Installing & Using Visual Studio 6 on Windows Vista

Krazy_About_Technology · 03-10-2007, 05:17 PM

Hi Guys,

I recently upgraded to Vista and after a few updates, my system is running awesome. But the real pain begun when i tried installing Visual Studio 6. I still use VB 6 for some reasons, along with VS.NET 2005. The setup failed straightforward. After many tries and searching on MSDN forums, i have found a way to do it.

Here you go...

Note: First thing to note is that Visual Basic 6 and Visual FoxPro 6 are the only components of VS 6 that are supported on Vista. For Visual C++ 6 and Visual Interdev 6, Use the Visual C++ 2005 and Visual Web Developer features of Visual Studio 2005 or 2008.

1. Right click the file setup.exe in root of Visual Basic 6 CD and choose "Run as administrator.

2. Setup will run the java virtual machine setup and restart windows.

3. After returning, setup may not run automatically. In that case run it again as in step 1.

4. Go through the first few pages as usual.

5. On the last setup page just before installation begins, setup it asks for installation folder. click custom.

6. First click 'Select All'. Now uncheck
a) Visual C++ 6
b) Visual Interdev 6
c) Under Tools, Uncheck VC Error Lookup, Self installing EXE redistributable File, OLE/COM Object Viewer, WIN32 SDK Tools, MFC Trace Utilities. Out of these, only OLE/COM Object Viewer is important, its incompatible with the new Visual Studio 2005 Tools. So it will give you problem if you are installing both VS 6 and VS 2005.

7. Continue installing. Setup will complete and restart system. Congrats!

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One more thing, to use vb, right click its shortcut and click properties. On the compatibility page, check the 'Run in compatibility mode' check box and choose Windows XP SP2. Also check the 'Run as Administrator' checkbox. Click OK and double click the shortcut to begin.

This last step is important or you wont be able to use any Active X components or set any references, since VB would not be able to access the Registry.

Cheers!