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VB6 Help Files Only, Visual Basic 6.0 MSDN 64 Bit



The VB6 runtime will ship and will be supported in Windows 10 and Windows 11 for the lifetime of the OS. Visual Basic 6.0 runtime files continue to be 32-bit only, and all components must be hosted in 32-bit application processes. Developers can think of the support story for Windows 10 as being the same as it was in prior versions.


Thanks for the articleI have met with an issue. All my installation files are in one folder and not on CDs. After choosing custom option,the installer is asking for visual studio 6.0Enterprise edition Disk 1, which I dont have as all installation files are in one folder. Can nyone help? Thank you in advance




VB6 Help Files Only, Visual Basic 6.0 MSDN 64 bit




STEP 3:To get the full MSDN library to work with your VB6 Studio, download the "MSDN Library October 2001 - Full Setup (English)" (this file will be called "en_msdn_library_october2001_dvd.exe"). Alternatively, you can download 3 separate ISO files for CD-ROMs. NOTE: the total download is about 1.2Gb so it will take 20 minutes or so on a 1Mb/sec connection


Visual Basic can create executables (EXE files), ActiveX controls, or DLL files, but is primarily used to develop Windows applications and to interface with database systems. Dialog boxes with less functionality can be used to provide pop-up capabilities. Controls provide the basic functionality of the application, while programmers can insert additional logic within the appropriate event handlers. For example, a drop-down combination box automatically displays a list. When the user selects an element, an event handler is called that executes code that the programmer created to perform the action for that list item. Alternatively, a Visual Basic component can have no user interface, and instead provide ActiveX objects to other programs via Component Object Model (COM). This allows for server-side processing or an add-in module.


Visual Basic can create executables (EXE files), ActiveX controls, or DLL files, but is primarily used to develop Windows applications and to interface database systems. Dialog boxes with less functionality can be used to provide pop-up capabilities. Controls provide the basic functionality of the application, while programmers can insert additional logic within the appropriate event handlers. For example, a drop-down combination box automatically displays a list. When the user selects an element, an event handler is called that executes code that the programmer created to perform the action for that list item. Alternatively, a Visual Basic component can have no user interface, and instead provide ActiveX objects to other programs via Component Object Model (COM). This allows for server-side processing or an add-in module.


Yes you read that right. I did specifically mention Visual Studio 6 in the title. That's because I am both an old codger and Visual Studio 6 is still in wide use around the world. I myself learned BASIC before there was any such thing as DOS and Visual Basic 6 is arguably the best version before they corrupted it with this dot net stuff. There are many tutorials around the net for installing this suite into windows 7/8x but none work for windows 10. There is one program which claims to support installing visual studio 6 in windows 10 but I did not want to register just to download that program and try it out. All of the other methods involve creating a zero byte file in the windows directory (msjava.dll) which does NOT work on windows 10. In any case you do not need to do even that trick. First of all you need to somehow obtain a copy of visual studio 6. There are many ways of obtaining that however, I will assume (yes I know about assume yada yada) that you have a legal copy and product key. Those files need to be on a modifiable medium. In other words if your copy is on a CDROM then you need to copy them to a folder on your disk. The next step is to find and open up in notepad the file setupwiz.ini. Under the [setup wizard] heading there should be a line like "VmPath=ie4msjavx86.exe". If there is not it doesn't matter. In the end you need to either modify that existing line or add a line and it must look like "VmPath=". Don't forget to save that file. What this does is create an empty environment variable and stops the setup program for looking for the super old version of java. This fixes what the zero byte msjava.dll cludge doesn't. After that you can start installing. Make sure you right click on the "setup.exe" file and run it as administrator. Go through all the click this and click that and put in your legal product code until you come to the screen with the setup options. You need to select the custom setup option because otherwise you will be up a brown smelly creek in a barbed wire canoe with a tennis racket as a paddle. Ok, maybe I embellished a bit but select the custom setup option ok? The next screen is to select the installation folder. It most probably will have as a default "C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft Visual StudioCommon". Get rid of the "(x86)" and install it to "C:Program FilesMicrosoft Visual StudioCommon". This apparently helps for the data access components. Remember, in those times there was not 64/32 bit thunking requiring separate program folders. Heck, in those days 32 bit was cutting edge and like the 640k memory limit it was not thought that more would be needed. There will be more click this and that which nobody then or today takes any notice of until we come to the important screen, the one where you can select your components. This may take a while to appear while the setup program searches for installed components. Be patient :) As I am only interested in VB6 I deselected C++, Foxpro, Interdev and source safe then selected graphics for the cool retro icons and animation, aaah nostalgia. Everything else I left as default except for one very important step. If this is not done then the setup will go into an endless loop at the end and leave your CPU fan screaming for mercy. What you need to do is go into the "Data Access" change options, go into the "ADO,RDS and OLE DB providers" change options then deselect "ADO and RDS". The setup program will give a big scary warning so just click on it without reading like any other window which pops up. Then click on "OK" back to the main component selection screen and "Continue" to let the setup program show it's self advertising screens while it copies the files. If you have windows firewall activated it will want to allow access to some program. I denied that access as I didn't want it traipsing around my network without my permission. Who knows what it will do. It will then want to restart windows which you should do because once windows has restarted the setup will continue on and want to install MSDN and other tools. None of which I installed. It may complain that "APEMREG" may not have installed correctly. You just tell windows that it did and to stop bothering you. The final thing to do, once the install has finished and you want visual basic 6 to at least run fast, is to go the the installed directory at "C:Program FilesMicrosoft Visual StudioVB98" right click on "vb6.exe" and in the properties under the compatibility tab for all users, select compatibility mode (XP sp2) and set the settings for Reduced color mode (16bit) and disable the display scaling on high dpi settings. Ok, the real final and never needed to be done again step is to run the VB6 program once as an administrator. This is so the final registry doo dads can be set. That is the end of that! You can now program on a modern 64 bit operating system using a 32 bit program with 16 bit graphics and 8 bit variables for as many bits'o'cash as you can make :)


The VB6 runtime will ship and will be supported in Windows 10 for the lifetime of the OS. Visual Basic 6.0 runtime files continue to be 32-bit only, and all components must be hosted in 32-bit application processes.


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