How to keep an old VB6 application running in Windows Vista and Windows 7?

Question

I have an old VB6 app which I'm still trying to support. A few users have reported weird crashes when running the app in Vista or Windows 7. The log files don't show anything after one of these crashes, but the customers report that the error message said "OLE something ...", if they saw anything at all.

I've never been able to reproduce these crashes while running the program on my own Vista or Windows 7 boxes, so I have essentially no information on what the problem is.

My suspicion is that it's a problem with their versions of one or more of the umpteen billion DLLs that a VB6 application is dependent on. The app also uses lame_enc.dll, which introduces a few more dependencies.

I'm guessing this is a common problem with VB6 apps (although it's possible that I just sucked as a programmer 10 years ago). Is there some magical installer/updater out there that makes sure all the VB6 dependencies are what they need to be for a VB6 app to function properly?

Answer 1

If Compatibility Mode doesn't work there is also XP Mode. This virtualizes the entire environment in an XP virtual machine but also allows it to interact with the host OS. It's only available for Windows 7 though.

Answer 2

Have the user run the app in compatibility mode for XP. Just drag a shortcut onto the desktop, right-click, Properties. Then on the Compatibility tab, set it to "run in compatibility mode for:" and pick "Windows XP (Service Pack 3)". And also "disable display scaling on high DPI settings". See if that helps. It just might.

Answer 3

Try a third party installer like Installshield. I have a VB6 app which didn't install and run properly on Win 7 using the original installer, but I when I put it through a recent version of Installshield it now works fine.