What Visual Studio do I need?

Associate
Joined
5 Jul 2012
Posts
279
I'm looking to download the visual studio that has vb6 in it for my computing homework but I'm not sure which one we use in school?

Is it Visual Studio 2005 I need?
 
what are you doing with it? as in what are you creating?

Stelly

We have to use VB6 as the programming language for computing at A level but I'm not sure which version of visual studio I need?

So far we've only done simple forms and stuff but I think we get on to databases after christmas.
 
Yes, that will be all you need.

VB6 wasn't actually integrated into Visual Studio (as an, the IDE software) back in those days, though it was present on the VS 6.0 installer/DVDs as part of the software suite.

So installing that download (and then applying the latest Service Pack if it's not already got it) will give you the full monty, enterprise edition was the fullest-featured release they did.
 
I used VB2010 for my computing A-Level project without problems. Just told my teacher about the dreamspark website and the school got 2010 Ultimate installed for me.
 
That's great, except if you have homework to submit in a VB6 compatible format, then VB.Net (2010 or any other) is no good, they're different languages.

On the other hand, if you're intending to do your homework on a Windows 7 machine and don't have a Windows XP VM / dual-boot available, then attempting to do VB6 work is going to be painful, bordering on impossible.
 
Last edited:
That's great, except if you have homework to submit in a VB6 compatible format, then VB.Net (2010 or any other) is no good, they're different languages.

On the other hand, if you're intending to do your homework on a Windows 7 machine and don't have a Windows XP VM / dual-boot available, then attempting to do VB6 work is going to be painful, bordering on impossible.

There is a very easy way to do that!
Just use Google-fu! ;)
 
Some controls just wouldn't work in design mode in Vista/Win7 and MS weren't going to fix/shim them. I didn't have problems compiling VB6 code on earlier operating systems and running them in Vista/Win7, but development does have some issues beyond the initial installation of it. I persisted/worked around it for the most part, as I had freedom to do so, but if I was doing work (as in $$$ or assignments), I'd probably run it in a VM (if I had an edition of Windows that permitted it) to be safe.

Maybe your google-fu will find solutions for that too, but just be wary, some of your fights to get things working (particularly as I say, some controls in design mode,) might cost you time. Depends how rigid the assignments end up being, and how much control you have.
 
Some controls just wouldn't work in design mode in Vista/Win7 and MS weren't going to fix/shim them. I didn't have problems compiling VB6 code on earlier operating systems and running them in Vista/Win7, but development does have some issues beyond the initial installation of it. I persisted/worked around it for the most part, as I had freedom to do so, but if I was doing work (as in $$$ or assignments), I'd probably run it in a VM (if I had an edition of Windows that permitted it) to be safe.

Maybe your google-fu will find solutions for that too, but just be wary, some of your fights to get things working (particularly as I say, some controls in design mode,) might cost you time. Depends how rigid the assignments end up being, and how much control you have.

I haven't tried it much.

My computing teacher said to just try and get it installed tonight and she's giving out a sheet of functions and stuff to try tommorrow to make sure our installations are working ok?

I can get a copy of XP from dreamspark but what would I use to VM it?
 
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/

This option being the one that is limited to the edition of Windows you're using it on (i.e. Pro or higher, can't use it on Home Edition).

Otherwise, whatever you can get your hands on I suppose - virtualbox is always a maybe option if no others arise, though I've not used it for doing any Windows/GUI development myself, I've used it with Aptana ('Eclipse') in a linux vm.

It's been a couple of years since I last touched VB6 though, maybe the articles you found now will even have helped you avoid the problems that we were facing then. I still have an XP box kicking around as my fallback should I need one.
 
VMware player is the one I use for creating virtual machines. I prefer it to the inbuilt microsoft virtual PC.

I have not tried my VS2003 on it, I know that it does not work in windows 7 though.
 
Back
Top Bottom