How To Install Visual Studio 6 Sp6 Download

| Posted on by

To install Visual Studio 6 on a computer running Windows 8.1 you need to take several special steps to succeed. Here I describe what I did to install Visual Studio 6 SP6 on Windows 8.1.

The ultimate utility to install Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 (any edition) and Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 and on Windows 10/8.x/7/Vista/XP/2000 (any version) VS6 Installer is a utility that allows you to interactively install the full suite of Microsoft Visual Studio / Basic 6.0 included MSDN Library 6.0 and the Service Pack 6 for Visual Studio 6.0. If you have 7-Zip archiver (If you don’t have, you can download 7-Zip from here). This procedure allowed me to install VC6 SP6 on a Windows 7 Professional machine. 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.

Contents

The procedure uses the nice Visual Studio 6.0 Installer by Giorgio Brausi [1][2]. Without using it, the installation didn't finish properly and no uninstall entry was created.


Note: many default actions are omitted from the following description.

Preparation

  • Download and unzip Visual Studio 6.0 Installer [1][2]
  • Start Visual Studio 6.0 Installer and read its help ?
  • Copy contents of Visual Studio Professional / Enterprise CDs to hard disk under a common folder, for example [3]:
    • .../VS6/EN_VS60SP6
    • .../VS6/MSDN CD1
    • .../VS6/MSDN CD2
    • .../VS6/VSE600ENU1
    • .../VS6/VSE600ENU2
    • .../VS6/VSE600ENU3
  • In the next steps, Visual Studio 6.0 Installer will prepare the folders to perform the installation from.
  • Specify the root folder where to prepare the folders to install from via File > Set Root folder...;
    For me this is D:UsersMartinVS6-ROOT
  • Click Step 1: Prepare Visual Studion 6.0 ENT and specify the path to CD #1 of the Visual Studio 6.0 CD you collected above, .../VS6/VSE600ENU1.
  • Click Step 2: Prepare MSDN Library and specify the path to CD #1 of the MSDN Library CD you collected above, .../VS6/MSDN CD1.
  • Click Step 3: Prepare Service Pack 6 and specify the path to the folder (CD)with Service Pack 6 you collected above, .../VS6/EN_VS60SP6.

Further preparation:

  • Create folder C:Program Files (uac)
    The Visual Studio development environment files will be installed here to prevent the UAC to intervene [4]. That would happen when Visual Studio would be installed to C:Program Files (x86) [4].
  • Make sure that Microsoft Visual Studio folders from previous Visual Studio 6 installations are removed as well as its registry entries [5].

Install Visual Studio 6

  • Start the Visual Studio 6.0 Installer
  • Note: in section Preparation above we already specified the root folder with prepared installation CDs via File > Set Root folder... (D:UsersMartinVS6-ROOT).
  • Select Visual Studio 6.0 Enterprise (or Professional).
  • Click Install Visual Studio 6.0 ENT
    • Choose folder for common files:
      C:Program Files (uac)Microsoft Visual StudioCommon
    • Select desired products
      Note: For Windows8.x, from Data Access main option, disable the item: ADO, RDS and OLE DB Providers
    • Restart Windows
    • Deselect Install MSDN, don't install anything further now
    • Deselect Register Now, press Finish
  • Click Install MSDN Library
    • Accept several defaults
    • Press Full button
  • Click Install Service Pack 6
    • Accept several defaults
    • Press Full button

Prevent compatibility check interception

Trying to run MSDEV.EXE now will result in a Microsoft (R) Developer Studio has stopped working dialog. To cure this:

  • Rename MSDEV.EXE to MSDEV8.EXE [5]
    MSDEV.EXE is located in C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft Visual StudioCommonMSDev98Bin.

  • On MSDEV8.EXE, change Properties, Compatibility to: Windows 7:

Enable using msdev from the command line

To enable using MSDEV8.EXE under the original name from the command line I created program msdev.cpp.

Visual

Download Visual Studio 6 Free

Compile this program with VC6 or higher and copy it to folder C:Program Files (uac)Microsoft Visual StudioCommonMSDev98Bin.

Create a VC6 command prompt

To enable opening a command prompt for Visual C++ 6, we create a new shortcut.

  • On the desktop, context menu, select New > Shortcut.
  • Location of item: %comspec% /k 'C:Program Files (uac)Microsoft Visual StudioVC98BinVCVARS32.bat'
  • Name for this shortcut: VC6 Command Prompt
  • Press Finish

Now move this shortcut to the start menu folder Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0:

  • C:ProgramDataMicrosoftWindowsStart MenuProgramsMicrosoft Visual Studio 6.0

As an example, start VC6 command prompt and issue msdev /?:

Wrap up

If you want to do the installation all over again and need to remove (part of) the Visual Studio installation by hand, reference [6] may be helpful to see which registry items may need removal.

I also installed WinHlp for Windows 8.1, however you may not need it at all [7].

How To Install Visual Studio On Linux

Notes and references

[1] Giorgio Brausi. Visual Studio 6.0 Installer.

[2] Giorgio Brausi. Visual Studio 6.0 Installer v.2.1 Last update january 18, 2014 . YouTube.

[3] Microsoft. Visual Studio SP6.

[4] Wikipedia. User Account Control (UAC).

[5] Microsoft Community. UAC and one program used very regulary. gbswales, 12/4/2011.

[6] Microsoft. How To Manually Uninstall Visual Studio with MSDN Library

[7] Microsoft. Windows Help program (WinHlp32.exe) for Windows 8.1