Running Visual Studio 6 C++ in Windows 8.1

Question

I recently migrated my system to windows 8.1. Unfortunatly like some others, I am not able to start Visual Studio 6 anymore. The software is crashing at startup (splash scre

Answer 1

I find a simple way to solve the problem！

1. Look for "MSDEV.EXE" in this path:"C:\Program Files\vc6\Common\MSDev98\Bin".
2. Rename "MSDEV.EXE" as "MSDEV3.EXE".
3. Use compatible mode "XP SP2 or SP3".
4. Run MSDEV3.EXE, report error,rerun again and you will succeed!
5. If failed, rename MSDEV.EXE as other names and use compatible mode will lead to succeed.

Answer 2

Another simple solution:

1. Make a copy of MSDEV.EXE to anything (for example MSDEV_XP.EXE)
2. Set the compatibility of the copy MSDEV_XP.EXE to XP
3. Launch the renamed copy MSDEV_XP.EXE instead.

Explanation:

Microsoft installs two executables, MSDEV.EXE and MSDEV.COM, one of which can be made to run in recent WINDOWS versions. If you launch MSDEV in a shell or script (a makefile for example), you don't want to launch the COM instead of the EXE, and making a copy with a different name solves that. (Also, if you leave the two files Microsoft installed as is, you can be sure you're not breaking any existing functionality)

This solved my problem when I was building with a make file which I changed to call my copy that had been changed to XP compatibility. Note that I did need to use the original MSDEV.EXE in some cases, so it's good to have both.