How to install Visual Studio 6.0 on Windows 10

This article will show you how to successfully install Visual Studio 6.0 on the latest version of Windows 10. The installation is possible but requires some additional steps for a successful installation.

If you have already attempted to install
If you have already attempted to install Visual Studio 6.0 but have failed to do so you will need to delete some files and some registry entries before trying again. Delete the following files from your computer:

If you are on 32-bit, then the program will be located at C:\Program Files instead of C:\Program Files (x86).


 * C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\Common
 * C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\MSDN
 * C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\MSDN98
 * C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\VB98
 * C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98
 * C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\*.HTM
 * C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\*.TXT
 * C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\MSDesigners98
 * C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\MSDN
 * C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\VS98
 * C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Wizards98

Delete the following registry entries:


 * HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\DevStudio
 * HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\HTML Help Collections
 * HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\MSVSDG
 * HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Visual Basic\6.0
 * HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Visual Component Manager
 * HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Visual Modeler
 * HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\6.0
 * HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\DevStudio
 * HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\HTML Help Collections
 * HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\MSVSDG
 * HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Visual Basic\6.0
 * HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Visual Component Manager
 * HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Visual Modeler
 * HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\6.0
 * HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\DevStudio
 * HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MSVSDG
 * HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Visual Basic\6.0
 * HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Visual Modeler
 * HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualFoxPro
 * HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\6.0

and then continue on with the tutorial.

Preparing the setup files
First things first, you will need a copy of Visual Studio 6.0 and we will need to extract the files. This has been tested on the Enterprise and Professional versions of Visual Studio. Create a folder on your Desktop named "Setup". Insert your Visual Studio 6.0 CD, or, if you have an ISO file, extract the files from it using 7-Zip or a similar tool. Copy the contents of the CD/ISO into the Setup folder. If you are prompted to overwrite a duplicate file name, skip it.

Open the file named SETUPWIZ.INI in your preferred text editor. This tutorial will use Notepad++. Under a section called [setup wizard], we are going to be looking for an entry called VmPath. It should be on line 21. If you do not have this entry, or the entry is empty, you may skip this step. Otherwise, we need to remove the value ie4\msjavx86.exe. We remove this to prevent the setup Wizard from looking for and trying to install this extremely old version of MS Java which does not work in newer versions of Windows. Your INI file should look similar to this:



Now we need to modify the Setup program so that it will actually run. It's very easy. Locate the SETUP.EXE which should be in the same location as SETUPWIZ.INI. Right click on this file, and choose "Properties". Click on the Compatibility tab and check the box "Run this program in compatibility mode for:". On the drop-down menu, select "Windows XP (Service Pack 3)". Then, check the box that says "run this program as an administrator". Click the Apply button and hit OK.



Now it's time to run the setup wizard. Click on SETUP.EXE. A UAC prompt will appear - hit yes. Once the setup opens, choose all of the defaults for each step and hit continue. It will search for "previously installed components" which might take a bit. When the process is done you will be presented with a dialog choice of what installation type you want. Select Custom. If you are prompted to install "Source Safe", choose No.

Custom Settings
When everything is finally done you should see a "Visual Studio 6.0 - Custom" dialog. For this article, we are installing only Visual Basic 6.0 and Visual C++ 6.0, so you can uncheck the options for Visual FoxPro 6.0, Visual InterDev 6.0 and Visual SourceSafe 6.0. Select the option for Visual C++ 6.0, press the "Change Option..." button and install the UNICODE libraries for MFC.



Installing Unicode Libraries
This part is completely optional, but some programmers may want to support languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, etc. If you do not plan on having support for those languages in your program or you are not compiling a program with support for those languages you can skip this step. Otherwise, when presented with the next dialog, select the option "VC++ MFC and Template Libraries", press the "Change Option..." button then select the option "MS Foundation Class Libraries" and press the "Change Option..." button. We want to install everything listed so press the "Select All" button. Now you should see the following options:



Disable ADO, RDS and OLE DB Providers
This step is necessary because if you do not disable this, the installation will fail. Select "Data Access", and press "Change Option...". When the Data Access dialog opens select "ADO, RDS, and OLE DB Providers" and make sure it is unchecked. Although the program will complain that it is an essential part of the application you can safely use Visual Studio without it. Ignore the warning, and press OK. Your options should look like this:



Disable Visual Studio Analyzer
This step is necessary because if you do not disable this, the installation will fail. Select "Enterprise Tools" and press "Change Option...". When the dialog opens select "Visual Studio Analyzer" and make sure it is unchecked. Press the OK button to continue.



Finishing up
The installation should finally be ready to go. Press the Continue button. When presented with the "Setup Environment Variables" dialog, just leave the Register Environment Variables box unchecked and press the OK button to continue. The installer should now be running and installing everything. Once completed you will be asked to overwrite JIT Settings. Select No and continue. You'll now be asked to restart Windows. Close any open programs, save all your work and restart the machine to continue the install.



MSDN Installation
When Windows restarts you'll get a prompt asking you to install MSDN. You can choose to install it or not, it's up to you. If you want to install MSDN, follow the instructions in the wizard.



Service Pack 6
Your CD may or may not have Service Pack 6 slipstreamed/installed. If you do not have Service Pack 6 you will definitely want to install it. To do so you can either download the SP6 from Microsoft's Website, or, if that's not available, you can download it from the Computernewb mirror. Right click on the SETUPSP6.EXE and make sure the compatibility mode is set to "Windows XP (Service Pack 3)" and that it is set to run as Administrator. Follow the setup to complete the installation.

Once the setup has completed, go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\Common\MSDev98\Bin\ and make sure that all of the EXE files in the directory are set to run in compatibility mode as "Windows XP (Service Pack 3)".