I used to have a CD of Visual Studio 6.0, and I have developed a few projects using it. I have re-formatted my disk and I am unable to find my VB 6.0 CD. I have managed to get a copy of Visual Studio .NET 2005 cd. If I install that, will I be able to work on projects which I developed using VB6? Will I be able to make native exe programs, which can be run without the .NET framework?

Q: Will I be able to work on VB 6 projects using VB.NET? A: No. Applications written in VB 6 will require that IDE environment in order to properly deal with the project for all kinds of reasons. VB.NET is not set up for them, and vice versa. I have seen where VB.NET can import individual files that were used in a VB 6 project (i.e. .BAS modules where I have a habit of keeping 'reusable subs/functions') However, the syntax and language of VB.NET is somewhat different, as you are aware, and so the modules must be edited to match the language of the IDE compiler platform you are using. Hope this gives some insight on possible workarounds, but sorry...the VB 6 projects cannot be simply loaded into VB.NET, they are not compatible. Q: Will I be able to develop Native Code applications that will run without the .NET Framework? A: To the best of my knowledge, No. First of all, Native Code compiled applications in VB 6 STILL require the VB 6 support DLL's. The Native Code simply builds the EXE utilizing processor optimized instruction sets instead of the more compatible "psuedo" coding. Windows 2000 and above come with these files. Want to check this? Find the MSVBVM60.DLL file and delete it, no VB 6 application will run. Likewise, all VB .NET applications will require the .NET Framework to be installed, and it is of course vastly larger in size than the VB 6 counterparts.

When VB.Net first came out Microsoft issued a conversion programme that would convert VB.6 source code to VB.NET. It did a reasonable job but left a lot of incompatibilities that needed to be modified manually. An example is the default VB.6 calling convention which is by reference. In VB.Net it is by value. That fact alone will cause many VB.6 applications to fail. Even if you do manage to compile the programme, you will need extensive testing to prove that it is still doing what it was meant to do. Because of this and many other little incompatibilities, very few VB.6 applications were converted to VB.net. If you only have access to VB.Net it would probably be quicker to re-write the code in VB.Net using the VB.6 code as a guide. Stuart

Thank you for your replies. I am ready to re-write the program in VB.Net. Only thing is I need the final application to be an exe, so that it can run without the Dot net framework. I need it this way because I cannot expect the client machines to be having dot net framework, and I do not want to force the users to install. Even the dot net framework ultimately translates to machine language code and executes right? So, is there any compiler option which will convert it to native exe? There are java to exe convertes in the market. Is there one for dot net? Thanks once again for your answers.

If you want to do without .Net then you are going to have to use something other than VB.NET or any other of the .NET programming languages. The VB.NET compiler makes native code to begin with and it will be an .exe. The .NET doesn't do any translation. It is a run time environment that contains, among other things, function that can be called from within the application supposedly making the programmers job a lot easier. Even VB.6 can be compiled to native code but it still needs the VB run-time environment to work. Stuart