HOWTO: Install 16-bit Visual Basic 4.0 Without Running Setup

ID: Q152559

The information in this article applies to:

SUMMARY

Under some circumstances, the 16-bit Edition of Visual Basic 4.0 will not install on a Windows system. This behavior is most typically demonstrated by a failure to extract information from a CAB file, but other persistent errors may also occur.

This article describes how to work around this behavior.

WARNING: The method described here should only be used as a last resort.


MORE INFORMATION

This method assumes that the customer has access to a working copy of Visual Basic on another system because many of the files required by the 16- bit Edition of Visual Basic 4.0 are incompatible with Windows 95 and Windows 98 system files of the same name. Rather than provide information that could possibly trash a system, we feel it is better to provide a less robust solution. A set of install disks for VisData and the three extracted files can always be sent if customer has no access to a working system.

Step-by-Step Example

  1. Copy the contents of the \VB directory from the CD-ROM to the \VB directory on your local hard drive. You should delete the \VB\System, \VB\ODBC, and \VB\MSApps directories from your local hard drive. If you will not be using the 32-bit version of Visual Basic 4.0, you may safely delete all files in the \VB directory that contain the string 32.


  2. Copy vaen2.dll, vba2.dll, and all the *16.OCX files from the \vb\system directory on the CD-ROM to the \windows\system directory.


  3. Expand the control licensing .REG file by running the appropriate line from the \SETUP directory of the CD-ROM in a Command prompt:

    Professional Edition:

    EXTRACT /L C:\VB /E VB4-6.CAB VBPRO.REG

    Enterprise Edition:

    EXTRACT /L C:\VB /E VB4-6.CAB VBENT.REG

    These commands will sometimes fail due to the inability to create a temporary file on the CD-ROM. Assuming that the CD-ROM is drive F:, the following will work even if the user does not have a TEMP environment variable set. From the root of the C: drive (or any other drive to which the user has write access):

    Professional Edition:

    F:\SETUP\EXTRACT /L C:\VB /E F:\SETUP\VB4-6.CAB VBPRO.REG

    Enterprise Edition:

    F:\SETUP\EXTRACT /L C:\VB /E F:\SETUP\VB4-6.CAB VBENT.REG

    If you cannot locate this file, type the following line from the \SETUP directory of the CD-ROM in a MS-DOS Command prompt:

    Professional Edition:

    EXTRACT /A /D VB4-1.CAB VBPRO.REG | MORE

    Enterprise Edition:

    EXTRACT /A /D VB4-1.CAB VBENT.REG | MORE


  4. From the \vb directory of a system with a working copy of Visual Basic 4.0, copy vbide.dll and vbext.olb to the \vb directory on the target system. They can also be extracted from the product CD-ROM as follows:

    EXTRACT /L C:\VB /E VB4-8.CAB VBIDE.DLL

    EXTRACT /L C:\VB /E VB4-9.CAB VBEXT.OLB


  5. From a system with a working copy of Visual Basic 4.0, use the Application Setup Wizard to create disks for the \vb\samples\VisData\VisData.vbp 16-bit Edition of the Visual Basic 4.0 sample app.


  6. Take the disks that you have just created to the target machine and run SETUP.EXE from the first disk to install the VisData sample.


  7. Run vb4pro.reg by double-clicking it from File Manager. Alternately, enter the following Command at the MS-DOS Command line:

    Regedit c:\vb\vbpro.reg


  8. You should now be able to execute VB.EXE normally. If Visual Basic protests that SHARE.EXE is not installed, exit windows and restart it to activate VSHARE.386, which was installed with the VisData sample. This should not occur on Windows for Work Groups systems.


Other dependency files will probably be required as well, but the above procedure should get the Visual Basic 4.0 16-bit Edition IDE going. These dependencies can be found in \vb4\setupkit\kitfiles\sw16tmpl.ini. The Register keyword will specify $(DLLSelfRegister) or $(EXESelfRegister) if the dependency requires registration. Use the \tools\pss\regsvr.exe utility from the CD-ROM, which is not normally installed by the Visual Basic 4.0 setup, to register the file manually. For example:
RegSvr OC25.DLL

Additional query words: kbVBp400 kbDSupport kbdss kbVBp kbSetUp 


Keywords          : 
Version           : WINDOWS:4.0;
Platform          : WINDOWS 
Issue type        : kbhowto

Last Reviewed: June 14, 1999