Posted by generalinfo on April 15th, 2009 in News

Software companies and individzuals that are using Microsoft Visual basic 6.0 are still going to be able to run this “#1 development tool in the world” on Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 even on Windows 7!

Microsoft has updated the Support Statement associated with the Visual Basic version 6 runtime. The new documentation now also covers the Windows 7 client as well as Windows 7 Server (Windows Server 2008 R2).     The Visual Basic team’s goal is that Visual Basic 6.0 applications that run on Windows XP will also run on Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7.

The Visual Basic team is also committed to the Visual Basic 6.0 development environment running on Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7. As detailed in Microsoft Support Statement document, the core Visual Basic 6.0 runtime will be supported for the full lifetime of Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7, which is “five years of mainstream support followed by five years of extended support,” according to Microsoft. 

The initial support statement for Visual Basic 6 made no reference to the next versions of the Windows client and server platforms. However, following the update, Microsoft revealed that it would offer the Visual basic 6 runtime for Windows 7 in conjunction with necessary support for the entire lifetime of the operating system.

However, Microsoft does not plan to continue with VB6 support on Windows 8! ”So, the VB 6 runtime will continue to be shipped with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, exactly the same way it was with Windows Vista and Windows 2008 Server. Beyond that, there are no plans to ship or support the VB6 runtime on future Operating Systems,” says Michael Epprecht from Microsoft.