Why does my VB6 IDE loses its buttons and menu items?

Question

I still have to use the VB6 IDE.

Unfortunately every time I start the IDE one of the buttons of the toolbar disappears. Almost always it's the Run button which goes first. Sometimes also items from the menu bar or the context menus are missing.

I have to reset the toolbars almost every time I start the IDE (Which is quite often during a typical work day). Recently I bought an IDE plugin which modifies the menu bar and requires a restart after every reset of the menu bar. (Otherwise it would crash)

I could live with just the resetting, but the restart is really annoying.

Is there something I can do?

Answer 1

Reinstall,clean registry and update with SPacks etc....

Answer 2

It's just guest, but:

Each graphical element on IDE (like button) is kind of resource (i.e. GDI handle).

Maybe your VB app doesn't manage these resources good enough and after sometime VB IDE cannot redraw elements like buttons (run is used often).

Also, maybe some IDE add-in is in conflict with some other add-in/application and breaks something -- I have this problem with Clip-X and MZ-Tools.

Answer 3

Yea, i have this same problem with one of the add-in. But if you reset it. Shut the IDE down and open it back up again without doing anything, the IDE shouuld be able to retain the previous clean setup.

Answer 4

I had a similar problem when I was setting up the IDE to use for the first time, though it may not be helpful if you've been using the same IDE for a while. When I first started using the IDE, I would modify the toolbars and then close the IDE. When prompted if I wanted to save the open file I always said No, since the file was just a dummy file I was using to open the IDE with. Turns out the IDE was saving the toolbar preferences with that file, so they never got saved.

Try opening a file, customizing the UI, saving the file, then closing without modifying the code. This was the solution for me.

Answer 5

It sounds like you recently bought a bad add-in. Can you get your money back? Every time I've had problems with disappearing controls in the IDE it has been due to a bad add-in. You can find out which one it is by disabling them, one by one, each time using the IDE for a while, then re-enable it and disable the next one, until the problem stops.

I still use one problematic add-in. It exhibits behavior similar to yours in that it makes the run button disappear. I avoid the problem by only loading the add-in when I need it, use it (it formats code), then I immediately unload it. If you don't use the functionality of the add-in that often, this could be an acceptable workaround.

Answer 6

I've tracked down the problem and as suggested it was an add-in.

The problem went away as soon as I disabled the Visual Basic 6 Resource Editor.

Answer 7

How to restore your VB6 IDE without reinstalling:

1. Run Regedit
2. Find the entry for Visual Basic 6.0
3. Export your settings in case things go wrong
4. Delete the 'UI' setting
5. Run VB and you will have your popup menus back