Visual Basic 6: What type of binary? Execution environment?

Question

We are planning to move a VB6 binary only from one Windows machine to another in production environment.

• What type of Windows OS cannot run a VB6 binary?
• What type of extra run time application needs to be installed to make sure that a VB6 binary would run on that machine?
• Underneath the hood how is a VB6 binary different from a C# binary?

Answer 1

VB6 makes heavy use of COM objects that you will have to make sure are installed on the new system.

This means installing the VB6 runtime on that machine and any other COM/ActiveX controls that the application uses.

VB6 apps are quite different from C# apps. C# compiled code is represented as CIL while VB6 is either native code or the old Pcode. They also use different standard libraries.

I am not sure about operating system compatibility. If it's a 32-bit app, then I imagine you could coax it into running on any version of Windows.