Is there a Visual Basic 6 C++ Alternative?

VB6 will run on Vista with some help. However, your simplest path to working with it out of the box is to either turn off UAC – recommended if you do any kind of software development on Vista (actually, I recommend it for anybody who’s fed up with Vista’s annoyances), or always run it as administrator.

If you don’t_ have_ to use Visual Studio 6 (VB6 can be standalone or part of Visual Studio 6), you can download the express version of Visual Studio 2008, which is what Microsoft would prefer that you do. I recommend this option, as you will be getting a standards-compliant compiler that will run on your system without problems. It’s a free download – although it takes a while to get it set up. There is an express version for VB, too.

http://www.microsoft.com/express/vc/

I assume you mean Visual Studio, right? Visual Basic…. is Basic, not C++.

You can certainly go old-school and use the command-line compilers that us old folks (30 years old) used in college. Google for g++ (or gcc, if you really did mean you were using C, and not C++).

Definitely go for the Visual Studio 2008 Express (free) editions, just make sure you get it in the language you prefer. There are versions for Visual Basic, C# (csharp) and C++.