Support status · Visual Basic 6
VB6 has been unsupported for years. The application is still running the business.
The IDE is long dead, the runtime survives on a compatibility promise rather than a support commitment, and the people who wrote it have retired. Here is how to work out what you are actually exposed to.
Free written status check · No obligation · We will tell you if you are fine
- Written support-status check
- Free
- Typical turnaround
- 3 days
- The report, whatever you decide
- Yours
The situation
If any of this sounds familiar, you are in the right place
The development environment no longer exists
You can still run the application. Building a change to it means keeping a specific old Windows image alive with a specific old IDE on it, and that machine is usually one failure away from gone.
The runtime is a promise, not a product
The VB6 runtime ships with Windows and keeps working. That is a compatibility commitment, not a supported product — nobody is fixing defects in it, and nothing obliges it to continue indefinitely.
The knowledge retired before the software did
VB6 expertise is now a genuinely scarce skill. The people who understand the application are usually reachable only as favours, and eventually not at all.
What we do
How we approach it
What the application actually does, recovered
Forms, modules, class files and the COM components underneath — read at volume and written down as business rules a non-VB6 reader can follow.
The dependency surface, mapped
COM registrations, ActiveX controls, third-party OCXs and database bindings. This is the part that makes VB6 migrations overrun, and it is knowable in advance.
Behaviour pinned before anything moves
Characterisation tests against the existing application first, so the port is checked against what the software really does rather than what the documentation claims.
Moved in pieces, never in one jump
Screen by screen, with both versions runnable side by side and each step independently revertible. No date on which everyone switches and hopes.
The engagement
How it runs
You tell us what you know
Roughly how big, roughly how old, and what would hurt most if it stopped.
We read the code
Inventory of forms, modules and dependencies, plus how much of it is provably unreachable.
You get the position in writing
What the application does, what it depends on, and where the genuine risk sits.
Options, with numbers
Leave it, isolate it, or move it — each priced and sequenced so the decision can actually be funded.
Questions
Frequently asked
Is Visual Basic 6 still supported?
No. Mainstream and extended support for the development environment ended long ago. The runtime continues to ship with and function on current Windows releases under a compatibility commitment, which is a meaningfully weaker guarantee than support: no defect fixes, no security servicing of the language tooling, and no obligation for it to continue.
Our VB6 app works perfectly. Why touch it?
If it works, is not internet-facing, and never needs changing, a decision to leave it alone can be perfectly rational — and we will say so. The problem is almost never that it stops working. It is that a regulation, an integration or a supplier eventually forces a change, and by then nobody can safely make one.
Should we move to VB.NET or something else entirely?
VB.NET is the shortest hop and preserves the most familiarity, but it inherits a desktop-application shape you may no longer want. The honest answer depends on whether the application needs to be a desktop app at all in five years. We put both options in front of you with real numbers rather than assuming.
How do you handle the COM and ActiveX dependencies?
By finding all of them first. Registered components, third-party OCXs and anything loaded dynamically get inventoried before a plan is written, because unknown dependencies are the single most common reason VB6 migrations run over. Some get replaced, some get wrapped, and some turn out to be dead.
Have you migrated VB6 specifically?
Our deepest delivery experience is ColdFusion. The method — recover the behaviour, pin it with tests, port incrementally, verify each step — is not language-specific, and reading unfamiliar code at volume is exactly what makes it portable. We would rather tell you that plainly than show you a case study we do not have.
What does the status check cost?
Nothing. You get a written read on what you are running and what it exposes you to, and it is yours regardless of what you do next.
Check your VB6 support status
Tell us roughly what you have. We will come back with a written read on where you stand.