Category Archives: Visual Studio 2003

VC6 Ultimate updates

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I’ve been trading emails with various people from the project after I had made my post, and helping them integrate more of Visual Studio 2003 into the project and working through a few issues to bring far better compatibility to VS 2003.

And the best part is being able to build projects in parallel!

10.2 seconds in parallel!

I haven’t ordered new processors, so the 2.1Ghz parts are… lacking. However being able to use all available cores makes building DOSBox pretty fast.

Restricting the build to a single process takes 1:13 while the full parallel build on this machine takes a mere 10 seconds!

So absolutely check out VC6Ultimate!

Visual Studio .net Enterprise Architect

I uh, also saw this on archive.org, which may help people looking for this stuff from the future as old tools get harder and harder to find. Especially bigger editions like the Enterprise Architect version.

VC6 Ultimate

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I saw this the other day, VC6 Ultimate. It’s an interesting ‘update’ on the old Visual C++ 6.0 product with an improved UI, along with updated compiler toolchain taken from later versions of Visual C++. Naturally something like this is 1000000% unofficial.

Features include:

  • Portable and compatible with Win7 / Win10
    bye bye regedit, hello .hjson setting file !
    also meaning it should not mess with your current install
  • More compatible compiler
    multicore version of VC7.1 compiler (It’s fast)
    you can compile with other compilers (64bit), but not debug yet
  • Real-time highlighting and diagnostics
    based on libclang 6.0 and compatible with VisualAssistX
  • Real multicursor editing
    search, sort, number, evaluate, etc. while in multicursor mode
  • Improved UX and UI
    32bit icons, dark skin, lot of visual hints
    multi-monitor friendly
    revamped dialogs (project settings, threads, breakpoints, …)
    searchable command palette
  • It’s free (as in free beer)
    ever had to pay for a birthday present ? 😉
  • Every change has a toggle
    only take what you like, but we can not check each combination
  • It’s an internal spare time project
    don’t expect everything to work in every setup, but feel free to reach out

Included in the bundle is the following compilers:

  • clang version 3.8.0 (branches/release_38)
    Target: i686-pc-windows-msvc
  • Microsoft (R) 32-bit C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 13.10.6030 for 80×86
    Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 1984-2002. All rights reserved.
  • Microsoft (R) C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 14.00.40310.41 for AMD64
    Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

It’s an interesting project, although I tried to re-build some Visual C++ 2003 projects and it bombed out. Maybe it’s just more geared towards VC 6 as indicated.

You can download it here

https://gitlab.com/VC6Ultimate/VC6Ultimate

Visual Studio 2003 on Windows 10 & Errors with Desktop Compositing/Themes

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While building the latest DOSBox SVN using Visual Studio 2003 I found something kind of annoying under Windows 10.  The first thing is that if I search through the source code base, the application locks up, hard.   It turns out that this has been an ongoing issue with Windows 8 (maybe Vista/7?) with Aero rendering of all things.  The fix is to disable Desktop Compositing & Desktop Themes, but the application comparability tab is hidden on many applications for Windows 10.

Broken Visual Studio

See how the application preview doesn’t render anything at all?  This is the hint that it’s broken.  I think it may be worth sharing this ‘fix’ as I’m sure that other applications that behave strangely have the same issue.

I found the solution to this over on stackoverflow in this discusstion:[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2422581/visual-studio-net-2003-on-windows-7-hangs-on-search].  The fix is a registry entry in the “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers” key.

The required settings to devenv.exe is:

“^ RUNASADMIN DISABLEDWM DISABLETHEMES”

Which, will run Visual Studio as Administrator allowing you to debug, and disable all the Aero assists for the application allowing things like search to work again.

I had gone further and enabled the Windows XP SP3 compatibility settings, however on doing a clean build I was presented with this error:

fatal error C1033: cannot open program database ''

Which I never could find any good source on what caused it, other than by guessing to remove the Windows XP flag, and now I’m able to build.

While debugging and re-building the debug database is held open on Windows 7 (maybe Vista?) and beyond on x64 based OS’s. You’ll get the annoying LNK1201 error.

There is a fix on bytepointer.com (local backup vs7.1_on_win7_pdb_handle_leak_unofficial_fix_win10.zip) that involves patching/replacing natdbgde.dll . All I can say is that it seems to be working for me.

In order to do a full build of DOSBox I had to re-build SDL, SDL-net, zLib, libPNG, and set them to a common C runtime linker setting to get a build where the final link didn’t complain.  However when it came to existing project files I did have to find some older Visual C++ 6.0 stuff for many of the components, but using those I was able to ‘upgrade’ them to the 2003 environment and produce a working set.

I’ve got to say, that the AVI capture in the newer branches (I’m using build r4177) is really great!

SDL 1.2.15 not working with Visual Studio 2003 (2002, 6, 97..)

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Well yeah fun errors like this:

SDL “error LNK2001: unresolved external symbol __alloca_probe_16”

What gives? well the binary kit was built using 2005 (I guess) something higher.

Download and link against SDL-devel-1.2.13-VC6.zip and all will be happy.  I suppose you could build the source yourself, but who’s got time for that?

And remember to set your project to use the Multi Threaded DLL libc, otherwise you’ll get errors like this:

LNK2005: __isctype already defined in LIBCMT.lib(isctype.obj)
LNK2005: _exit already defined in LIBCMT.lib(crt0dat.obj)

Ok?

 

Installing Visual Studio 2003 on CrossOver (OS X)

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First run the ‘setup.exe’ from the prerequisite CD-ROM.

Set the supported application type to “Microsoft Office 2003”, and place it in a new bottle.

Step 1

Step 1

Pre-requisites install

Components install

This will be counter intuitive.

Screen Shot 2014-01-20 at 5.50.56 PM

Answer no, and the needed components will install.

Pre-requ

Pre-requisites

Don’t worry the .net 1.1 runtime & the j# .net redistributable package will both fail.  It is nothing to worry about as we need to install them manually.

Everything is fine!

Everything is fine!

CrossOver will then notice that something went wrong.  We just tell it to ignore the step, and pretend everything is OK.

Screen Shot 2014-01-20 at 5.53.02 PM

Just ‘Skip This Step’ and all is well.

Now that the bottle is ‘setup’ we manually install the .net 1.1 framework.  First tell the installer that we are going to install the runtime component .NET Framework 1.1.

I just point the installer to the CD’s ‘dotNetFramework’ directory to the dotnetfx.exe.

Install .net 1.1

Install .net 1.1

And let it install.

Next I install the J# Runtime.  First select the ‘other’ application type, then I select the JSharpRedistCore directory and the vjredist.exe

J# Runtime Install

J# Runtime Install

This should install just fine.

Next it’s time to install the MDAC 2.7 sp1 components.  I select MDAC 2.71 Serivce Pack 1, then point the installer to the MDAC27SP1 directory, and select the mdac_typ.exe installer

MDAC Installation

MDAC Installation

And the MDAC components should install without issue.

Now for some reason I’ve had issues swapping CD’s so I ‘cheat’ and do the following:

Screen Shot 2014-01-20 at 6.04.22 PMPrograms -> Run Command, then open up the ‘Debug Options’ and choose Open Shell.

From here I simply do this:

$ cd ‘/Users/neozeed/Library/Application Support/CrossOver/Bottles/Microsoft Visual Studio 2003/drive_c’
drive_c neozeed$ mkdir temp
drive_c neozeed$ mkdir vs2003
drive_c neozeed$ cd vs2003
vs2003 neozeed$ cp -R /Volumes/VSPROD2/* .
vs2003 neozeed$ cp -R /Volumes/VSPROD1/* .
cd ..

Now we can go ahead and install Visual Studio.

Choose

Lets choose the right setup.exe

I find it easier to ‘Open the C: Drive’ which will take us to the 2003 folder, then we can choose the vs2003\setup\setup.exe executable.  The vs2003\setup.exe will take note that the pre-requisites are installed, then just exit.

Use the ‘other application’ template, and make sure it is installing to the bottle you’ve been installing to so far!

Running Setup

Choosing Setup

Assuming you’ve done this right, it’ll take a while

Screen Shot 2014-01-20 at 6.13.34 PMAnd with any luck you’ll finally see this!

Visual

Visual Studio 2003 EULA

Now you can select what to install

Selecting components

Selecting components

And again this will take a few minutes.

Final Failure..

Final Failure..

 

Then it bombs out with a Failed LookupAccountNameW:   … which I think a few installers bomb on stuff like this.  So close.

Anyways it’ll install but not work. 🙁

Sorry to get your hopes up, I know I’m kinda disappointed.