Delphi 5 and Windows 7 Issue

Question

This is a weird one. I've now installed Delphi 5, updated to service pack 1, on my brand new Windows 7 64-bit machine. It seems to function well enough, but when I start it up an error message comes up telling me that the system cannot rename Delphi32.$$$ to Delphi32.dro. I thought "Okay" and went in to rename it manually, only to find that there was no Delphi32.$$$ but there, large as life, was a Delphi32.dro ...

I'm logged on to an administrator-level account, so I figure it isn't a permissions issue.

I'm willing to live with this slight annoyance, but I am worried that it is symptomatic of some deeper problem.

Has anyone else encountered this?

Answer 1

This is a user permissions issue.

Even running as an administrative user, Windows 7 puts some limits on where applications can write. C:\Program Files, (AKA %PROGRAMFILES%) is off-limits except to applications explicitly started using "Run as Administrator", even if you're running under an account with Admin privileges.

More recent versions of Delphi properly handle running from the restricted folders, but D5 was outdated long before Win7 was released and therefore does all sorts of things that aren't proper now. It writes to its own Bin and Lib folders, for instance, and stores the default Projects folder for your own projects there as well.

The easiest solution is to uninstall Delphi 5, and reinstall in a location outside the %PROGRAMFILES% directory structure, such as C:\Delphi5 or C:\Borland\Delphi5. Installing in a different root level folder resolves these issues.

Actually, the easiest solution is to upgrade to a more recent Delphi version, but I'll presume that isn't an option. :-)

Answer 2

This might also help with Delphi 5:

http://blog.dummzeuch.de/2013/11/11/delphi-6-on-windows-8-1/

Ken White's Answer sums it up nicely.