How to debug with Visual C++ 6 on Windows 7 x64?

Question

Surely the answer will be "you can't" or "use XP mode", but I'd like to know if it it possible.

The issue I have is that whenever I debug some application and hit a breakpoint, when I stop the debugger the debuggee remains stuck. It can't be killed, I can't attach another debugger (it says it is already being debugged). It won't go away until I close Visual C++.

This is hapenning on a Windows 7 64 bits install. VC has SP 6 installed.

Answer 1

My previous fix was horrible.

Finally, I developped a new fix, working perfectly with the english version of Visual Studio 6. (SP6 I think)

You need to check the version of the file DM.dll located into "Common/MSDev98/Bin"

The correct version is 6.0.9782.0.

link: http://www.dr-hoiby.com/TLLOC.dll (28KB)

how to install: replace "Common/MSDev98/Bin/TLLOC.dll" by the version downloaded.

Best regards.

Answer 2

Comment reposted:

You can try using Visual Studio 2008 with VC6 compiler. I recently blogged about this.

Answer 3

I developped a little fix for that. You just have to copy the file "ShiftF5Fix.dll" into "Common/MSDev98/AddIns/" et load it from Visual.

It's an hugly fix. If you modify your source file during debugging you have you answer "NO" to the poup displayed after you press "SHIFT+F5" to stop the process.

link : http://www.dr-hoiby.com/ShiftF5Fix.dll

Best regards

Answer 4

Another option would be to install daffodil. This is an open source project to compile all versions of visual studio in VS2010. Once this is configured you can use visual studio 2010 debugger to debug VC6 projects.

Answer 5

On the heels of Dr Holby, I implemented a leaner variant, with source code: http://www.algonet.se/~tamlin/TLLOC_fixer.zip

The code currently only understands sp4 (?) and SP6, but I think it'll cover most cases.

You only need to compile the source (1.cpp, 1.rc), rename your existing TLLOC.DLL (which btw stands for Transport Layer Local - as opposed to remote debugging) to TLLOC.old.dll, and drop in the one you compiled (~4KB). Should work like a charm for all 32-bit debugging needs, from Windows 95 to Windows 7 (and later).