Visual Basic 5.0 installation

[jgelesh]

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This is the strangest error I have ever encountered! And I started with TRS-80, C64, and early IBM clones. I installed Visual Basic 5 on an 4GB AMD Phenom 940 computer. Small errors aside, the main problem concerns the immediate execution of the Scansoft PaperPort installation program when trying to do almost anything in VB5. That is if I try to run API Viewer, Books Online, compile a program etc. they will work but first the Scansoft program runs necessitating several mouse clicks to shut it down, then I get to the function I requested. I have never EVER had one program execute another completely different program by accident before. It almost seems like I am making this up, but I am not.

The Scansoft program was installed several months before and runs fine, though that installation program should have been deleted after installation.

What I have tried: VB5 Service Pak 3, Disk Cleanup(hopefully rid temporary files), uninstall and re-install VB5. Still no change. One minute commands execute normally, then the next the Scansoft program jumps in.

Hope somebody has a clue as to what's causing this. I studied ptogramming back in the procedural days, and now would like to take a crack at object-oriented programming without spending a lot of money. The VB5 was purchased on ebay in like-new condition for $80. Incidently, I installed VB5 on my old notebook computer(1GB) to test it, and so far it seems to work fine there, so I don't think I have a bad CD.

Please help.

 

[dilettante]

You got ripped off. VB5 has been explicitly unsupported even for runtime use of compiled programs for quite some time, unlike VB6.

It is entirely "at your own risk" software.

That said, with enough hacking and kludging VB5 programs can still run, even in Windows 7. However there are a multitude of known security vulnerabilities in the related runtime libraries that Microsoft will not issues fixes for, making it an utterly unnecessary risk to use.


Regarding your symptoms, I suspect there are some corrupted Installer registry entries related to some shared library both VB5 and this Scansoft thing use.

There is a possible fix but it's so risky that Microsoft pulled it from their downloads a while ago. If you want to give it a try (even though it is most often related to Office it generally applies to other software) you might look for a link to it over at the Clubhouse.

 

[tedsmith]

Search for the name of the scansoft app exe in your registry and manually delete any references to it associated with visual basic. (Run Regedit from the command prompt if you have one)