Why does my VB6 IDE loses its buttons and menu items? - vb6

I still have to use the VB6 IDE.
Unfortunately every time I start the IDE one of the buttons of the toolbar disappears. Almost always it's the Run button which goes first. Sometimes also items from the menu bar or the context menus are missing.
I have to reset the toolbars almost every time I start the IDE (Which is quite often during a typical work day). Recently I bought an IDE plugin which modifies the menu bar and requires a restart after every reset of the menu bar. (Otherwise it would crash)
I could live with just the resetting, but the restart is really annoying.
Is there something I can do?

To solve this problem:
Unload all add-ins.
Right-click on a toolbar and select the Customize... menu.
For each toolbar click the Reset... button (6 times in total).
Reload the add-ins.
For me action 3 was enough.
cf. MZTools faq (thanks to Andrea Bonafini), but these steps are originally from MSDN

It sounds like you recently bought a bad add-in. Can you get your money back? Every time I've had problems with disappearing controls in the IDE it has been due to a bad add-in. You can find out which one it is by disabling them, one by one, each time using the IDE for a while, then re-enable it and disable the next one, until the problem stops.
I still use one problematic add-in. It exhibits behavior similar to yours in that it makes the run button disappear. I avoid the problem by only loading the add-in when I need it, use it (it formats code), then I immediately unload it. If you don't use the functionality of the add-in that often, this could be an acceptable workaround.

Yea, i have this same problem with one of the add-in. But if you reset it. Shut the IDE down and open it back up again without doing anything, the IDE shouuld be able to retain the previous clean setup.

It's just guest, but:
Each graphical element on IDE (like button) is kind of resource (i.e. GDI handle).
Maybe your VB app doesn't manage these resources good enough and after sometime VB IDE cannot redraw elements like buttons (run is used often).
Also, maybe some IDE add-in is in conflict with some other add-in/application and breaks something -- I have this problem with Clip-X and MZ-Tools.

I had a similar problem when I was setting up the IDE to use for the first time, though it may not be helpful if you've been using the same IDE for a while. When I first started using the IDE, I would modify the toolbars and then close the IDE. When prompted if I wanted to save the open file I always said No, since the file was just a dummy file I was using to open the IDE with. Turns out the IDE was saving the toolbar preferences with that file, so they never got saved.
Try opening a file, customizing the UI, saving the file, then closing without modifying the code. This was the solution for me.

I've tracked down the problem and as suggested it was an add-in.
The problem went away as soon as I disabled the Visual Basic 6 Resource Editor.

How to restore your VB6 IDE without reinstalling:
Run Regedit
Find the entry for Visual Basic 6.0
Export your settings in case things
go wrong
Delete the 'UI' setting
Run VB and you will have your popup
menus back

The 'Find' button disappeared from my VB6 toolbar forcing me to select the Edit menu to use Find. I had two add-ins enabled: vbCodePrint and ResourceEditor; so I did away with both of them, turned VB6 off and back on, then put both add-ins back in and my button returned.

If you're still using the VB6 IDE, and I do amongst others, then this problem is not likely to have gone away. I use VB6 in Windows 10, and the problem is still there. But it doesn't affect me anymore.
I have had this problem a few years into using VB5 and VB6. Today, if I start VB6 directly, it may work fine the first time, but buttons will go missing the second time -- ALWAYS.
My solution, which I developed from day one:
Do whatever needs to be done to restore all your buttons. Save the Visual Basic 6.0 registry settings to a file, as suggested previously, and only keep the UI entry. Sometimes, you have to exit VB6 for it to post changes to the registry. So if this doesn't work the first time, try exiting before saving the settings.
I use my own program to launch VB6, which automatically copies my VB6 registry backup back into the registry -- by calling "RegEdit.exe /S D:\VB\IDE_Fix.reg" -- before I launch the IDE . This works every single time, and requires no action on my part.
If you read this, that means you are a programmer. You can make this work by yourself.
Mike

Reinstall,clean registry and update with SPacks etc....

Related

How can I save code changes in debugging mode in vb6

When an app stops in debugging mode and I make changes to the code
Is there a way to save the code with the changes, without stop the app?
Although the VB6 IDE does not provide this natively, an add-in for the IDE called MZTools has been around for ages which adds this feature.
Personally I've used MZTools 3.0 for many years, and this works really well.
This is what its help system says:
Shortcut To Save File At Debug-Time
The Shortcut To Save File At Debug-Time feature allows you to define a keyboard shortcut (Options
window, Shortcuts tab) to save the selected file at debug-time. The
Visual Basic IDE does not allow to save files at debug-time, but often
it is useful to save the modifications that you have made to the
source code at debug-time.
Remarks:
This feature is not available in the VBA version of MZ-Tools. This
feature only works at debug-time. Since Visual Basic disables buttons
or menus of add-ins at debug-time, the only way to save a file at
those times is through a keyboard shortcut. The file must be
previously saved at design-time, that is, MZ-Tools does not prompt for
a name to save the file (it shows an error message instead).
This is the options window for how I have it configured locally:
Note that originally MZTools was free in version 3 and later they switched to a paid version; if I hadn't gotten v3 originally however it would be well worth paying for, not only for this feature.
The short answer is you can't.
If you make the project before the crash, maybe this piece of code can be found in a ".tmp" file. But searching in .tmps is often a waste of time.
I particularly always force myself to stop the debug and save my progress.
And I always use this setting which forces me to remember to save:

Detect file changes outside the Visual Basic 6 IDE?

Background
I am working with VB6 legacy code and I am using an external editor because of the features that it has. Unfortunately, those changes aren't refreshed in the IDE because VB6 doesn't monitor loaded code for changes.
I have done some extensive searching on the subject including looking for alternative editors, a fairly exhaustive internet search including following all of the links on this StackExchange link and haven't found a way to refresh the code window to reflect the external file changes.
My company doesn't have access to the latest edition of Visual Studio and will not be purchasing it anytime in the near future. Until then, there is code to fix.
Question
Aside from restarting the program are there any methods that can be used to refresh the code displayed in the VB6 editing window?
Check out vbAdvance add on. It will prompt you to reload source file in case of external modification.
I think a found one possible solution.
The MZ-Tools set has an function called Reload file from Disk. It also allowed me to create a shortcut for this function through the MZ-Tools options menu, so I assigned it to the shortcut keys of my choosing.
It's a solution, but I'm still looking for anything that might be better.

Fields in the XAML editor Property window becoming un-responsive

Edit: I see "Silverlight -" is in front of my question, which I realize may have something to do with the alphabetical order of my tabs... really Visual Studio 2013 should be in front, anyone know if that can be changed?
I've been using the newer Visual Studio 2013 for about a week now, and I've found some quirks with it. The one that seems to happen the most is when I'm in the XAML editor working on something, suddenly if I go over to the property window I can't enter anything. I'm not running/debugging. I can type stuff in the regular XAML code editor window.
Even stranger, one of the times, I could get the cursors to appear in the fields. I typed a bunch of junk and just one character from what I types appeared. Another time I couldn't enter values into the properties, but I could double click on an event in the events window and create a new event handler. Just a minute ago I had the opposite, where I couldn't double click in the events window.
I think VS 2013 introduced async handling of more things, could it be related to that? Or perhaps because I'm using Silverlight? Right now my only workaround is to restart VS, does anyone have any knowledge about this? Anyone else experienced this?
I'm going to submit a bug report, but it would be a while before there's a patch, so I'm wondering if maybe someone understand the problem better and has a workaround? Or maybe just confirm that this exists and that I'm not crazy/my computer's haunted.
Edit:
I should mention another weird thing that happened two nights ago. I thought it was some how my doing, but I never figured out how I could have managed it without noticing. I was working on a piece of code, went to run after changing a few lines, and suddenly I had a ton of compiler errors. I go over to a user control I haven't touched in hours and suddenly the main LayoutRoot grid is completely empty. Luckily I'd committed to source control, but still...
I found an easy way to deal with this problem. It happens a lot after debugging so what I did was I created a batch file on my desktop containing this line taskkill /f /im XDesProc.exe and I run it every time the properties start misbehaving. Its the quickest way to reload the designer's functionality. I submitted this bug to microsoft they claim it will be included in the next update.
Me and another guy are developing a silverlight app and having the same exact problem. I accidentally found where the bug lies and how to mess with it to allow you to type "very briefly". Apparently this has something to do with tooltips. If you hover over anything in the property window when this bug is happening and allow a tooltip to popup while your cursor is blinking in a field, for the duration that the tooltip is up you can resume typing normal. As soon as the tooltip times out and disappears you can't type. So the only way you can edit or search properties is while a mouse tooltip is floating active. Very unusual. Can't seem to find any kind of tooltip settings in the program and the situation is very hard to find on google because search results assume your talking about programming tooltips. As far as I know we have had this issue since before release candidate. We are currently on official update 1 with the same problem persisting.

Unable to set breakpoints in Chrome dev tools, version 26.0.1410.64 m

I need to debug some JavaScript an' I use Chrome dev tools. I'm a newby in JavaScript (just started to learn a couple of days ago), an' at work I could set breakpoints via the Resources pane. But at home for some reason I can't do this: after the click no breakpoint appeares.
I have Chrome version: 26.0.1410.64 m.
What could be the case?
clicking on the De-Obfuscate Source button (i.e. {}) solved this issue for me.
I'm a fool! haha! breakpoints are set in the Source pane )))
It's been a while, but in version 33.0.1750.146, but my problem was that I was on the Sources pane (I'd call this a tab; it's one of the items at the very top of the window), but I was on the Content scripts tab (on the left hand side). I needed to switch to the Sources tab.
To be clear, there are two sets of Sources tabs; one is within the other.
UPDATE 2016-01-07: Now I'm on 47.0.2526.106. The only thing that worked for me today was to close DevTools and re-open. It was a little finicky. It worked once, then stopped, and I had to close the DevTools and re-open again. I saw #johntrepreneur's answer about closing the browser, but unfortunately I have too many tabs open on too many workspaces, so that's too much of a pain, so I didn't try that, although I have to assume that would work.
Other solutions didn't work for me. Had to close and restart browser to be able to set breakpoints again.
This also happens when there is a JS error in your code.
Some sort of weird built in function in windows 10 i think because I did press a few buttons by accident. Some of my keys even stopped working in certain areas of visual studio. F.e the letter "c" stopped working in the find window.
Mine did this and no solution worked, i pressed alt, windows key and function key a few times and my problem went away.
Fixed as follows: For me, the issue stems from having set up Chrome to interact with operating system files. If you set this up, then the fact is evident from a green dot by the file name. At some point, I could not set a breakpoint in a recently edited file. I fixed this by disconnecting the interaction, as follows: When viewing "sources", above the code, there were some file names listed. Clicking the [x] to make the particular filename go away gave a caution message; I proceeded without saving. After that, I was able to set breakpoints for that file.
I also had this problem. However, once I closed the popup message in my browser, suddenly all my breakpoints that I set in that time appeared. Mental note: Don't set breakpoints while your app is showing a popup.
I couldn't find any direct fix for this problem.
It seems that chrome keeps settings of your site stored somewhere whatever you do to clean it. (I tried removing the folder from workspace, closing et reopening chrome etc... and nothing worked).
A workaround is to change your site's url to make chrome consider it a new site

Eclipse's tab double click on Visual Studio?

On Eclipse, whenever I double click a tab, it fills the workspace (by hiding all other views like project tree, console, etc).
Is there any way to do this on Visual Studio?
Note: i'm not looking for full screen, just want a way to declutter the workspace but still have access to menus.
Are you after this?
Set shortcuts for the Window.AutoHideAll function and for the Window.ResetWindowLayout function. In order for the ResetWindowLayout to work, you have to export your settings (make sure you select "All Settings") with all windows expanded and then import them again.
ResetWindowLayout will restore all windows to the way they were the last time you imported your settings.
Not with double click on tab, but you can do the same with Shift+Alt+Enter key combination.
This keyboard shorcut was changed to F11 from 1.9.1 vscode version.
All keyboard Shortcuts: https://code.visualstudio.com/shortcuts/keyboard-shortcuts-windows.pdf
I was looking for that, as well, and I now just got used to using full screen (Shift+Alt+Enter), which hides a little too much, which you seem to think, as well, but does in fact still show the menus.
Looks like drby got it on this one. Just FYI. I pinged the VS team to ask about this and here is the response:
"There is no way to reverse the command automatically. For it to work as a toggle we would need to save which toolwindows were auto hidden and which ones were not when the command was run, which we don’t do (it would cause lots of interesting persistence questions, across profiles and VS sessions)."
The idea of a "Unhide All" command is what I suggested. So if you hide all then you can unhide all as well. There might be some windows you don't want to unhide but the 1 or 2 extra windows is better than not having an unhide IMHO.

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