Q: I'm developing under NT 4.0 with SP4 and Visual Studio 6 (VB portion) with SP2. The problem is in the IDE. I can't load the Resource Editor to edit a resource file in my project. I've done some research, but without success. I even reinstalled VB. I have a dual-boot system, under Win95 with VB 6 I have no problem launching the editor. However, I prefer developing under NT. Is there a way to use the Resource Editor in my project under NT?
--Edith Carter, Nevada City, California
A: The Resource Editor that comes with Visual Basic 6.0 is an add-in. Visual Basic add-ins are ActiveX objects. In the case of the Resource Editor, the add-in is registered when Visual Basic is installed. These registry entries are stored in the registry under the user profile, rather than the system. This isn't an issue with Windows 95, since by default all users share the same profile. But with Windows NT, each user has a separate profile, so the add-ins only appear if you log in with the account that installed them. I suspect that you have different accounts for installing VB and actually developing in VB. There are two ways to fix this. One is to manually register the add-ins in the account you need them for. For the Resource Editor, the ActiveX file is RESEDIT.DLL. Use RegSvr32 to register it, and it'll appear in the add-in list in Visual Basic.
The other technique is to log in as the account that originally installed VB and export the registry keys for the add-ins into REG files, so that you can install them in the other accounts. The add-in keys are:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Visual Basic\6.0\Addins
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Visual Basic\6.0\AddInToolbar
Once you've got the .REG files, log in with the other account and merge the files into the registry.
--Richard Campbell, Technical Editor
Melody Hendricks was a senior associate editor at Advisor Media from 1997 to 2004. Earlier, she contributed news stories and feature articles to print and online newspapers and magazines, including the Chicago Tribune Web site. Melody holds a bachelor's degree in English from North Park University in Chicago, Illinois, and an MBA in Entrepreneurship and Marketing from San Diego State University.
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Keyword Tags: ActiveX, Application Development, Development, IDE - Integrated Development Environment, Microsoft, Microsoft Visual Basic, Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft Windows, Software Development