Re: Starting Winhelp with VB6 application on Vista

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"MikeD" <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Hansin" <hansin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Does anyone know of a way to activate "Winhelp" on Windows Vista from a
VB6 application.

Microsoft supposedly stopped the "Winhelp" executable running on Vista
but
I was wondering if there was a way to start it by setting XP
compatibilty
mode in Vista.

There's no "supposedly" about it. They did. The old WinHelp program,
WinHlp32.exe (from the Win3.x and maybe earlier days), is dead and removed
in Vista. As a result, any help that was provided by .hlp files won't open
in Vista. The good news (if you can call it that) is that MS has available
a
download to sort of fix this. See the following:

A download is available for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 that
resolves an issue in which you cannot open Help files that require the
Windows Help (WinHlp32.exe) program
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/917607

Make note that certain functionality has been disabled and requires
registry
or group policy changes to be functional within the help.


I haven't found any lack of functionality, but I don't doubt that is
correct.

The trouble is I would like to automate this with VB code so that
customers using my VB6 app won't have to do anything extra to see the
help
file.

I doubt there's a legal way you can automate this as I highly doubt you
can
legally re-distribute the winhlp32.exe file from older versions of
Windows.
IOW, you're going to have to instruct users to download the WinHelp
program
from Microsoft.


That is correct. MS says the user can download and use it, but you cannot
distribute it with your application.

But I do have some good news (as I decided to do some investigating)....I
just looked at user32.dll from Vista using Dependency Walker and
user32.dll
DOES export the WinHelpA (as well as WinHelpW) function. That means if the
winhlp32.exe program is present, you can *probably* still call that API
function to open your .hlp file. This means you may not have to make any
changes to your programs' code.


No code changes were required. Just installing the WinHelp file.

But undoubtedly, the best thing for you to do is rewrite your old .hlp
help
using something newer such as HTMLHelp.


I guess. I never liked HTML help as well, to be honest, but that is
certainly the way things have gone.

--
Regards,

Rick Raisley


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