Microsoft Controls

Our project currently uses Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 to do the development. Previously we used VS 2005. And before that we used VS6. Right now I am trying to bring up one of our large dialogs in the resource editor. I get an error message that "4 Active X controls could not be instantiated. Reinstall or register the controls and try again."

Okay. I have the OCX files. I register the controls. Actually it is one control - the Microsoft FlexGrid. God knows why were are using it. But I register the control. Still get the error in Visual Studio. Come on Microsoft. These are your own controls. And I had our customer buy your Visual Studio. That cost some big bucks.

Well I google around. And I figure out what the problem is. These are VB6 controls from way back when. Visual Studio 2008 does not by default install licenses to use VB6 controls. Go figure. Microsoft's knowledge bases tells me to either (1) intall VB6 on my machine, or (2) find some hack on my VS2008 install media to update my registry.

I guess the real message that Microsoft is trying to send is for us to stop using the VB6 controls. Otherwise they will make it hard for developers to use them. Hey I would love to fool around and find the latest .NET controls and put them in our application. But my customer has real business needs that need to be solved. They don't want me wasting time updating controls that have no positive business impact to our system. Darn you Microsoft.