Windows 2000 and Visual Basic 6.0

I was working on the same problem yesterday!!!!! My install (using Windows Installer) worked on all machines, however on the 6th machine, the app opened, but wouldn't "do" anything. After a couple of days of searching/trying various things, I stumbled on the answer.

Assume your exe is called MyApp.exe

Create a zero length file and call it MyApp.exe.local then place this in the same folder as MyApp.exe - recreate your install script, but make sure you place your dependant dll's IN THE APPLICATION FOLDER - NOT THE SYSTEM FOLDER. The .local file forces Win2K to look in the application folder for dll's/ocx's first - this is the ONLY way you can have different system dll's on the same machine.

In my case, I am using Win2K with no service packs, but I have installed the Platform SDK & Visual Studio. On the machine where the app wasn't working, he has Win2K SP1. My version of SCCRUN.dll was a later version than his, so my install script *tried* to update it, (and obviously failed). By using the .local file, the app is now working fine on his machine. The downside to this, is that he has 2 copies of the same dll (although differing versions) on his machine.

Found the answer in an article on MSDN - search for "The End of DLL ****" - its under the "Private DLL's" subsection.