VB5/6 to vb.net

[peter.lawton]

Ok, I've been struggling for a year or two to convert a VB5 program to
VB.2005 express.
The conversion wizard is a great help, and so is this newsgroup.
With the help of the above two resources, the language conversion is
no great problem, but the programming is a tedious business because of
the slowness of the IDE. The .exe goes quicker, but nowhere near as
quick as the original VB5 version.
So- my questions are -
a) Can I speed up the IDE? The program is quite big with around 100
Forms. I can't seem to switch off syntax checking which is probably a
big slow-downer. Is the slowness because of the size of the program?
Are the express versions really suitable for a largish program?
b) Can I switch to VB.2008 express and might this be any quicker? I
tried downloading VB.2008 express but everything crashed and I had to
re-install vb.2005 express. If I ever get it to install (perhaps on a
'clean' computer), will the VB.2005 program run under it? Are Vb.2005
and vb.2008 compatible?

Thanks
Peter

 

[Rory Becker]

Hello (e-mail address removed),

Ok, I've been struggling for a year or two to convert a VB5 program to
VB.2005 express.

First off... I feel your pain.

This is never an easy task and whilst many will say that you should rewrite,
this is not always an option.

So- my questions are -
a) Can I speed up the IDE? The program is quite big with around 100
Forms. I can't seem to switch off syntax checking which is probably a
big slow-downer. Is the slowness because of the size of the program?
Are the express versions really suitable for a largish program?

They target the same dotnet versions as the full versions of the same IDEs
so they should work in many cases.

I would suggest copying your solution and trying just to see.
I'm not sure if they are nessecarily faster though.

Try turning of Tracking Current item in solution explorer (a quick search
should find you more info on that)
Turn off any toolbars you don't need. I have personally created a custom
toolbar with the 16 most used commands on it for myself and turned all others
off.
I understand that this reduces COM communications and provides some small
measure of speed increase. It certainly gains you more editor space.
Turn off and toolwindows you don't use. That includes things like tasks in
the lower part of the screen.

Perhaps break your project into multiple projects and choose to reference
by file rather than by project.
This will enable you to not load all projects at the same time and save you
some memory.

That said more memory is (almost) always Good. what hardware are you running
at the moment?

Are you running a fast Hard disk? Does one disk supply your pagefile and
you Applications/Data?

It is said that VS is a very IO intensive application.

b) Can I switch to VB.2008 express and might this be any quicker? I
tried downloading VB.2008 express but everything crashed and I had to
re-install vb.2005 express. If I ever get it to install (perhaps on a
'clean' computer), will the VB.2005 program run under it? Are Vb.2005
and vb.2008 compatible?

I would definitly recommend moving to a VS2008 IDE from a VS2005 one.

I have not used Express editions in some time but I would wager that the
VS2008 one is far better than the VS2005 one simply by my own comparison
of VS2005Pro and VS2008Pro.

I'm not sure if any of this helps but it might

Good luck either way

 

[Martin H.]

Hello Peter,

a) Can I speed up the IDE? The program is quite big with around 100
Forms. I can't seem to switch off syntax checking which is probably a
big slow-downer. Is the slowness because of the size of the program?
Are the express versions really suitable for a largish program?

I read the VB 2005 IDE was not among the best ones and that VB 2008 had
some improvement in this regard. (I switched from 2003 to 2008, so I
can't confirm that.)

b) Can I switch to VB.2008 express and might this be any quicker? I
tried downloading VB.2008 express but everything crashed and I had to
re-install vb.2005 express. If I ever get it to install (perhaps on a
'clean' computer), will the VB.2005 program run under it? Are Vb.2005
and vb.2008 compatible?

VB 2008 will import your VB 2005 and convert it into a VB 2008 project.
So, yes they are compatible but only in one direction 2005->2008.

Best regards,

Martin

 

[peter.lawton]

Thanks for those replies. Much appreciated.

"Tracking current item" seems to be already turned off.
I use VB.2005 express on two computers and it's much the same speed on
both. One's got 3gb of memory, the other has 1gb. One processor is
dual core. Both processors are ~ 2.4GHz speed. One hard disk is SATA.
It doesn't seem to make any difference.

So, after learning that the program(s) I have written in VB.2005
express will be goers in vb.2008 express, it seems to make sense to de-
install all the VB.2005 stuff and download and install vb.2008
express?

As I said, the 2008 download crashed when I tried it, and vb.2005
didn't work after that until I'd reinstalled it.

Peter

 

[Rory Becker]

Hello (e-mail address removed),

Thanks for those replies. Much appreciated.

"Tracking current item" seems to be already turned off.
I use VB.2005 express on two computers and it's much the same speed on
both. One's got 3gb of memory, the other has 1gb. One processor is
dual core. Both processors are ~ 2.4GHz speed. One hard disk is SATA.
It doesn't seem to make any difference.
So, after learning that the program(s) I have written in VB.2005
express will be goers in vb.2008 express, it seems to make sense to
de-
install all the VB.2005 stuff and download and install vb.2008
express?
As I said, the 2008 download crashed when I tried it, and vb.2005
didn't work after that until I'd reinstalled it.

VS2005 and VS2008 should work side by side perfectly. You should not need
to uninstall VS2005 to try this.
Having said that I think there is an issue with uninstalling VS2008 in that
it can kill some things needed by VS2005.
This is typically fixed via a repair rather than a reinstall.

If I recall correctly the change from VS2005 to VS2008 is a minor one and
is held in the solution files rather than in the Project files.
If you were to stick with VS2005 syntax for now, you would be able, I think,
to have 2 solution files and switch (if needed) between IDEs.

That said If VS2008 works for you, I think you'll want to switch to it full
time ASAP

 

[peter.lawton]

Hello (e-mail address removed),



VS2005 and VS2008 should work side by side perfectly. You should not need
to uninstall VS2005 to try this.
Having said that I think there is an issue with uninstalling VS2008 in that
it can kill some things needed by VS2005.
This is typically fixed via a repair rather than a reinstall.

If I recall correctly the change from VS2005 to VS2008 is a minor one and
is held in the solution files rather than in the Project files.
If you were to stick with VS2005 syntax for now, you would be able, I think,
to have 2 solution files and switch (if needed) between IDEs.

That said If VS2008 works for you, I think you'll want to switch to it full
time ASAP

Right, I'll have a go at installing 2008 without de-installing 2005
then.

I'll let you know how it goes.
I've got 95gb hard disk free - should be enough.

Peter

 

[peter.lawton]

Right, I'll have a go at installing 2008 without de-installing 2005
then.

I'll let you know how it goes.
I've got 95gb hard disk free - should be enough.

Peter- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Well, vb 2008 express installed without problem. I also downloaded
VisualBasic Powerpacks 3 for the printer.
Vb2005 express still works, as you said, Rory.
Now for the speed - I've got it on two computers which were equally
slow before. Now one of them is still just as slow, but the other one
seems to have had a dose of adrenalin and now both 2005 AND 2008 are
fast enough on it to be usable without annoying waits all the time.
The one which has been rejuvenated runs Vista, dual core 2.3GHz, 1gb
memory. The still slow other is XP Pro, 2,6GHz, 3gb memory.
Something has happened to speed up the one of them - I don't know what
but I'm just glad I can now get on with my work.
Thanks for all advice.

Peter