Delphi 6 Update 2 installation workaround on Windows 8.1 x64?

Question

I need to work with Delphi 6 Update 2 in Windows 8.1 x64 (in case you were wondering, it's about maintaining an old application, migrating to a newer version is not an option. I can't use a VM because I use the same machine to connect to some peripherals that don't work in a VM).

The problem is that Update 2 has a 32 bit installer with a 16 bit stub. So the current behaviour is that the installer starts, it extracts the files in a temp location, starts the setup then nothing appears on screen.

So far, I gathered that it is impossible to do it. But the same behaviour I 've seen for SQL Server 2000 (don't ask) but there I was able to use msetup.exe (DemoShield) to open a sqlservr.dbd that started the script. However, there is no such dbd file. I guess I was lucky on SQLServer 2000. So far I've tried compatibility mode, DosBox, replacing the setup file with both Installshield 3 and 5, waiting for hours for the setup to start (sometimes, W8 does that), even comparing files and registries on an XP machine before and after update 2 but this might be a bit too risky to apply on a real machine.

Answer 1

Since Windows 8.1 86 includes Hyper-V for running VMs, most modern hardware supports Hyper-V, and Windows 8 x86 can still run 16-bit based apps:

Install a Windows 8.1 x86 VM under your host physical machine, then install it there.

The up-tick: it is easy to move your VM to a new host without needing to reinstall a full new VM.

See http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/windows-and-office/get-started-with-windows-8-client-hyper-v-the-right-way/7893/ and http://www.infoworld.com/d/virtualization/5-excellent-uses-of-windows-8-hyper-v-208436 to get started with Hyper-V.

Hyper-V can redirect quite a bit of hardware from the host to the VM nowadays. For "old" hardware like COM and LPT ports you often can buy USB adapters that can be redirected.

If installing on x86 Windows 8.1 works and x64 fails, I think you have proved the assumption that the 16-bit portion of the installer is the culprit.

Answer 2

Maybe my blog post from last year can solve your problem:

http://blog.dummzeuch.de/2013/11/11/delphi-6-on-windows-8-1/

excerpt:

I just deleted the registry entry

HKCU\Software\Borland\Delphi\6.0\LM

(I did not make a backup, what would have been the point?)

I started Delphi 6, ignored the warning about incompatibilities (which was talking about Delphi 7 anyway) and went through the registration/activation process again. This time it worked.

Maybe I should mention, that I did not install any of my Delphi versions to c:\program files but put them into c:\Delphi instead to avoid any problems with access rights to the installation directory.