Delphi 6 IDE and apps working on windows 7 64 bit?
I have a commercial app that is developed with Delphi 6. Ive been developing under windows xp 32 bit, but am about to get a new development machine with Windows 7 64 bit.
Will Delphi 6 install and work in the new environment ?
The developed app also uses the BDE, on vista I couldnt get it to work at all, which meant my customers had to remain on windows xp. I dont want this to be the case for windows 7. Does the BDE have any problems working with windows 7 ?
(or is it best to use virtualisation )
Answer
My development machine has been running Windows 7 64-bit for almost a year now, with UAC enabled. I do daily development in Delphi 6 without problem. I do have one recommendation, but this holds true for installing any version of Delphi before Delphi 2007 on Vista or higher:
Rather than installing to \Program Files, install to a non-system protected folder. For example, I installed Delphi 6 to C:\Programs\Borland\Delphi6\ (and the Common Files folder to C:\Programs\Common Files). This avoids the problems related to Delphi 6 not being UAC friendly. The file virtualization feature, where Windows redirects \Program File writes to a virtual store causes additional confusion for Delphi 6. However, the approach I describe works very well.