How to install Delphi 7 on Vista

Question

I tried to install Delphi 7 on Vista several times and Vista prevented me from doing so by telling me that there are known problems with this application (Delphi 7). Several other people in my company experienced problems with installing D7 on Vista.

This lead to the conclusion that we were at risk with our D7 application, as the company could within the lifetime of the app switch to Vista or Windows 7 and newer Delphi versions are not in the policy of the company. Therefore management decided on rewriting the app in C#.

My question(s):

1. How to install D7 on Vista
2. Experience with such an installation
3. Risk assessment concerning stability of IDE and developed programs
4. Risk assessment concerning executability under Windows 7

Not using any third party components or database - there should be no problem running the developed app under Vista. If not able to develop and debug under Vista (which at the point being will be the only customer platform, yes, internal programming) will result in a sort of cross platform development - if we would be allowed to keep XP as the development platform.

It is not a developers decision to rewrite, it has been done in the company for the last 3 years: if you had to significantly touch an app developed in Delphi or if there was a certain risk of it not to survive the planned life circle/life span, it had to be rewritten. The life cycle just expanded to 2015 due to canceling another project.

So the main issue here would really be: I would like to have educated arguments about the risks.

Solution 1

Just follow these instructions and you'll be fine. No reason to turn off UAC! I've been running Delphi 7 on Vista for about a year without any problem at all. Debugging is totally fine too.

http://www.drbob42.com/examines/examin84.htm

Solution 2

For installing Delphi 7 in Vista, you can try this patch from Microsoft.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/932246

As for the rest someone else I suspect will have more knowledge.

Solution 3

I have Delphi 7 working fine on my Vista development box. Yes there was a few issues during installation, but no more than other applications and these issues have been resolved in subsequent versions of Delphi.

None of this should cause problems with apps developed by D7 for Vista. We use Delphi as our primary development tool for all our applications and they work just fine with Vista.

It sounds like this is an excuse by someone in the company to get rid of Delphi and move to C#. Typical FUD tactics. There may be genuine reasons for your company to move away from Delphi, but Vista compatibility should not be one of them.

Solution 4

Also, if you'd like all the Vista-ready features in your Delphi 7 application, have a look at this article here: Creating Windows Vista Ready Applications with Delphi

This will make it so that your application correctly appears when doing Flip3D, or when showing a preview thumbnail when hovering over the app in the taskbar. Essentially, this will give you the "Vista-readiness" of Delphi 2007, from within older versions of Delphi (I have used this with Delphi 2006 and it works very well).

You also get the new Vista task dialogs and new Common dialogs with the modifications listed on the linked website.

Solution 5

I think there's a big jump from having trouble installing D7 in Vista (D7 which after all contains low-level bits and pieces for the debugger and which doesn't know about the 'correct' place to put things under Vista), to assuming that your own app will have problems with Vista...

You have the source code, you can test your program running under Vista, you can make whatever (usually minor) tweaks are necessary to your code.... I'm really surprised that you would decide to rewrite the app in another language just because you can't get the (old) development tool to install under Vista.

We need to know more about what your application does, and what components you make use of, to be able to make any guess at your 3rd and 4th questions. They're too general.

FOr instance, I have several D7 applications on the market, one of which uses open-source Interbase 6 with Delphi and can be a problem to get installed/working on Vista Home (the process seems less painful on Vista Business). Another of our apps uses SQL Express 2005 and runs quite happily on Vista. Our newest app, written in D2007, runs fine on Vista. On both Delphi platforms, our two main 'third party' tools are DevExpress controls and ReportBuilder.

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Comments

[Ralph M. Rickenbach]

Thanks a lot. Some of this is no option, as I will never be granted the right to change read/write permissions on any directories in the "program files" path. Large company :-(

[Frederik Slijkerman]

Tell them that as a programmer you should be admin on your own computer!

[Vegar]

You're not allowed to change permissions, but you are allowed to turn of UAC? Boy, I'm glad we are a small company...

[Remko]

Why can't they change the permissions for you? Else just install it in a path where you have permissions (subfolder of documents?)

[AmigoJack]

Just create your own folder outside of any Program Files folder, i.e. create C:\Programs and then install everything there. This will automatically give you more rights and you also don't mix 32bit with 64bit or Windows interferes with that.

[AmigoJack]

Wayback archived copy from 2012-10-16 of that link