BUG: Moving .VBP File Can Corrupt References with Long Paths

• Microsoft Visual Basic Control Creation, Learning, Professional, and Enterprise Editions for Windows, version 5.0

SYMPTOMS

When moving a Visual Basic 5.0 project from one folder to another, you may see corruption to references that include a path longer than approximately 40 characters (such as DAO 3.5) in the project's .vbp file. On the same drive, this problem can occur when one of the folders is at least one level lower in the directory tree structure than the other. This problem does not occur when saving the project to a different folder within the IDE.

This corruption may also occur when checking a VBP file out of Visual Source Safe, if the file was previously saved and then checked in from a different machine, even if the directory structure used to store the project on the other machine is identical to that used on your machine.

RESOLUTION

Avoid moving .vbp files, or save them through the IDE to their new location using File | Save As. Attempting to edit and correct the corrupt .vbp file in Notepad does not work because the file becomes corrupt again the next time it is saved.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a bug in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article. We are researching this bug and will post new information here in the Microsoft Knowledge Base as it becomes available.

MORE INFORMATION

Corruption of the .vbp file may occur when the project is moved to a different directory.

Steps to Reproduce Behavior

1. Create two new directories as follows:

         C:\aaaTestThisBug
         C:\aaaFirstLevel\SecondLevel
   

   One of the directories needs to be two or more levels down.

2. Start a new Visual Basic Standard EXE project, Project1.

3. Go to Project | References and add at least one reference whose path is longer than approximately 40 characters (The reference to Microsoft DAO 3.5 Object Library is a good one).

4. Save Project1 to C:\aaaTestThisBug and exit Visual Basic. Using Windows Explorer, move the .vbp, .vbw, and .frm files associated with this project to C:\aaaFirstLevel\SecondLevel.

5. Open the .vbp file in Notepad and note that the all of the paths for the references are still correct.

6. Close Notepad.

7. Open Project1 with Visual Basic.

8. Save and Close Project1. Answer "yes" when prompted to save changes.

9. Examine the .vbp file in Notepad. Note that any reference that includes a path longer than approximately 40 characters is likely to be corrupted.

Examples of sections from good and bad .vbp files

DAO 3.5 reference from a good file:

Reference=*\G{00025E01-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}#4.0#0#..\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\DAO\DAO350.DLL#Microsoft DAO 3.5 Object Library

DAO 3.5 reference from a bad file:

Reference=*\G{00025E01-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}#4.0#0#..\..\..\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\DC:\Program Fi#Microsoft DAO 3.5 Object Library

Keywords          : vb5all
Version           : WINDOWS:5.0
Platform          : WINDOWS
Issue type        : kbbug