title: Why does the VB6 IDE crash when opening a form?
body: <p>The question is - why is my VB6 IDE crashing (all of a sudden) and how can I fix it? </p>
  
  <p>VB6 had been operating on this PC, normally, for months if not years before this first began. The problem appeared to arise spontaneously.</p>
  
  <p>Here's all the information I have to describe the issue...</p>
  
  <p>Scenario:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Run VB6 - either by double clicking a project (VBP) file, or from it's icon / Start menu</li>
  <li>Load a project</li>
  <li>Try to open any form or code module</li>
  <li>IDE instantly crashes with an error message such as:</li>
  </ol>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>An unhandled win32 exception occured in VB6.EXE [XXXX].</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>Allowing Windows to open the debugger, it shows the fault occurring on this line:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>004581F1   mov         ecx,dword ptr [eax]</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>And in the Windows event log, it shows this:</p>
  
  <p><code>Problem signature:
   Problem Event Name:    APPCRASH
   Application Name:  vb6.exe
   Application Version:   6.0.97.82
   Application Timestamp: 403acf6c
   Fault Module Name: vb6.exe
   Fault Module Version:  6.0.97.82
   Fault Module Timestamp:    403acf6c
   Exception Code:    c0000005
   Exception Offset:  000afa89
   OS Version:    6.2.9200.2.0.0.256.48
   Locale ID: 1033
   Additional Information 1:  a239
   Additional Information 2:  a239f58f940977df1cec7176d1176bff
   Additional Information 3:  ef99
   Additional Information 4:  ef9908a42708e3d51b1220b5874297f1</code></p>
  
  <p>O/S: Win7 64 bit</p>
  
  <p>Note 1 - I think this is a different issue than this question: <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3409093/vb6-crashes-after-build">VB6 crashes after build</a>, because the scenario to cause the crash is different.</p>
  
  <p>Note 2 - I have seen a few signs of this problem elsewhere. Both <a href="http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?516971-RESOLVED-VB6-Can-t-open-project-forms-without-VB6-crashing%20here" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a> and <a href="http://www.xtremevbtalk.com/tech-discussions/325980-vb6-ide-crashes-form-view-windows-8-a.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a> include some similar information, but no apparent solution.</p>