Why does the VB6 IDE crash when opening a form?
<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>