About The Visual Basic Runtime Environment

Visual Basic applications exhibit considerable dependencies. In order to execute a Visual Basic application, those have to be fulfilled. The special environment which backups execution of VB apps is called the VB runtime environment. Unlike most runtime dependencies exhibited by similar languages, VB is a relatively special case. The VB executable is a true PE(Portable Executable) file directly executable by Windows OS. The runtime environment is required in the middle way as the VB app starts relying on the runtime environment to do work for itself. (Read more on Ups and Downs of VB)

List of VB6 Basic Run-time Environment Files

• Asycfilt.dll 
• Comcat.dll 
• Msvbvm60.dll 
• Oleaut32.dll 
• Olepro32.dll 
• Stdole2.tlb

The VB6 run-time is readily included in Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8. However, if you are planing to distribute a VB app, it is vital to include the runtime files in the package to make things 'Sure'. Using the 'Package and Deployment Wizard' helps with this.

Here's the official Setup for distributing VB6.0 run-time by Microsoft (Download Service Pack 6)

Note that Microsoft isn't committed to go ahead with VB anymore. So VB6 is the last one of the row. MS replaced VB6 with their new line of VB.NET(Why?) which is dependent on a seperate run-time, the .NET framework. However, Microsoft has guaranteed to continue their extended support for VB upto the year 2013. Since MS still uses VB extensively in their OFFICE packages, Windows and other products; its more likely VB will survive a much longer time.

Read the Microsoft's official Support Statement for Visual Basic 6.0