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Software Technology Tips

All of us must have come across the fact that some set of codes are specific to a particular OS only and incompatible with others. In some instances they may also lead to system crashes.

In such cases we need to track and identify the OS first and then proceed accordingly. So, here is how you can write a program in VB6.0 that can run in different Windows operating systems.

The first step is to make some simple declarations. Add the following code to your projects declarations.

Private Const VER_PLATFORM_WIN32s = 0
Private Const VER_PLATFORM_WIN32_WINDOWS = 1
Private Const VER_PLATFORM_WIN32_NT As Long = 2

Private Declare Function GetVersionEx Lib "kernel32" Alias "GetVersionExA" (lpVersionInformation As Any) As Long

Private Type OSVERSIONINFO
OSVSize         As Long
dwVerMajor      As Long
dwVerMinor      As Long
dwBuildNumber   As Long
PlatformID      As Long
szCSDVersion    As String * 128
End Type

After we are done with the above declaration we can have some methods/functions to determine current OS as shown below.

# 1.

Public Function IdentifyOperatingSystem() As String

Dim rOsVersionInfo As OSVERSIONINFO

Dim sOperatingSystem As String

sOperatingSystem = "NONE"

rOsVersionInfo.OSVSize = Len(rOsVersionInfo)

If GetVersionEx(rOsVersionInfo) Then

    Select Case rOsVersionInfo.PlatformID

    Case VER_PLATFORM_WIN32_NT

        If rOsVersionInfo.dwVerMajor >= 5 Then
            If rOsVersionInfo.dwVerMinor = 0 Then
                sOperatingSystem = "Windows 2000"
            Else
                sOperatingSystem = "Windows XP"
            End If
        Else
            sOperatingSystem = "Windows NT"
        End If

    Case VER_PLATFORM_WIN32_WINDOWS

        If rOsVersionInfo.dwVerMajor >= 5 Then
            sOperatingSystem = "Windows ME"
        ElseIf rOsVersionInfo.dwVerMajor = 4 And rOsVersionInfo.dwVerMinor > 0 Then
            sOperatingSystem = "Windows 98"
        Else
            sOperatingSystem = "Windows 95"
        End If

    Case VER_PLATFORM_WIN32s

        sOperatingSystem = "Win32s"

    End Select

End If
End Function

# 2.

Public Function IsWinVista() As Boolean
   Dim osv As OSVERSIONINFO
   osv.OSVSize = Len(osv)
   If GetVersionEx(osv) = 1 Then
      IsWinVista = (osv.PlatformID = VER_PLATFORM_WIN32_NT) And (osv.dwVerMajor = 6)
   End If
End Function

Related Tags:
Visual Basic

Author: Pallavi Kar

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