Creating an Installer Package for a VB6 Program

[winchestermili]

I have a Visual Basic 6 program that was written many years ago and it was packaged using the Microsoft Development Environment 6.0 software (Version 8426) to create a single MSI package. That MDE software dates back to 1998 and I need to create an Installer Package which will suit current platforms from Vista to Windows 8. Since this is a temporary measure for short term deployment then hopefully there is a free version of software that can be used to create a suitable package? Please can anyone recommend a suitable method to create an Installer Package which will suit more modern systems?

Secondly, in the longer term I intend to convert the VB6 program into a Visual Studio version. I tried previously but my program uses data from an Access Database and early versions of VS Express reported vast numbers of errors. I appreciate that there will be considerable work in updating the program but can anyone please advise the best route to take to initially convert a VB6 program into a Visual Studio program?

Many, many thanks for any advice.

[DataMiser]

The conversion utility that was included with VB.Net was not very good and better off not used. They removed it after 2008 so it is not in the new versions.

Best way to upgrade is to rewrite the application.

I know of no free tools that are good for creating an installer though the one you said you used before should work.

Just for clarification VB is part of Visual Studio so you do not upgrade a program from VB to Visual Studio. What you seem to be referring to is upgrading from VB6 to a later version of VB. VB6 is part of Visual Studio 6, it is also sold as a stand alone product. The various versions of VB.Net [7 and later] are parts of the newer Visual Studio packages i.e. [2003,2005,2008 .....]