What does “Method '~' of object '~' failed” at runtime mean?

Question

I\'m trying to run a legacy VB6 application on my desktop (it doesn\'t have a user interface, being a command-line app), and when I do, I get a message box saying

Answer 1

I have VB6 SP6 and I can reproduce this behavior. In a fresh project, put this code into a form. The project runs normally with F5. Right click the project and select Publish then Build Outputs. This generates the error message.

Option Explicit

Public Sub Init()
    Dim blnErrorHandling As Boolean

    If False Then
        blnErrorHandling = True
    Else
        blnErrorHandling = False
End Sub

Now comment out the last four lines:

Option Explicit

Public Sub Init()
    Dim blnErrorHandling As Boolean

'    If False Then
'        blnErrorHandling = True
'    Else
'        blnErrorHandling = False
End Sub

You no longer get the error and the outputs are built normally. I was quickly adding in some error handling to locate the source of a crash and If False Then is perfectly valid. The MDAC checker said all was ok and a reboot didn't solve the problem.

Answer 2

For a VB6 program which is run as a command line application there is an extra stage required after compilation: the VB6 linker needs to be run on the executable to set it as a console program:

<VB6 dir>\LINK.EXE  /EDIT  /SUBSYSTEM:CONSOLE  <program>.exe

Failure to do this will give the Method '~' of object '~' failed error when the program is run.