Yes, You Can Install Visual FoxPro Version 8 on Windows 98

You heard right. While Microsoft does tell you that Visual FoxPro's Version 8 requires Windows 2000 SP3 or higher, you can install it on operating systems as old as Windows 98 by taking a little extra care with the install.

Follow these steps:

1. Make sure your copy of Windows 98 is fully patched, and that you are running Internet Explorer 6 with the service packs installed.
2. Retrieve a copy of the Windows Installer 2. This is a new version of the standard Microsoft Windows Installer. VFP8 only provides the installer engine for Win2K and up. You can download it from Microsoft.
3. Install the Windows Installer that you just downloaded.
4. Restart your computer.
5. If your copy of VFP8 was downloaded from MSDN, and you burn it to a CD, make sure that you name the CD volume "VFPPROD1" or else the setup will not work correctly.
6. Double-click the setup.exe file at the root of your VFP8 installation CD.
7. The installer menu will start with links to install MDAC, SOAP, and SETUP. Install MDAC and SOAP first.
8. Now, Install VFP8 itself. You're good to go!

If you get an error message at startup that indicates you are missing the file GDIPLUS.DLL, you'll need to copy it into your \Windows\System directory. By default, it is located in the "\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\VFP" directory.

VFP8 also includes a newer version of the Visual C 7 runtime (MSVCR70.DLL). This runtime can be included with VFP7 installations. It fixes some of those transient C0000005 errors you may have been getting.

— thanks to Jürgen Wondzinski (wOOdy) of ProLib for these instructions!

This page was last modified on Tuesday, 07 November 2006