Anyone who still works with Visual Basic 6 for legacy applications will inevitably run into an issue where a customer’s computer needs MSWINSOCK.OCX in order to run their application. You could install the entire VB6 runtime files package or you may chose to redistribute this one file with your software. In any case, I wanted to make sure this file was available for those who need it.

Download MSWINSCK.OCX

After you have downloaded the file, you can either place it in your C:\Windows\System32 (or C:\Windows\SysWow64 on an x64 system) and register it there or you may want to put it directly into your application’s directory and create a .local file so that the application does not look beyond it’s own folder for the file.

To register the file, open up command prompt (Win+R then cmd) and enter:

regsvr32 "C:\Windows\System32\MSWINSCK.OCX"

If you are going to use the .local file, just create an empty text file in that directory with the same name as your application but a .local extension appended. So for example if you had a file called “MyApp.exe” you would create an empty text file called “MyApp.exe.local” Make sure if you have hidden extensions that it is not secretely adding “.txt” to the end of the file name.

Brad Fettes

A seasoned Senior Solutions Architect with 20 years of experience in technology design and implementation. Renowned for innovative solutions and strategic insights, he excels in driving complex projects to success. Outside work, he is a passionate fisherman and fish keeper, specializing in planted tanks.