As most people know by now, support for Visual Basic 6 expired in 2008 (http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/search/default.aspx?sort=PN&alpha=visual+basic+6&Filter=FilterNO). However, I frequently receive questions about the risks of NOT migrating. I try to respond to each of these requests individually, but I thought that I would post a typical response here. Perhaps some of you will find this useful.
So, for the question: "What are the risks of NOT moving my applications off of VB 6?"
Visual Basic 6 support falls into three categories; the IDE, the source code itself, and the runtime.
Support for the IDE and source code expired a while ago. Support for the runtime, however, will continue for quite some time. The VB 6 runtime files are considered to be a part of the operating system with which they shipped. As you can see from our official support statement (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vbrun/ms788708.aspx ), the VB 6 runtime will be supported for the life of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008. (This means that VB 6 applications will be supported on Windows Server 2008 until support for that system expires in 2020.) This sounds like a very long time, but there are caveats:
As always, the views stated here are my opinion and not Microsoft's. You should contact your Microsoft respresentative for an official statement for your specific situation.