How to get Delphi 7 to work in Windows 7 ?

CCH : Quoted verbatim from http://weblog.hansotten.com/?p=833

As you can see in this blog, I recently started programming again in Pascal, eh, Delphi Object Pascal. The version I use (since it is the last version close to traditional Windows programming) is version 7.

The best version to use  is the version that floats around as Delphi 7.2 Second Edition (search a torrent site) which is a trimmed and bugfixed small package.

Of course this package runs fine on Windows XP. But how on Windows 7?

This is how I got it to work.
Installation

• Make sure you run this as administrator,  you will need the privs.
• Run the Delphi installer. Use defaults for the file locations, ignore the incompability warnings.
• Dont start Delphi 7 as it will complain when starting a project  about unable to rename delphi32.$$$ to .dro in the /program files/delphi directories . And something about debug options requiring a change.
  So there are access problems, as to be expected. Windows 7 is a lot more robust, so directories are better protected.

Solve the access problems

1. Run this as administrator.
2. Open the properties on c:/program files/delphixxx directory.
3.  On the first tab Clear the Read-only attribute and press Apply for all files including subdirectory.
4.  Open the security tab
5. Give users (and admins if necessary) full access to  c:/program files/delphixxx directory   

Now Delphi can be used to write programs again.

Fix Winhelp
Help does not function, a windows pops up telling “winhelp is not supported anymore on this Windows version, go to microsoft.com for a fix” .
The fix for Vista is already made, the Windows 7  fix will be here Real Soon Now.

Edit january 2010:  Search ‘ Windows Help program (WinHlp32.exe) for Windows 7′ on microsoft.com, currently here ,  install that and you do not need the next trick.
So this will be fixed in the future, but for now it can be solved as follows.

1. Remove the Read-only attribute from winhlp32.exe and winhelp32.exe in c:/windows
2. Set  ownership of the winhlp32.exe file (properties, security tap, advanced)  to administrators (and remember, you are logged on as admin!)
3.  change the security to full control
4.  rename winhlp32.exe to something like winhlp32old.exe just in case
5. copy from a Windows  XP system the files winhlp32.exe and winhelp.exe in c:\windows

Now help functions also.