It often happens that a company needs to modify a Visual Basic 6 application whose source code has been lost: fixing a text, replacing a logo, adjusting a window. Without the original .frm and .vbp files, the task looks impossible. It isn't.
The design edition mode
VBReFormer includes a UI edition mode that works directly inside the binary. Rather than recompiling the whole project, the tool opens the executable, rebuilds the tree of forms and their controls, then lets you modify their visual properties. That's what earns it the nickname of "half-decompiler": it doesn't necessarily reconstruct all the logic, but it gives direct access to the presentation layer.
What can be modified
- Labels, window titles and button texts;
- Images, icons and embedded resources (
.frx); - Position, size and properties of controls;
- Colors, fonts and other visual attributes of the forms.
A concrete use case
Picture an internal application still used daily, but whose vendor is gone and whose source code was never archived. A simple change of brand name or legal notice in the UI becomes a blocker. With binary editing, the change is made directly on the shipped executable — no build chain, no VB6 environment to reconstruct.
The limits to know
UI editing remains an intervention on a compiled binary: it's perfect for presentation adjustments, but it doesn't replace a full recovery of the business logic. To recover the logic itself, Native Code decompilation comes into play — a topic we cover in our article on P-Code and Native Code.
Always make sure you hold the necessary rights to the application you modify.