c++ - What are some convincing arguments to upgrade from Visual Studio 6?

Question

I have a client who is still using Visual Studio 6 for building production systems. They write multi-threaded systems that use STL and run on mutli-processor machines.

Occasionally when they change the spec of or increase the load on one of their server machines they get 'weird' difficult to reproduce errors...

I know that there are several issues with Visual Studio 6 development and I'd like to convince them to move to Visual Stuio 2005 or 2008 (they have Visual Studio 2005 and use it for some projects).

The purpose of this question is to put together a list of known issues or reasons to upgrade along with links to where these issues are discussed or reported. It would also be useful to have real life 'horror stories' of how these issues have bitten you.

Answer 1

Not supported on 64-bit systems, compatibility issues with Vista, and it was moved out of extended support by Microsoft on April 8, 2008

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vbrun/ms788708.aspx