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Crystal reports accessibility lost within my VB 6.0 application.

I have an application written in VB 6.0 using the built-in crystal reports from 4 yrs ago.

Since then:
Installed CR 8.5 on my PC (developer edition)
Installed VS .NET (which has CR 9.0 I believe)
Ran a CR 8.5 SP2 upgrade which did a lot of unregistering dll's and installing SP2 (via Computer Associates Software Delivery tool, script written in house; I believe it was mainly used to distribute the necessary run-time libraries, but I wanted to try something to fix my problem; it may have made it worse!)
Ran an install of 8.5 (developer edition) from the actual CD to try and clean up the installation.
Have manually went into the .dsr and replaced the GUID from the 6.0 to the 8.5 version.

When I try to run my app within the IDE, I get "Errors during load. Refer to [the report].log for details." This is one step closer than not even being able to load the project cleanly.

I've tried numerous "stabs in the dark" but would like some thoughtful suggestions. I am not above recreating the reports from scratch, although this would be *several* hours worth of work. But I at least need to be able to view the details of the current reports. ".dsr" files cannot be opened within the "real" crystal reports environment, only within the VB IDE which I cannot get to work!

Help!! Thanks, Emory.

JamesPMCD

One of the great features of Crystal reports is the inablility to use older versions of reports with the newer components. They changed a lot of the backgroud dll components and this tends to mess up every thing else.

We found that the only way to ensure that the reports created in a version prior to CR8 would work was to open each report into the 8.5 environment, verify it and save it in that version. Then repeat the same process in CR9

As for the Source code, you have to remove the references to the dsr files and recreate them on a machine configured with CR9.

KingDumbNo

ASKER

When I try to open the .dsr file from within CR8.5, it refuses with the very helpful "invalid TLV" error. The reports were initially created entirely within the VB 6.0 IDE, if that helps.

JamesPMCD

This is bad. the TLV error is the connection object which could fail anywhere from the password to the formating of the sql command that retrieves the data.

do you have the reports <reportname>.rpt files saved anywhere?

Mike McCracken

What version of CR were the dsr files created with?

The best thing to do is to uninstall CR then reinstall and try again.

When you installed CR8.5 did you update the application references and components?

mlmcc

KingDumbNo

ASKER

The log file created by VB when I try to run the application is this:
Line 2: Property OleObjectBlob in crActivityRpt could not be set.
Line 2: Cannot load control crActivityRpt.

Thanks for the help so far. Any more suggestions?

KingDumbNo

ASKER

The initial version of CR was 6.0. Since everything was done from within the VB IDE, I do not believe there are any other files to turn to. I have .dsr, .dsx, and .dca files.

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JamesPMCD

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KingDumbNo

ASKER

The powers-that-be are building me a new machine as we speak. I should have it by tomorrow morning, and will update this thread with the results of the lastest instructions. Thanks.

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Mike McCracken

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KingDumbNo

ASKER

Okay...a day and a half later...

I just got the new PC with VB 6.0 installed and nearly nothing else. It looks like CR 6 isn't installed, and they are just putting 8.5 on it. Hopefully that will work since the machine doesn't have VS.NET on it. We'll see...

Mike McCracken

Glad i could help

mlmcc