I have taken responsibility of a VB6 app.
I installed the VB6 IDE on one of my older machines. When I compile the app and copy the .exe to client machines, the Rich Textbox control breaks the app and causes a run-time error.
How important is it what machine you compile an app on? Is it possible that the app is expecting a control with a different ID and therefore there is a run-time error?
You need to deploy the Rich Textbox control richtx32.ocx to the client machines. These tables show it is not part of Windows, you need to deploy it yourself.
You might want to create an install for your program.
You could look into using a manifest so that you can just copy your program and its dependencies (like richtx32.ocx).
You could just manually copy the OCX file and use regsvr32 to register the OCX. This will quickly become unmanageable if you have more dependencies or many machines to deploy onto.
Related
This question may seem really dumb, my apologies for having very minimal programming experience. We just need to make an inventory system exe given to us run and "work" on some computers.
The exe file itself is an inventory system made using Visual Basic 6. It runs fine on computers that have visual basic 6 installed.
However, on computers without VB6, we encounter crashes. The exe's themselves run fine but as soon as we perform something (logging in/clicking buttons/etc.), we get runtime errors 339. On one machine it says, "Component 'MSCOMCT2.OCX' or one of its dependencies not correctly registered: a file is missing or invalid. on another machine, we have a similar error but points to MSFLXGRD.OCX
I figured these problems may be caused by missing system files/dependencies and we need to first install those. How do I make an installer wizard (similar to those Windows app installers that installs system files alongside the actual app) for installing these missing dependencies?
You could do a lot worse than the free Inno Setup. I've used it for many VB6 projects and it's never failed me. There's a learning curve but it's a very flexible package.
I used to use (and contributed to) the WiX toolkit for this purpose.
This will build a standard .msi installer for you. Start with the heat program which will inspect your software and generate much of the WiX project for you, be sure to use the -svb6 option.
You will need to source the appropriate merge modules for VB6 as well, which will provide the components you are missing.
Using the Desktop Bridge (formerly known as Project Centennial) through the DAC, one can create a full-trust UWP App. I thought this meant you can now create a Full-Trust UWP App and if so, how do you do that?
What I am trying to figure out is what configuration can I manually set on my UWP Project to grant it full-trust.
If you need some background, I need to create an Enterprise tool that has to be UWP. The application is going to be run on my company and one of the features that would make the UX better is to be able to access some parts of the file system outside of those allowed by UWP and preferably without the summoning of a dialog. Being able to run other DLL would also be a big plus; perhaps DLL Hell is desired this time around.
#Anzurio - just stumbled across your question and thought I'd share our experiences building the new Windows Terminal.
We originally set out to create the Terminal as a UWP app, with a nice modern XAML UI, but quickly found that the UWP app platform couldn't support a couple of our key requirements:
1. Terminal must be able to be launched elevated
2. Terminal must be able to launch & connect to arbitrary executables (e.g. cmd, powershell, wsl, etc.)
Because of these limitations, we had to create the Terminal as a standard Win32 process which contains a XAML Island which hosts the Terminal's Tab Bar and Terminal XAML Control instances in the main window frame.
We have taken care to keep as much app lifetime/logic code OUT of the Win32 host as we can, so that we'll have less work to do if/when the app platform does support our requirements and we get to ship a real UWP Terminal apps.
We are working with the app plat team to figure out how we might be able to build/full-trust modern apps more cleanly in the future.
In the meantime, I hope this response helps, and hope the Terminal source gives you some inspiration as to how to craft your own apps.
I don't know such of options. Yes, DAC can contain the Full-Trusted Win32 apps, but it is only applicable for Win32. UWP - WinRT - apps are restricted with App Container.
The alternative option is - using the "Special capabilities".
Special and restricted capabilities
There are many of declarations that overcome the restrictions of sandbox. Some of these are not applicable for store submission - only for in-house deployment apps. Others need registration for Microsoft to deploy with store. If your requirement is matched, you can use it.
(Added - June 2017) From Win10 AU, we can use the "FullTrustLauncher" API to launch the Win32 component from UWP App. But, yes, it does not mean we can run the "UWP" - WinRT process with full-trust rights. It's applicable only for Win32 process. And, the Win32 app executable should be contained in the application's AppX package and the manifest should declare the executable as "windows.fullTrustProcess".
<Extensions>
<desktop:Extension Category="windows.fullTrustProcess" Executable="fulltrustprocess.exe">
<desktop:FullTrustProcess>
<desktop:ParameterGroup GroupId="SyncGroup" Parameters="/Sync"/>
<desktop:ParameterGroup GroupId="OtherGroup" Parameters="/Other"/>
</desktop:FullTrustProcess>
</desktop:Extension>
</Extensions>
FullTrustProcessLauncher Class
I'm using PDFCreator to create PDFs in VB6. My VB6 development VM is Windows XP 32-bit. On that system PDF generation works both from a desktop app and from ASP (via VB web class runtime).
When I create an exe to run on Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 or use it in the web class runtime I get:
Run-time error '429':
ActiveX component can't create object
This is when using early binding. I add a project reference to "C:\Program Files\PDFCreator\PDFCreator.exe" and then in my code I do:
Public WithEvents mPDFCreator As PDFCreator.clsPDFCreator
Set mPDFCreator = New PDFCreator.clsPDFCreator
If I don't use a project references and use late binding instead, then it works on the desktop app but still not in the web class runtime. Late binding is done like so:
Set mPDFCreator = CreateObject("PDFCreator.clsPDFCreator")
I want to use early binding so that I can use the events, plus I need it to work in ASP/Web Class Runtime.
I realise I'm dealing with ancient technologies here and I should have tempered expectations when running such things on modern 64-bit Windows and IIS. If porting this legacy app to .NET were an option, I would.
On IIS I have set the Enable 32-bit Applications setting on my app pool. I have also tried running it as Administrator to rule-out security problems.
I've done everything I know how to debug this, but I'm stumped. I suspect it has something to do with PDFCreator being a 32-bit app and COM registration. I've also tried running regsvr32 out of SYSWOW64 but PDFCreator.exe can't be registered.
Windows 64-bit architecture does not allow the load of 32-bit dll into 64-bit processes.
But you can modify the configuration of your vb project to convert it from an in-process dll COM component into an out-of-process exe COM server. This will allow you to instantiate your 32-bit component from a 64-bit process.
See Process Interoperability
Since this is a VB6 question there aren't any 64-bit processes to worry about.
It seems far more likely than anything else that this library just isn't being registered properly. I haven't use it since I don't know whether its setup works properly. I do know that the download itself does not display with a UAC Shield on its icon, suspicious in itself. For all I know the setup program spawns a run of the wrong regsvr32.exe.
But it seems more likely you have misregistered the library manually after copying it naked over to these 64-bit Win7/Server 2008 systems.
In any case, going over all of the symptoms you describe, I'd guess it got registered as a 32-bit ActiveX library but registered in the per-user virtualized part of the registry for the user you were logged on as when you registered it.
This can be a hassle to clean up after. However you should, and then be sure to manually run the original setup once again with elevation.
These threads that include hand-wringing over "ancient technologies" really get old. It's a poor workman who blames his tools. In the future why not hire an experienced programmer to handle tasks like this?
I use PDFCreator in my accounting software written in VB6. Years ago, I noticed that after a certain update from the makers of PDFCreator, my software stopped working properly with it. The problem stopped after I re-installed the older version, and came back when yet another new update was released from them, so I have had my customers freeze at the version that worked. I don't know off the top of my head what version that was, but I can check my own web site since I made it downloadable for my customers if it would help, but it's likely many years old now.
This is my first time using the NetBeans Platform (RCP) for an application. I would like to package the application as .exe installer, and now I know how to do that. What I do not know, is it possible to customize this NetBeans RCP installer to prompt the user for a serial number? Please, any help is greatly appreciated
The only way presently (and that I know of) to do this is to edit the installer's source. The code that is used to create an application's installer is shared between all NBP projects and as such it is probably not a good idea to do this. For reference, the installer code on a Windows 7 machine is located at "C:\Program Files (x86)\NetBeans 7.1\harness\nbi".
Another option for you is to create a "setup" wizard that runs the first time the application runs and gets the serial number then. This is also considered good practice although I have seen applications that ask for a serial number on installation. In general your installer should only be concerned with installing; activating a product should be handled in a setup process.
Edit: The NetBeans Platform has a built in Wizard located in the Dialog API. Of course, The best resource for learning about the NetBeans Platform is the http://platform.netbeans.org site. If you are using 7.1 then this is the tutorial you want.
I'm working on an application developed for Windows XP SP3, using VB6. I'm currently in the process of getting it to work on Windows 7, but am encountering a problem with one of our custom OCX files.
When attempting to load a form that contains an instance of the control contained in the problem OCX, the following error is produced:
Failed to load control 'x' from y.ocx. Your version of y.ocx may be outdated. Make sure you are using the version of the control that was provided with your application.
I've checked the version numbers and they're all correct and referencing the proper version. The OCX registers fine, and all the expected registry entries are present.
Inspection with DependencyWalker shows no missing dependencies.
The software works fine under XP, and this is (seemingly) the only issue when running on Windows 7.
Interestingly, if I run through the VB6 IDE using a VB6 group (with the offending OCX part of the group, and the application the startup project), I don't have the issue. Running the application on it's own through the IDE still presents the error.
Any ideas on what could be missing which would cause the application to throw this error?
Error occurs on both Windows 7 Professional and Home Professional, both 32 bit.
This is almost certainly an interface compatibility problem. COM interfaces are versioned entirely separately from your Major/Minor/Revision numbers, which are little more than comments except as used by Installer.
Somewhere along the line you broke binary compatibility, and you are trying to deploy a library with a newer interface than your application was compiled against.
These version numbers are found in keys such as:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{class Id GUID}\VERSION
Your program needs to have its old reference to the OCX removed, a new one set, and then it must be recompiled. This also means deleting any instances of the control and adding them back one by one.
I doubt this is a Windows 7 issue.
I would suspect this is a UAC problem. Try turning UAC off to see if that solves the immediate issue. If it does then you have to regsiter everything using 'run as administrator' and/or create a manifest for you application.
Sounds like on of the controls included in your OCX is having issues loading, not a general registration error. Look at the constructors for x control, and see if they are doing anything that disagrees with UAC or such. One way you can debug this is put some kind of a break before the control is initialized, and debug the application from Visual Studio (remember to create the PDB's in VB6), and then carry on from the break to see why the control isn't initializing.