If you use Crystal Reports with VS7: READ THIS

[bcm]

After several wasted days, I've found that there are four undocumented (or
misdocumented) issues one has to be aware of before deploying an app that
uses Crystal Reports.

1) There are three "Merge Module" files that must be included in an
installer package before you distribute a Crystal aware .NET app (if you
don't include them, your app won't work. Period.) The Dynamic Help
documentation ("Distributing Crystal Runtime Files to a Client Computer") is
erroneous in several details. First, location of these Merge Modules as
listed is incorrect (the "Redist" folder doesn't exist). They are in fact at
Program Files\Common Files\ Merge Modules. Second, the file they list as
"Managed_enu.msm" is simply called "Managed.msm." Also required are
"DataBase_Access_enu.msm" and "regwiz.msm". After adding a Setup and
Deployment project to your Solution, right click it and select "Add...Merge
Module" and browse to these three files.

2) THIS IS ESSENTIAL (and it presumes you have registered Crystal Reports as
you were prompted to do when you first launched it from within VS7). Adding
the Merge Module files isn't enough: if you install your app at this point
and launch it, all will be well till you access any portion of it that uses
Crystal. You'll get a message saying "Missing KeycodV2.dll or invalid
Keycode." Go back to the Solution Explorer and click on the regwiz.msm file
(in your Setup and Deployment Project). In the Properties window, the first
selection is titled "MergeModuleProperties." Expand it, and you will see a
blank field titled "License Key." Go to Help_About Microsoft Development
Environment and highlight the line "Crystal Reports for Visual Studio .NET."
Click Copy Info, open Notepad, and paste the result. Now copy just the
alphanumeric code at the end of the line and paste it into the License Key
property in the Properties window. Recompile and rebuild the installer
package, and you'll have a working app. Almost...

3) I have found that I must compile my project on the same platform I intend
for it to run on. In other words, if I compile on an XP Professional
machine, the resulting .exe will run fine on XP, but will not even load
under Windows 2000. Conversely, if I compile on W2K and try to run the
resulting .exe on an XP client machine, it crashes on launch: "Common
Language Runtime Debugging: An exception occurred that cannot be handled:
error 80004500." Needless to say, it behaves on W2K.

4) It appears that Crystal does not respect integrated security. When
setting up my database connection through Crystal, every runtime attempt at
a connection results in a username/password dialog box (even though Crystal
says that the Integrated Security property of the connection is set to
"true"). Since the box's title is "Main Report", it seems clear that it is
Crystal requesting the logon (presumably because it is negotiating with the
DB inappropriately at connection time). When I make a System DSN and point
Crystal to IT for connectivity, integrated security works as it should (i.e.
no logon required).

Hope this saves some headaches. Mine is still THROBBING.

[Mah]

Also if you are deploying with Datasets and getting data using ADO.NET
while designing crystal reports, you also need to merge VC_CRT.MSM and
VC_STL.MSM for crystal reports to work properly

mah

"bcm" <b...@nc.rr.com> wrote in message news:<#04KX9mpBHA.2164@tkmsftngp03>...