Tech Stuff

Today I found out the hard way that if you have Crystal Reports XI already installed on your machine and you are going to upgrade to Crystal Reports XI Release 2 you should uninstall the original as the Release 2 “Upgrade/Service Pack” is a whole new installer and doesn’t remove the previous version automatically.  Once I had installed Release 2 each time I tried to access a report in Visual Studio I was prompted that Windows needed to setup the software.  This process would take about 10 minutes.  Also if I tried to save changes I had made to a report they would be lost and I would get an Active X error.  After several hours of researching the problem I found the solution.  It was a “good” waste of a day.  After uninstalling Crystal Reports XI and Crystal Reports XI Release 2 and then just installing Crystal Reports XI Release 2 I had an installation that works correctly.

Earlier this week I installed the Crystal Reports 10 run time on a client’s Citrix server.  After installing I tried to run our application and the run time kept on giving me an error saying “Load report failed”.  Doing some research we found that the Crystal run time when installed assumes there is going to be a C drive.  In this case we didn’t have one.  The main system partition was W.  The below knowledge base article describes what needs to be done to get the run time to work on a server that doesn’t have a C drive.

Symptom

A Microsoft Visual Studio .NET application uses Crystal Reports 10 for Visual Studio .NET SDK as the reporting development tool.

When the application is deployed to a computer that does not have a C drive, the following error message appears:

“Load Report Failed”

Why does this error message appear and how can it be resolved?

Background Information

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It is common to not have a C drive on Terminal servers and Citrix servers.
Resolution

This error message appears because the application sets registry values that point to the C drive. To resolve the error message, use the following steps to change these registry values in the Registry Editor.

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WARNING:

The following resolution involves editing the registry. Using the Registry Editor incorrectly can cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall the Microsoft Windows operating system. Use the Registry Editor at your own risk.

HELP:

For information on how to edit the registry key, view the ‘Changing Keys And Values’ online Help topic in the Registry Editor (Regedit.exe).

RECOMMENDATION:

It is strongly recommended that you make a backup copy of the registry files (System.dat and User.dat on Win9x computers) before you edit the registry.

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1. On the ‘Start’ menu, click ‘Run’.

2. In the ‘Run’ dialog box, type “Regedit” then click ‘OK’.

3. In the Registry Editor browse to the following subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Crystal Decisions\10.0\Report Application Server\InprocServer\LocalConnectionMgr

4. Right-click the ‘ConnectionDirectoryPath’ string value, then click ‘Modify’.

5. In the ‘Value data’ text box, change “c:\” to the drive letter where the following directory exists (You may need to search your computer to find where this directory exists):

\Program Files\Common Files\Crystal Decisions\2.5\bin

Click ‘OK’.

6. Right-click the ‘LocalConnectionMgr’ subkey, click ‘New’ then click ‘String Value’.

7. Name this String Value “ReportDirectoryPath”.

8. Right-click the ‘ReportDirectoryPath’ string value and click ‘Modify’.

9 In the ‘Value data’ text box, type the same drive letter as you typed in step 5.

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NOTE:

After making changes to the registry, restart the affected service or application as required.

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Now, when the application is run, the error message will not appear.