Bug Appeal: LV6 activeX with Excel; Error -2147319784

Question

At Thu, 16 Nov 2000 14:55:00
"Dominic Lavoie" wrote:
<-2147319784 Old format or invalid type library.
Dominic and others
This is an old bug in LabVIEW that I have been fighting
with for several years. The problem (as I have seen it) is that
LabVIEW for some reason on some PC's suddenly becomes unable to read
from the (NT-) registry that Excel is installed as an
available ActiveX component on the machine. In my case the
Excel8.olb file.
Under earlier verion of LabVIEW no error messages
was generated, but you could see the problem when entering
the list over ActiveX classes, Type library. Suddenly the Excel
would be gone from this list, and it will not come back no matter
how you try to install, reinstall or reconfigure the Excel (or Office)
system. (And the Regsvr32 program does not handle OLB files.)
The only way I have heard to fix it, is to reformat the
harddisk and install the OS and everything fresh. But you might
see the problem coming back again.
There might be a possibility that this bug is not NI's, but one
in the OS. When I use other programs to View/Edit the registry,
these programs have no problems of detecting the Excel library.
So I believe it is a LabVIEW bug !
When working with Excel and ActiveX with this problem
meant that you had to manually browse to the OLB file each time you
would want to work with it, or you would sometimes get messed up
the wires and VI's working against the Excel library.
Now, under LabVIEW 6i, this situation creates the error message
-2147319784, and the problem suddenly seems much bigger.
I have reported this bug two month ago to NI, together with some
other people that has seen the same problem. So far NI has not
been able to locate the problem in detail or done anything with it,
as far as I have been informed.
This has been a very frustrating experience for me, because there are
many other features under 6i that I would like to use right away.
But since I am working a lot with Excel as a data format from LabVIEW,
I cannot proceed with 6i before they have broken this bug.
So now I would like the LabVIEW community to help me push NI
a little in their effort to debug this one.
All questions of course assuming that you have installed Excel
on your PC.
Could as many as possible out there check out if,
when testing the ActiveX/Excel examples;
A) under 6i; do you get the Error -2147319784 ? (YES or NO)
B) under 5.1.1 or earlier; can you run the example Write Table to XL.vi ?
(YES or NO)
C) if B=NO, can you locate the Excel library in the ActiveX class list ?
(YES or NO)
D) Where in the world are you located (country) ?
(Some has speculated that this bug might be connected to a problem
with different OS versions in different parts of the world.)
E) What version of Excel are you using ?
F) What OS are you running ?
If you can't do both A and B/C, send me the one you can.
Please report your results directly to me.
DO NOT REPLY TO THIS LIST. I will send a
summary after a couple of weeks, to let you know
the results. And also if NI seems to make any progress here.
best regards
Martin Plassen

Answer 1

"[email protected]" wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Martin, I'm not sure how to reply directly to you. (I can't find your
> email address or anything.) I may be experiencing a very similar
> problem. I am trying to generate Excel reports using LabVIEW 6.0
> under a Windows 2000 OS. Under Win95 in LabVIEW 4 I had no problem
> but I recently updated. Now I can't even open Excel using the NI
> distributed LabVIEW 6i Excel toolkits from ni.com. When I execute the
> Open Excel vi I get a Windows error message, "Labview.exe has
> generated errors and will be closed by windows. An error log is being
> created." Could this be the same problem dominic was having under WIN
> NT?
dmbillings
It seems NI has been so kind as to remove the fix on this problem
from their Knowledgebase. Well, I dug up some old e-mails on the subject,
and here's one you should look through. According to NI this problem
should have been fixed under LV 6, so I really hope this is not what you are
facing...
Martin
Good news for all of you,
we have a bug-fix that seems to do the trick.
Here's the recipe , with my words:
Do You have the bug ?
You can confirm that the bug is there, by opening a new file in LabVIEW,
in the diagram, insert an Automation Open.VI, right-click on it,
Select ActiveX class, Browse, and check the Type Library list.
You should not see the Microsoft Excel5 and 8 library in the list,
if the bug is there.
As I have suspected for a long time, the whole bug was related to
how LabVIEW read the registry at startup to locate all ActiveX
components on the machine.
Here's the fix to try out;
1. Open the RegEdit program
2. Under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT locate the TypeLib
3. Locate the Excel-key
On my machine this is {00020813-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}
(You will find it on top part, I think, not necessary to browse long
down.)
4. There are two base keys there, named "1.0" and "1.2".
Under the "1.0"-key, right-click and create new key, name it "0"
(zero).
5. Under the new "0"-key, create a new key kalled "win32".
6. Under the "1.0"-"9"-"win32" key you will find the link to the
Excel5-library on the machine, copy this link into the key you created
under pt 5.)
On my machine this is "C:\Program Files\Microsoft
Office\Office\XL5EN32.OLB".
That's all. Exit RegEdit.
Afterwards, check again that the Microsoft Excel5 and 8 libraries
is on the LabVIEW list mentioned above. After restarting LabVIEW of
course. It is not necessary to restart the PC.
Attached you wil find two gifs showing how this should look
in RegEdit before and after the described operation.
Good luck
PS: hacking around is the registry are do be done with
caution. The wrong actions here could have large consequences.
The two attached pictures should help you out,
but if you feel uncomfortable by working with the registry,
try to hook on to some hacker around that has been there before.
As I understand it, this is the reason that NI asked me also not to
give this info directly to the List-server. So please don't do it
you either. I plan to put the word out about the fix, not with these
details, but with a reference to the NI Knowledgebase that soon will
have this info.
You are welcome to send me a conformation that you see the
fix is working, or worst case, not.
Martin