I have been running windows 7 since the second RC and I really like it. I have had a reoccuring problem with it hanging on restart/download. I manage to consistently fix it by opening up the system config and removing everything (especially the google toolbar notifier) except what is required at startup:

1. open the start menu
2. type ‘msconfig’ into the box at the very bottom that says: ‘search programs and files’
3. go to the startup tab
4. unclick everything that doesn’t need to run at startup. I only have five clicked: three called ‘Intel(R) Common USer Interface, Microsoft Windows Operating System and ESET Virus Protection.
5. My laptop always hangs when I have the GoogleToolbarNotifier enabled at startup. If this is your problem too, then changing it here will only fix it until you open a browser window. You have to open ‘Manage Add-Ons’ in IE and disable the GoogleToolbarNotifier BHO. Here are instructions for doing the same in Firefox.

When I set ‘Compact on Close’ to true in the options menu in Access 2003, users that open the app in the runtime get the infamous ‘microsoft access has encountered a problem and needs to close’ message when they exit. Uncheck the ‘compact on close’ option and the error goes away. That was kind of a funny error and I thought I would blog it in case anyone runs into the same problem.

Had a problem with an Access application that requires the Outlook library to email. Some users were using office 2003 (office 11) and others office 2007 (office 12). The access app is running in the 2003 runtime. We were getting ‘Library not Registered’ errors when users were using office 12 when the reference was pointing to the office 11 version. You can’t reference BOTH versions, so I wrote some code to remove any existing outlook references and detect and set the proper reference when the main switchboard loads. 

  ’remove any references to outlook (this is probably mine from development)
    Dim referenceItem As Reference
    For Each referenceItem In References
        If (referenceItem.FullPath = “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\MSOUTL.OLB”) Then
            References.Remove referenceItem
        ElseIf (referenceItem.FullPath = “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE12\MSOUTL.OLB”) Then
            References.Remove referenceItem
        End If
    Next referenceItem
   
    ‘find a reference and use it
   If (Dir(“C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\MSOUTL.OLB”) <> “”) Then
        References.AddFromFile “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\MSOUTL.OLB”
    ElseIf (Dir(“C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE12\MSOUTL.OLB”) <> “”) Then
        References.AddFromFile “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE12\MSOUTL.OLB”
    End If

I maintain a MS Access 2003 application for a client. The front end sits in a shared directory on their network and they use a bat file to copy the mdb file locally and execute it in the Access Runtime (ART). The back end is MS SQL Express 2005. They just recently tried to install it on their first Vista machine and they encountered an error: Error #3075: Function is not available in expressions. This error occurred on many but not all of the calls back to the database. It obviously had something to do with the references. Upon comparing the references between the same app running on Win Server 2003 and Vista, I found that all of the references were the same except:

Vista: Microsoft ADO Ext. 6.0 for DDL and Security (WDAC 6.0)

Win Server 2003/XP: Microsoft ADO Ext. 2.8 for DDL and Security (MDAC 2.8)

In Vista, they replaced the MDAC 2.8 (Microsoft Data Access Components) with WDAC 6.0 (Windows Data Access Components). These components include ADO, OLE, DB and ODBC. 

I really didn’t feel like messing with rolling back to MDAC 2.8 or trying to make both versions run on the same machine. So, I just tried reordering the references. I moved WDAC 6.0 up as far as I could – second from the top and viola – no errors!

I moved the last reference (not the highlighted one) up to second from the top.

So, if the app is runing in the Access Runtime, how did I get to the VB References?? Well, this particular machine had the full version of Access installed on it. I have no clue what I am going to do when it is only running the Access Runtime. I guess I will have to amend this post…

OK – amending now (Feb 2010): Ran into the same problem on another machine. Had to RUN the front end in Access 2007 in order to get the references to ‘stick’. Perhaps it needed to compile in Access 2007? Don’t know. After that, the same thing ran great in the runtime. Go figure.

Ok, first blog post. I had a blog a while back and didn’t keep it up. This one will mainly be for programming things that I come across and need to remember how to fix. Occassionally, I will need to vent about kid stuff and life. Mostly programming.