RB 10.06/D2007/Vista - Installer Help registration fails

rbuser

I've installed RB 10.06 on Vista PCs with Delphi2007. On both machines, at
the end of each installation I get two "Help Registration Utility" error
messages saying that the Microsoft .NET Framework SDK cannot be found.

The SDK is installed, infact, before the 2nd installation I re-installed the
SDK to see if it made any difference.

Anyone any ideas?

Cary.

rbuser

I have the same issue on XP sp2 (a VM). Another instalation on Xp (not a VM)
went smoothly. In the first XP i had the SDK 2.0 installed. In the second PC
only version 1.1 was installed. Maybe it needs 1.1?

nicocizik

Hi Cary,

Thank you for pointing this out. The ReportBuilder help installer looks for
the .NET SDK version 1.1 on your machine. If this is not present, an error
will be shown. We missed seeing this error because all of our machines
contain the .NET SDK v1.1. This issue has been fixed and uploaded to our
servers.

Please re-download ReportBuilder 10.06 for Delphi 2007 and reinstall.

Note that this is not a Vista only problem. This issue could occur for any
opperating system running Delphi 2007 and the .NET SDK 2.0 only.

--
Regards,

Nico Cizik
Digital Metaphors
http://www.digital-metaphors.com

rbuser

I had the same error. Can we update on top of the previous install or do we
first need to uninstall from the Control Panel?

rbuser

Can't seem to re-download - the server's asking me for a password.

Cary.

nicocizik

Hi Cary,

The downloads should work correctly now. Please try again.

--
Regards,

Nico Cizik
Digital Metaphors
http://www.digital-metaphors.com

nicocizik

Hi David,

Yes, installing a new version will uninstall the version currently on your
machine. If you see the error during the uninstall process (before files
begin copying to your machine), disregard it and the install process should
finish successfully.

--
Regards,

Nico Cizik
Digital Metaphors
http://www.digital-metaphors.com

rbuser

Yep. downloaded ok but still producing errors at the end of the
installation, different error this time....

"Microsoft Documention Explorer application not found"

Cary.

nicocizik

Hi Cary,

This error indicates that the help installer cannot find the dexplore.exe
file on your machine. This is necessary to view Help2 on a windows machine
(i.e. Delphi 2007 help). If the Delphi help works correctly, then you must
have this application on your machine. The help installer looks in the
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\dexplore.exe\Path
key in your registry to find where this file is located. Check your
registry to be sure this entry exists.

--
Regards,

Nico Cizik
Digital Metaphors
http://www.digital-metaphors.com

rbuser

Nico,

I had the same error. I noticed that the uninstall didn't work without
errors so I decided take a "holistic" approach. I did an uninstall of Sdk
and framework 2.0, than installed 1.1 (sdk + framework) and reinstalled 2.0
(SDK +Framework).
After that the installation of the latest setup went without a hitch.

rbuser

I received the same error you report below "Microsoft Documention Explorer
application not found", then I ran the installation again and did not get
any errors. The ReportBuilder components for both Server and Enterprise are
there, but the help files do not appear to be installed. Delphi's help
system works fine, but no help for ReportBuilder.

During the uninstall part of the installation, I received the following
error:
The file 'C:\Program Files\CodeGear\RAD
Studio\5.0\RBuilder\Lib\rbDB10105.dcp could not be opened. Please check
that your disk is not full and that you have access to the destination
directory. I also received three Help Registration Utility Errors about the
.NET SDK cannot be found.

Nico, can you give us any direction about how to resolve this? I hope we
don't have to install the 1.1 .NET framework for this to work.

I'm attempting to install this on a clean Windows Vista Business machine
right after a clean install of Delphi 2007 before installing any other
components. In other words, ReportBuilder 10.06 is my first Delphi add-on.

rbuser

Thanks Nico,

Well, I checked both VISTA registries, both have a dexplore.exe entry
BUT neither had a PATH key.

The path to the application was in the (Default) key ("D:\Program
Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Help 8\dexplore.exe").

I've now tested this on a clean XP machine, installed .NET2 and SDK 2.0
and just like the VISTA machines no PATH key but the path was created
in the key.

I followed this by installing .Net 1.1/SDK 1.1 and this time the PATH
key was created:

(Default) "D:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft
Shared\Help\dexplore.exe"
PATH "D:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Help"

So it would appear that MS have changed the SDK 2 installer and the
ReportBuilder installer will only work if the 1.1 SDK has been
installed!

I had no reason to have the 1.1 SDK installed, these are clean VISTA
machines with Delphi 7 and Delphi 2007 installed and SDK 1.1 is not a
D2007 pre-requisite so you guys may want to re-visit the help installer
to use the (Default) key if there's no PATH key in the registry - or
get MS to change the SDK 2 installer ;-)

Regards,
Cary.

rbuser

David,

I haven't tried this yet but my guess is that the RB installer will
work if you add your own PATH entry in the registry before installing
RB.

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\dexplore.exe

Copy the contents if the (Default) value
eg C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Help 8\dexplore.exe

Add a string "Path" with the only the path to the file as it's data
value eg. C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Help 8\

And then try the RB installer.

Regards,
Cary.

rbuser

Was quicker than I thought but I can confirm this works with no
requirement to install the 1.1 SDK

No error messages during install and RB help has now appeared in the
Delphi 2007 help contents.

Cary.

rbuser

Thanks, Cary! Your instructions got me through it. The uninstall still had
errors and I had to run it twice, but the final run had no errors and now
the help system shows up fine in D2007.

nicocizik

Hi Cary,

Thank you for all the information. I installed a new copy of XP
Professional SP2 and Vista on a couple virtual machines and verified what
you found. After updating the help installer, everthing seemed to test ok.

We re-uploaded the install files to the server and they are now available
for download.

--
Regards,

Nico Cizik
Digital Metaphors
http://www.digital-metaphors.com