Windows XP - "Canvas does not allow drawing."

rbuser

My Original message was:

"What would cause the EInvalidOperation error message "Canvas does not allow
drawing." on Windows XP Professional. I am logged in as an Administrator
and running just a preview of a report."

Jim Bennett at Digital Metaphors suggested checking the printer driver. So
I tried to printing to a network printer and it preview and printed fine.
So I thought Jim was probably right, it must be the printer driver. Except
for one thing, the local printer and the network printer were using the
EXACT same driver. So after hours of trying to download new drivers and
such, it still did not work.

Answer: The local printer had become unplugged from the computer. No
printer not available. No printing to the spooler and waiting for the
printer to be online. "Canvas does not allow drawing" simply because the
printer wasn't plugged in. You gotta be kidding. But that was it.

Thanks Jim for the suggestion about where to start looking. You might want
to put this one in the FAQ - Bizarre XP Experiences category.

Thanks.
Bill Brittain

digitalmetaphors

Glad it's figured out. Sometimes it is the simplest of things. I should
have been thinking. I thought we had patched 6.02 for a problem like this.
Unfortunately the patch is for 6.03. This message is shown, when no
printers are connected and RB 6.03 tries to use the screen canvas to
generate the pagination for a screen preview (RB tries to use the printer
canvas to determine pagination, even for screen previewing). Sorry, to have
wasted any of your time with trying to install a driver. XP is new, and
this is usually our first line of defense, and hence my suggestion.


Cheers,

Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors