Excel 2000/XP/2003, Managed(.NET 2.0) COM Add-in with shim

[Vladislav Malicevic]

There is a known issue with Managed COM Add-ins and .NET 2.0 Framework and
related patch described here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/907417

Patch works fine if Excel 2003 is present on the system. It does not work
for Office XP or Office 2000. Does anybody know of solution to this problem?
Any help would be appreciated.

 

[XL-Dennis]

Hi Vladislav,

Perhaps the following KB article may resolve it:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/908002/en-us

---------------
With kind regards,
Dennis
Weekly Blog .NET & Excel: http://xldennis.wordpress.com/
My English site: http://www.excelkb.com/default.aspx
My Swedish site: http://www.xldennis.com/

 

[Vladislav Malicevic]

Hi Denis!
Thank you for reply. I know the patch. It's targeting VS2005. As far as I
know it only adds patch 907417 to your Setup project so when you build Setup
for your add-in it adds office2003-kb907417sfxcab-ENU.exe to it and executes
it on users machine. However this does not solve the problem on machines
which have Office 2000 or XP on them, since 907417 works just for Office
2003. The other problem is what if I'm not using VS Setup project, but some
third party setup tool. How do I include this patch in there?

Please correct me if I'm wrong in that assumption.
Any ideas?

 

[XL-Dennis]

Vladislav,

The patch is targeting 2000 to 2003 of Office. I've had to situation where
this patch fixed the problems although it on 'its surface' was not related to
the issue itself...

As for adding patches that are installed with third part installation tools
I don't see the issue with it. The patch is an exe file and it should be
installed before You install the solution. Why can't You use the Setup in
..NET?

BTW, have You compiled your own IA for Excel 2000 and also for the XP
version? For the XP version there exist 'official' PIA.

The .NET platform is an excellent platform in many ways but the rapid
development of it and the less good 'relation' with older versions of Excel
make it more difficult then previously with VB 6.0

---------------
With kind regards,
Dennis
Weekly Blog .NET & Excel: http://xldennis.wordpress.com/
My English site: http://www.excelkb.com/default.aspx
My Swedish site: http://www.xldennis.com/

 

[Vladislav Malicevic]

Hi Denis!
Well yes and no. I didn't say patch does not work. I said patch works but
only with Office 2003. If you have 2000 or XP and 2003 on the same machine
then this patch will help also for office versions < 2003.

I can include EXE in my setup but it will run only on system with Office
2003. Otherwise it brings error message "Patch not suited for this office
version" or similar. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I have PIAs and is shimmed too. Add-in worked with no problems with 1.1. We
decided to move to 2.0 since there were some issues when user had different
..NET versions on his machine. It seams we have to go back to 1.1 again.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[XL-Dennis]

Vladislav,

I can include EXE in my setup but it will run only on system with Office
2003. Otherwise it brings error message "Patch not suited for this office
version" or similar. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I've made some tests to see the outcome of it:
- It runs as expected with 2003
- It runs as expected with XP
- It does not run as expected with 2000 without SP, i e I can reproduce the
mentioned error.
- It does run as expected with 2000 SP-3.

My enviroment:
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005
Version 8.0.50727.42
Microsoft .NET Framework
Version 2.0.50727

Windows XP SP-2

However, I don't say You're right or wrong because there are so many
scenarios that don't play by any rules.

Are You using the latest SP for 2000 and XP as well as the right versions of
the .NET Framework on the target machine?

--------------------
With kind regards,
Dennis
Weekly Blog .NET & Excel: http://xldennis.wordpress.com/
My English site: http://www.excelkb.com/default.aspx
My Swedish site: http://www.xldennis.com/

 

[Vladislav Malicevic]

Wow, thanks for the effort. Configuration of our development machine looks
pretty same as yours with exception of Office -we have 2003.

We are targeting .NET 2.0 and Excel 2000+(at least that was our intention).
If you are right, than we are one step closer to solution to our problem. SP3
for Excel 2000 should not be to much to ask of our users.

The only thing I have to figure out is how and what exactly to include in my
setup from "vs2005-kb908002-enu-x86.exe". We are not using Visual Studio
Setup project (add-in is just a part of a larger setup made with Inno Setup).
I could A) eventually extract content of vs2005-kb908002-enu-x86.exe
(bootstrapper.msi, office2003-kb907417sfxcab-ENU.exe and setup.exe), include
it and run it from setup. Or B) I could create VS setup project for add-in
(this will hopefully include everything what's necessary) and then include
and silently run it from inno. What do you think A), B) or something C) ?

In any case thank you very very very much for your help!

 

[XL-Dennis]

Vladislav,

I don't know about Inno Setup's facility as I use a Swedish software (which
can make the preinstallations of exe, ADO et al).

In general I find it very annoying that we tend to end up in 'black boxes'
when it comes to Managed COM Add-ins... That's explain why I want to learn
more about it.

It's my understanding that many of the issues we spend considerable time to
try to solve are related to the rapid development of .NET Framework +
Services Package + Patches. To be honest I find myself to be in the state of
confusion...

Anyway, I sincerely hope it will work out for You.

---------------
With kind regards,
Dennis
Weekly Blog .NET & Excel: http://xldennis.wordpress.com/
My English site: http://www.excelkb.com/default.aspx
My Swedish site: http://www.xldennis.com/

 

[Vladislav Malicevic]

Hi!
We are preparing test right now ... I will post my results here when we are
done. Seams like that bootstrap.msi is the key package ... besides
office2003-kb907417sfxcab-ENU.exe it contains also two other msi packages
(extensibilityMSM.msi, lockbackRegKey.msi). I guess these two are more
XP/2000 related ones. I'm not sure what exactly they do but I guess they will
help. Like I said ... I will post my results here when we are done.

Thanks a lot Denis for your help! Go Svenska!

 

[Vladislav Malicevic]

Hi Denis!
You were right. It works. Key file for is lockbackRegKey.msi and it's
mysterious contents. After running it on the target machine Office 2000 SP3
works. Thank you once more!

 

[Vladislav Malicevic]

Also some more info here (last post from Martin Sawicki):
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=498815&SiteID=1

Regards,
Vlado

 

[XL-Dennis]

Vladislav,

Good to hear that You managed to resolve it

Thanks for letting us know the outcome of it.

---------------
With kind regards,
Dennis
Weekly Blog .NET & Excel: http://xldennis.wordpress.com/
My English site: http://www.excelkb.com/default.aspx
My Swedish site: http://www.xldennis.com/