VFP6 on Win10: "Ole Error Code 0x8002801d: Library Not Registered"

[Stella740pl]

Hello, everyone!
Haven't been here in a while and glad to find this forum alive, well and active.

Here at work, I have recently received a new machine with Win10, and still need to use VFP6 (it's the only one we have) for some mission-critical legacy applications. I installed it several times, with the same result. After the files copied over, the installer shows "Updating your system" screen, and then becomes unresponsive (I tried to wait for up to 45 minutes to see if it still doing something; should I try to wait any longer?). The only way to finish it is to force close. After that, Control Panel doesn't show Visual Studio or VFP in the list of installed programs (to properly uninstall it), but the folders with all the files are there and seem to be working.

The problem I have is that each time VFP starts, it throws "Ole Error Code 0x8002801d: Library Not Registered" error, then Welcome screen (even if it was checked to not show again the previous time). When I close both of these, it works normally (at least the simple things that I tried). I googeld, and the most helpful tip I found was to run RegSvr32 with full name and path of the library in question - but I don't know what library that is, as the error message doesn't provide it. Another tip was to find and register VFP6ENU.DLL, which I tried, and got the following message from RegSvr32: "The module "C:\...\VFP6ENU.DLL" was loaded, but the entry-point DLLRegisterServer was not found. Make sure that "C:\...\VFP6ENU.DLL" is a valid DLL or OCX and then try again."

I can probably live with having to press two extra keys every time it starts, to close error message and then the Welcome screen, but it is annoying. Besides, I am not sure what else may not work properly at some point because of this.

Up until now, I have been using VFP6 on Win7 for years, without major problems, even though it did throw some errors during installation, if I remember correctly, and once in a while an internal consistency error.

If someone knows how to fix this, please share.

Thank you,
Stella

 

[Tore Bleken]

You must run the installer as an administrator, a normal user account doesn't have the necessary rights.

 

[Stella740pl]

I did. I have admin rights to my machine, and I installed as an administrator.

 

[Stella740pl]

Maybe as an aside question, does anyone has an experience of a 100% successful VFP6 installation on a Win10 system? Thanks.

 

[Stella740pl]

I should probably mention, that at repeated installation attempts I was not offered a choice of a folder, the installer chose to use the one I picked at the original installation (probably due to the fact that, as I mentioned above, I was not able to properly uninstall the earlier installations, I either deleted the whole folder or kept it and installed over).

 

[Tore Bleken]

VFP6 and Win10 works fine together. Try to Google the error number.

 

[Stella740pl]

>VFP6 and Win10 works fine together
Thanks for the confirmation.
As for googling, I did. What I found, I mentioned in my original post. I will try reinstalling again, of course, but not sure I would get results significantly different from what I got before...

 

[Tore Bleken]

Having administrator rights to the machine when logged in with your user name is living extremely dangerously, and is NOT recommended! If you are a serious programmer, and want to be accepted as being serious, you should make sure that your account is a "normal" user account.

Be aware that "being an administrator" (or "having administrator rights") is very different from "run as administrator".

 

[Olaf Doschke]

I remember it already was hard enough to install VFP6 on XP, especially SP5, because of MDAC and some other specifics and as that all still was part of the whole Visual Studio. And I did so for a data migration I programmed in VFP6 in 1999 and reactivated again ~2005.

If you can get hands on VFP7 or 9 use them. Conversion of a VFP6 project to VFP7 was perhaps the easiest transition I ever had and it is so much more stable.

Bye, Olaf.

Olaf Doschke Software Engineering

https://www.doschke.name

 

[Mike Gagnon]

Having admin rights to your computer and 'running it as administrator' are two different things.

Mike Gagnon

If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ184-2483 first.

 

[Olaf Doschke]

Having admin rights to your computer and 'running it as administrator' are two different things.

Yes, Tore already said that.

Be aware that "being an administrator" (or "having administrator rights") is very different from "run as administrator".

Up to XP running windows as admin meant all the processes you ran inherited the admin privileges and ran elevated. Since Vista that changed. I don't agree fully with Tore, but indeed to higher the system security Microsoft changed that with UAC and it still is an awkward solution, albeit better than what I know from Mac where you can change to admin for a certain action but also (dangerous) for the next X minutes.

There are surely more dangers of running Windows as an administrative user. We don't need to talk about running Windows with UAC turned off, that just puts you back into all the dangers of running everything elevated and thus also allowing any malware to have root rights without needing an exploit via a rootkit. Since running as administrative for example means you only get a confirmation dialog for elevating something like a setup instead of getting a login dialog. But Windows first puts the desktop in a lightbox mode, that's not just a visual UX thing aiming for your intention, that also means that confirmation dialog won't receive any Windows message sent to it, it's not automatable.

Anyway, if you want to go down the route what would be the best option to work with, you'd never even run your system in its main system but in a VM on a host system that barely has more than a VM software installed. Then you can always reset the VM, but even than viruses having an artificial incubation time won't allow you to know how far back you need to revert the VM to get rid of the infection. You just have one level more than that of an antivirus boot CD/DVD to examine that system from outside, from the host level.

Microsoft made it more secure to log in as an adminstrative user and if your main job is to work as such you may not do so on your main office computer, but surely during administrative sessions on other employees PCs or on servers remotely. And that's what it's meant for.

But to contribute to the core problem and the main thread question, Stella740pl, I'm not even sure if you're talking about installing VFP6 itself or VFP6 based setup. The setup you did in VFP6 and earlier were not system setups like InstallShield or Inno installers and those setups actually need to be manually elevated as the OS only will automatically add the admin requirement on executables having "setup" or "update" in their file name.

So to get the registration of OLE classes working, which seems a problem here, you will need to right click the setup and "run as admin", even if your account is one, that's a difference. The setup might still not do some registration. ISE allows you to right-click on an EXE or DLL you want to register and add appropriate setup actions or in general autodetect OLE classes for registe3ring, on which I would not rely. All in all, if you're talking about a VFP6 application setup you at least best recreate the setup itself if you can with at least ISE (InstallShield Express) that comes with VFP7+.

Bye, Olaf.

Olaf Doschke Software Engineering

https://www.doschke.name

 

[Dan Olsson]

I have changed computers at least 5 times and always just copied the VFP-directory from the old to the new one.
After that I run "VFP /regserver". Everything works except F1 to automatically run the helpfile.

 

[Stella740pl]

Thanks everyone!
I will try to answer all questions/suggestions.

First of all, last night I started a new VFP installation (yes, running as an admin), and when the installer started "Updating the system", just locked the Windows and went home. Came this morning to the same unresponsive screen, force-closed it, got a message of failed installation. Again, everything is there, same messages (error, then the unwelcome Welcome screen) when trying to run it, and working after that. From those several times that I tried to reinstall, probably a couple of times I forgot to run as an admin. One of the problems is, as all the installations technically failed, neither they finish the registration, nor I was able to do a clean uninstall in between the attempts. Now what?


>just copied the VFP directory from the old to the new machine

Dan, some of my coworkers usually went that route, I did it at some point, too (like some years ago on Win7, not having admin rights). The VFP6.EXE itself did work, which was good for many tasks, but not all. A lot of bells and whistles didn't work. I don't think any of us ran "VFP /regserver", though. (As for the help file, that wouldn't be a problem to me, as I prefer to set up help as a separate shorcut and run it independently from FoxPro anyway.) So when a technician with admin rights was servicing my computer, I got to install VFP6 properly and was happy to be able to use everything I want. So now, when I got Win10 plus admin rights, I was trying to do just that. But after attempts to install it, now even running VFP from a copied over directory gives me the same messages.


>But to contribute to the core problem and the main thread question, Stella740pl, I'm not even sure if you're talking about installing VFP6 itself or VFP6 based setup.

Olaf, I was trying to install Visual Studio 6, out of which I only need VFP6. I don't usually develop and install applications for users (well, rarely). I mostly program for internal use, and then these applications are used either by myself or by my colleagues, so we mostly run them straight from FoxPro (in this case, but we also use Oracle and more), and often in debug mode, to be able to intervene as needed. These applications are usually serving purposes of data processing, data quality control/screening/repair, data analysis, etc. My product is data and reports from said data, not end-user oriented applications.


>If you can get hands on VFP7 or 9 use them. Conversion of a VFP6 project to VFP7 was perhaps the easiest transition I ever had and it is so much more stable.

Olaf, I don't think I can do that. The company refused to get us VFP9 back in the day when it was new and shiny (what, like 15 years ago?), saying that FoxPro is on its way out everywhere, including our organization. It's not like I can buy and bring to work unapproved software. And nothing is as permanent as temporary things. Mainframe, FoxPro, and other "antiques", that were on their "way out" 15-20-25 years ago, are still in use here, in parallel with many more modern hard- and software. I did keep my old Win7 machine next to the Win10 one, and for now, running VFP on it. But planning to eventually switch completely.


>I remember it already was hard enough to install VFP6 on XP, especially SP5, because of MDAC and some other specifics and as that all still was part of the whole Visual Studio.

I didn't have any problems with VFP6 on XP, and some occasional, mostly tolerable problems on Win7.


>Having administrator rights to the machine when logged in with your user name is living extremely dangerously, and is NOT recommended! If you are a serious programmer, and want to be accepted as being serious, you should make sure that your account is a "normal" user account.

Tore, I don't think I have a choice. Programmer or not, I am a part of a big organization, I can have only one user account here, and that user ID/password is synchronized across many different systems here - including my email, my access to mainframe from where I download the data I use, company's portal, etc. I simply won't be able to work with a different account. Having admin rights on my main and only account means for me higher efficiency and independence, as it is really nice being able to perform tasks I can do myself instead of logging in a service request and waiting for someone to connect (or come) and serve me, or just do without if the request is not serious enough to even bother.

>Having admin rights to your computer and 'running it as administrator' are two different things.
Mike and Tore, yes I know that, tend to forget occasionally, though, as I used to have admin rights on my XP system, but not on Win7.


I guess, I will have to learn to live with the the couple of extra key presses, and just hope that it is the worst thing that would happen.

Stella.

 

[Tore Bleken]

Stella, by running your computer using an administrator account, you take a far bigger risk than you seem to understand. You have opened up your whole computer system, including every server you are connected to, by that setup. If you for instance get an infected email, the virus can attack every account on the whole system, not only your computer! Google UAC for a description of why the security is much stricter on Win10.

To use an analogy which I hope you, and your boss, will understand: To let someone use an administrator account is like letting someone have the master key to all doors!

Even running your own personal computer at home using administrator rights, is extremely dangerous! Nobody who takes security seriously, would even consider doing that. Only fools, or users who has not being aware of the security risks, runs a computer using an administrator account. And if a boss allows that, he/she should do some reading and reconsider!

 

[Stella740pl]

Tore, well, I understand - kind of.

First, the IT department (I work for a different one) allowed me - and a group om my colleagues working in similar positions/capacity - this kind of access. I would imagine the IT people are the ones that should be most careful about allowing this setup. My responsibility here is to be careful of what I am opening and running on my machine, but I don't think I want to be as careful as to request to withdraw the admin rights from me. Just no.

Say, I am not sure how long I would have to wait for someone with admin rights to come and attempt to install VFP6 for me. I would guess then that the installation would fail, just like all of mine did, and the technician would just conclude that VFP6 doesn't work on Win10, close the ticket and leave (especially as this particular software belongs to the department and not the company, but this is a different story).

Second, the firewall and other mechanisms of protection seem to be set up very well. For example (and you used email as an example), I don't remember ever receiving junk/spam/suspicious email on my company account - it's screened out well before I can even see it.

Third, as you pointed out yourself, having admin rights to your computer and running and app as administrator are two different things.

And last, I am still trying to solve the problem at hand, which is not the setup of my account. I understand your concerns and am thankful for all the tips, ideas and advice, including the ones on the risks. I am sorry to ask for this, but can we please get back to the topic, if possible?

Thank you so much.

 

[Tore Bleken]

"Say, I am not sure how long I would have to wait for someone with admin rights to come and attempt to install VFP6 for me"

You clearly misunderstand completely! Everyone can "run as administrator" since it's a temporary right which ma be necessary from time to time, typically in order to install programs.

I would imagine the IT people are the ones that should be most careful about allowing this setup.

No, I have seen many times that the self proclaimed gurus are the ones who most frequently disrespect security rules. Until the big OOOOOPS! hits them...

Being logged in on a computer with administrator rights is a big no-no in every company which takes security seriously. I'm sad to read that the company you work for is not in that category.

 

[Stella740pl]

Everyone can "run as administrator"? (Sorry, I am relatively new to Win10). Wouldn't that trigger a request to supply admin password and then deny running as admin, as that account has no admin rights? At least in Win7, I was not able to install anything at all, for the reason just described.

 

[Tore Bleken]

To illustrate, open File Explorer and locate an exe file. Select it, and right-click. Now you will see Run As Administrator. Select it, and you will observe a huge messagebox with Yes and No as the only options. To really make it clear that this is something you must be careful with, everything else on the computer is blanked while this messagebox is visible.

And NO, you are NOT asked for a username/password when you do like this. Unless someone has removed the right to Run as administrator, I don't know whether that is possible or not.

I repeat that you should Google UAC......!!! Some people turn off UAC, I call them idiots or something in that direction... UAC was introduced for very good reasons!

 

[Stella740pl]

>open File Explorer and locate an exe file. Select it, and right-click. Now you will see Run As Administrator.

Yes, that's exactly what I did when I installed Visual Studio/VFP.
But no, not every program in every system/setup responds in the same way to this action.

What I see on Win10 is that the many programs just start running, no questions asked, no messagebox. (It didn't ask me anything when I was installing VFP, and when I just now tested a few executables.) Only some programs, that do attempt to make changes to the system, triggered the messagebox.

On Win7, on which I also currently have the rights, exactly the same programs did trigger the messagebox.

On my home machines, when trying to install something from non-admin account, it does ask for admin password (I will check again if it does so when running as admin).

Anyway, I guess, this discussion is more fitting in one of the Security Solutions groups and doesn't add anything to the topic.

 

[Tore Bleken]

What I see on Win10 is that the many programs just start running, no questions asked, no messagebox.

Sounds like UAC is turned off. I'd rather sit on a time bomb, because then you not only know that it will explode, but also roughly when.

One final note: most users follow the recommendations, and don't have the problem you face. Need I say more?