Help not working over RDC connection or through mapped drives?

Question

Greetings!

VFP 9 SP2 on (XP SP3 or Windows 7)

When user presses F1 key, help window pops up, but then get this message:

Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name: BEX
  Application Name: foxhhelp9.exe
  Application Version: 9.0.0.2412
  Application Timestamp: 41bdf896
  Fault Module Name: windowscodecs.dll
  Fault Module Version: 6.1.7601.17514
  Fault Module Timestamp: 4ce7ba3a
  Exception Offset: 00001e01
  Exception Code: c0000005
  Exception Data: 00000008
  OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.16.7
  Locale ID: 1033
  Additional Information 1: 9e27
  Additional Information 2: 9e2778096e7e1e2a2e0302fe58f3eea8
  Additional Information 3: 9e27
  Additional Information 4: 9e2778096e7e1e2a2e0302fe58f3eea8

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If the online privacy statement is not available, please read our privacy statement offline:
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If you double-click on the compiled CHM file, no problem whatsoever.  Just when instantiated from the application via the F1 key?

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

---

Scott Malinowski, Product Development Manager, Premiere Educational Systems, Inc.

Answer 1

Hi Scott,

since XP SP2o3 help files have to be called from a local drive due to security aspects.

foxhelp.exe however is (AFAIK) not part of the VFP distributables. And for displaying a chm it is not needed at all. (Someone may correct me if I'm wrong ;-) )

So perhaps your app lacks a 'SET HELP TO myhelpfile.chm' and therefore wants to start the default VFP help.

---

Gruss / Best regards
-Tom
Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible,
you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. 010101100100011001010000011110000101001001101111011000110110101101110011

Answer 2

Hi Tom,

Actually, FoxhHelp.exe and foxhhelpps9.dll are required if you use CHM (compiled Help file).  

The problem seems to be with the VFP runtime files?  I found some VFP runtimes in the Windows\SysWOW64 folder.  Not sure how they got there, but deleted those and then installed a VFP application that re-installed the VFP runtimes.  Now, VFP apps are running as expected. 

However, F1 does bring up help, but about 3 seconds after it appears, I get the Visual FoxPro has stopped working error message with a C0000005 error on FoxHhelp.EXE as where the error is occurring.  Also, if I try to open the CHM using FoxhHelp.EXE nothing happens, although checking Task Manager shows FoxHhelp.exe is running?

Thanks for your input, Tom.

---

Scott Malinowski, Product Development Manager, Premiere Educational Systems, Inc.

Answer 3

So, which path has the foxhelp.exe for accessing the chm? If that path is a non-local drive then this might cause the problem. As said, make sure its a local drive letter.

BTW, I never use any kind of system dir for our vfp dlls. All dlls needed by our app are by default copied into our apps installation directory. This is searched first by vfp rt and therefore always found. That way all other apps using/copying  their rt files into any system dir can do whatever they want. It won't interfere with our apps.

---

Gruss / Best regards
-Tom
Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible,
you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. 010101100100011001010000011110000101001001101111011000110110101101110011

Answer 4

The FoxHhelp.EXE is stored in the C:\Program FIles (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\VFP folder.   Our applications all run on RDC connections or LANs or single computers...etc.  But, mostly RDC through terminal services.

Our application has this code to set the help:  SET HELP TO help\ourhelpfile.chm.  So, the help folder is a sub-directory of the folder the application is loaded from.

FYI, this is working perfectly fine on 2 of the 3 Windows 7 64-bit machines that we have.  It's just on the main server that it having a problem?

I worked with Rick Strahl, a VFP guru yesterday for about a half hour on this.  He connected to my laptop and he got this stuff working on one of the 64-bit PCs.  So, we kind of know what the problem is.  However, it is not so clear on the 64-bit server.  

Anyway, the bottom line is that he wrote HTML Help Builder which is a VFP application.  His installation program follows the suggested standards from Microsoft and installs the VFP runtime files in the folder I first mentioned in this post.  

I am very appreciative for your input and for your time.  Thank you!

---

Scott Malinowski, Product Development Manager, Premiere Educational Systems, Inc.

Answer 5

I have had a similar problem on Small Business Server 2011. All users access the server via RDC (not my setup so don't ask me why!)

Anyway the .CHM file did not show the Help text (righthand side) when opened inside or outside of VFP.

From elsewhere on the web I came across the HHReg.exe utility to register the .CHM file within the Registry - see http://www.helpandmanual.com/products_hhreg.html 

This added entries to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\HTMLHelp\1.x

This fixed the problem when opening the .CHM from outside the application, but did not fix it from within the application.

On checking through the Register for other "HTMLHelp" entries, it showed an entry under HKLM\Software\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\HTMLHelp\1.x - but it did not have the subordinate entries as the other Registry key.  As a test I added these subordinate keys and data - HHRestricitions\MaxAllowedZone and URLAllowList and ItssRestrictions\MaxAllowedZone and URLAllowList. This immediately fixed the problem when Help is opened from within the VFP application

So, in its current format it appears that HHReg.exe only does half the necessary Registry entries on 64 bit systems.

I trust this help someone in the future facing the same problem.

Answer 6

I have the same problem with my VFP9-program on a server 2008 with Remote-Desktop-Clients. On "help" command in the application occurs the error with this message.

My program- file is 2.278KB, the .chm- file is 405KB. A smaller program (2065KB) with a smaller chm- file (111KB) on the same system works fine.

If I rename and change the .chm- files of both systems - works the big programm with the small chm- file fine. Also the small programm with the big .chm works fine. The error occurs only with big programm and big chm- file. I take for this experiment the same files, only copy and rename.

Is there a problem with memory- management?

Answer 7

Adrag1

For info. my program is 9,420kb and .chm is 395kb.  So overall much bigger memory usage than your progam plus chm sizes.