Today, I ran into a problem deploying a .NET windows application that uses Crystal Reports. I'm developing with VS2008 and Crystal Reports is a part of the VS2008 installation.
I build a .NET windows application (with a couple of crystal reports in it). I created a standard setup project with a merge module of crystal reports in it. So far so good.
Installation directly on a PC seems to work fine, but installation via (e.g.) RDC (remote desktop connection) failed. You got error like:
Module C:\Program Files\Common Files\Business Objects\2.7\bin\ExportModeller.dll failed to register. HRESULT -214701895. Contact your support personnel.
After some research on the internet, if found out to create the setup project a little bit different. What do you need to do:
- Remove the Crystal reports merge module from the setup project.
- Open the property page of your setup project (right-click and select Properties)
- Click on the button prerequisites.
- Be sure that Create setup program to install prerequisite components has been checked
- Check the Crystal Reports Basic for Visual Studio 2008 (x86, x64) record
- At Specify the install location for prerequisites choose Download prerequisites from the same location as my application.
- In this scenario, the setup for Crystal Reports is not included in your application msi, but present as a seperate msi, available in the same dir as your application setup (note: placed in a sub dir).
- When you start the setup of your application, it will check the prerequisites and in case no crystal reports is installed, it will do it first before installation of your own application. Slightly different, but it work on RDCs too.
