Simply Accounting and Sage 50 were most compatible with the versions of the Crystal Reports editor that came with them, the newest would have been that 8.5.823 build of the Print Engine.

Report forms developed with a  newer version of Crystal Reports will not work with the old Print Engine.  Newer versions of the Print Engine may not work with Sage 50 and Simply Accounting.  

So you have to stick with all the old parts that work together, or give up on Crystal Reports in Simply Accounting / Sage 50.

Sage pulled the Crystal Reports Print Engine and the interface to it, out of the 2014.3 release, so you can't go newer on the Sage 50 for this additional reason.

****************************************************************************

The Registry settings and DLL versions may end up different depending on the order that software is installed, and on the options selected, and the patch levels at the time of install.

I would play "one of these things, is not like the other" with the list of dependencies from the Simply Accounting / Sage 50 Support screen, from the About box.  Compare Working, to Not Working.  

Who knows, the working computers may once have had some other software installed that was since updated, and the critical bits left behind are still making it work.

Are the Working, and Not Working computers different bitness *AND* different versions of Windows?   64 bit OS will usually run 32 bit processes, but generally a 32 bit process can't call a 64 bit DLL, and vice versa, so communication between different programs may fail.

If you have the resources, can you build a Virtual Machine from one of the old (working) systems, and just deploy that?

I'm confused about why you mention Sage 50. We're using Simply Accounting 2012 Enterprise.

As for the crpe32.dlls I believe the reports were created in a newer version which is why I had to update the crpe32.dll version. I don't believe this is related to the current issue.

I did go into Help -> About -> Support Info and compare the lists of DLL and found some version differences and missing ones. I backed up and replaced the different/missing DLLs.

This did lead me to believe that maybe some older programs may have been installed on the working computers that are no longer needed. I tried installing some older packages like Visual C++ 2005, 2010, (both x86 and x64), MDAC, Jet, anything the missing or different DLLs pointed to.

I will dig a bit deeper into this and compare the installed programs between the computers in Add/Remove Programs. There wouldn't be some Knowledge Base article or somthing similar that would list any dependencies would there?

All computers are running Win7 Pro x64. I have, in the past, used Win7 Pro x86 and XP Pro x86 with no issues.

I probably could clone a working computer to this drive but this solution would not be ideal as I would be copying over the years of garbage a previous user has built up on their computer. It would also be a lot of work to do this on any future. It would likely cause further issues as the computers are all running on a Server 2003 Domain as well.

Tharman

First, instead of using your own template, test the original Quotes.rpt with the original crpe.dll and see if that will work.

I looked for the knowledgebase articles on this topic but it looks like they have been removed.  If I recall correctly, this problem sometimes came up when the program is installed with a Windows user who does not have Windows Administrative rights.  Sometimes you can right-click the Simply program and run as administrator to see if that will work.  I just don't know if you would have to do that all the time.

You can also test the Crystal report in the MS Office Documents program to see if it will work.

If you haven't uninstalled and reinstalled Simply, try that but make sure the Windows user has local Administrator rights (at least temporarily) during the install.

OK it looks like maybe it has something to do with the custom Crystal Report. Here's my findings.

Original crpe32.dll and original quote: Prints OK.

Original crpe32.dll and custom quote: Unable to load report. (This is what it used to do before i found the crpe32.dll v11.5 fix)

v11.5 crpe32.dll and original OR custom quote: The Crystal Reports Print Engine is currently busy. Please wait a few moments and try again.

Any ides?

Just wanted to add this report is still working on my other 13 users computers. Same OS on all of them and was working on one of the computers I'm having an issue with until i replaced the hard drive and had to re-install everything.

tharman said:

Original crpe32.dll and custom quote: Unable to load report. (This is what it used to do before i found the crpe32.dll v11.5 fix)

Did you try running it as administrator?

"Unable to load report" means that you are trying to print a report designed in a newer version of Crystal, with an older print engine that does not understand the format.  The default Simply system was designed with Crystal 8.5.  Someone at ACCPAC in California got cranky about the costs of Crystal and they never updated to Crystal 9.  The people that own Crystal have kept the same file format since version 9 and they are somewhat backwards compatible in the Designer.  But, since ACCPAC stopped at Crystal 8.5 and Sage never updated the Crystal engine when they took over, there is an incompatibility with Simply and using versions of Crystal past version 8.5.  Hence your problem.  Whoever designed the quote did it on the version of Crystal that was current at the time, instead of using the one compatible with Simply.

So basically you are trying to patch a Simply system, that was never designed to run with Crystal XI, to work with it and there are more than just the one dll that is needed.

Have you copied over the c:\Windows\Crystal folder?

Other than that, the only thing I can think of (short of designing the quote in CR8.5) is to install CRXI or even XI R2 and uninstall it to see if it will leave behind a few supporter dll's, unless you have a license for another install so you can leave it.

The last option might be to try my BizMan Reports 2.0 utility (www.ridings.on.ca).  However, I did not test it on Simply 2012 so I don't know if it will fully function (though it might).  I would however, look at the above options before looking at my program.  The costs of recreating the report in Crstyal 8.5 may be less than buying my program for even just the two computers, depending on the design of the report.  However, some of the programming is copy and paste to move it back.

Hello Richard,

I sent you a PM.

Thank You,

Trevor