We recently had a case where a customer got the below error whenever they tried printing any reports.
Often when cases are first logged with support, not all the relevant detail is supplied and, as a result, the complete picture often only becomes clear after several interactions. So, to make this easier to read, I have summarised all the information gathered in the next paragraph.
In this specific instance, the issue occurred on a new standalone instance of Sage 300 2022.0 i.e. with no PU installed and a local installation of SQL. The users were able to create Journal entries, Purchase orders, AR invoices, etc. but were getting the error when attempting to print any reports.
The error is rather generic but usually related to a file such as a4wcrinterop.dll which has either not registered properly, or is not accessible, corrupt, missing, etc. indicating that something went wrong in the environment requiring a repair of the installation.
The partner confirmed that they attempted a repair via Control Panel > Programs and Features which did not resolve the issue.
The error typically occurs if the installation and/or repair didn’t complete successfully e.g. wasn’t done “as Administrator” with full elevated rights on the PC. We therefore suggested they reach out to the customer's IT to ensure that all the Sage 300 folders and files are whitelisted to prevent any antivirus / malware solutions from interfering, or even temporarily disable them, failing which, a complete uninstall and reinstall might be necessary.
We also referred the partner to a Sage Community Hub post listing a number of things to check / try which others have tried and has resolved similar issues for them.
After some further troubleshooting, the partner confirmed that completely uninstalling and then re-installing SAGE 300 with full rights, as well as running RegAcc.exe to ensure all files were registered, resolved the issue. They believe IT had done the initial installation, which might not have completed successfully, thus causing the issue.
This case raised a few thoughts, and I would appreciate adding your own to the comments below.
- Whilst IT teams are generally very capable of installing software, it does not replace the knowledge and experience of a certified Sage 300 consultant. How do you, as a consultant, ensure installs are done correctly when IT insists on doing the install?
- How often are you as consultants hampered from doing these installs due to the IT team or businesses concerns regarding costs or security?
- Working with IT teams and 3rd parties can sometimes be challenging, especially when needing to manage the ongoing relationship, navigating trust whilst wanting to get the customer up and running as efficiently as possible. So, when problems do occur, what strategies do you use to validate that the IT team has completed the troubleshooting steps correctly?
A lesson learnt from a support perspective is that one cannot assume that the consultant raising the issue, was in fact the one doing the install or accessing the system to troubleshoot. Any feedback to these questions in the comments will help us support you in such situations, and hopefully anyone else reading this faced with a similar scenario as well.