addin - tm1p error!

[yyi]

some anomalies when adding perspectives in excel occurs, a dialog box appears with "active x cannot create object" and in another instance, windows installer dialog appears - i'm wondering if it has anything to do with automation [servers] that are missing some files..

has anyone come across something like this?

[Steve Vincent]

need more info, what version of TM1 / windows etc are you on? and whats the full error code, does it have a numeric ID (429 by any chance?) as that may help narrow down the issues.

[Alan Kirk]

some anomalies when adding perspectives in excel occurs, a dialog box appears with "active x cannot create object" and in another instance, windows installer dialog appears - i'm wondering if it has anything to do with automation [servers] that are missing some files..

has anyone come across something like this?

Frequently. And it's undoubtedly the error 429 that Steve alludes to.

It's a problem in registering some of the .ocx and/or .dll files in TM1. I'm not sure exactly which ones will trigger it, though I believe that at the time that TM1 loads the one that it's trying to register is tm1xl.ocx.

As I understand it, this is what's used for the In Spreadsheet Browser (ISB). The good news is that if you wait for the release after 9.4, they'll have discontinued the ISB anyway.

The bad news is that (in 8.2.12 at least) it doesn't matter whether you want to use the ISB or not; once you hit the 429 error everything stops and the TM1 menu item won't appear on the toolbar.

We started to have the problem here when the IT department changed the level of access on users' deskttops. Originally everyone was in the "Power Users" user group, and the files would register themselves correctly. They've since downgraded new users to the common or garden "Users" group. Members of that group can't install software, and also can't register ActiveX controls or .dlls. Part of the reason that I.T. did this is that apparently the Power Users group doesn't exist in that bleeping abomination Vista, and they're getting ready to eventually migrate to that platform. Hopefully later rather than sooner, may I add. (I can't confirm that from personal experience since I haven't used Vista extensively enough to have gotten into its security group settings. Aside from which I feel the need to take a half hour bath every time I touch the thing.)

The only workaround we've had to date is to have I.T. desktop support manually register the controls and .dlls (we currently pick the add-in files up from a network share rather than installing the client software on each desktop), though they're planning to create a script which will automatically register them when they get the time to do so.

By which time maybe we'll be on 9.1 SP4, and there will be a whole new set of issues.

[yyi]

it was win xp pro sp2. tm1p is 9.1 sp3. 429 is right for the active-x error. the 2nd one is (same o/s spec) runs a window installer when the tm1p addin in excel is checked and okayed. then asks for a nero - burning rom.msi, although when the esc key is pressed several times it cancels and loads perspectives for that one session. in both machines, there are no security restrictions so i'm not sure whether it's some dll's clashing or the hd needs to be wiped

[Alan Kirk]

it was win xp pro sp2. tm1p is 9.1 sp3. 429 is right for the active-x error. the 2nd one is (same o/s spec) runs a window installer when the tm1p addin in excel is checked and okayed. then asks for a nero - burning rom.msi, although when the esc key is pressed several times it cancels and loads perspectives for that one session. in both machines, there are no security restrictions so i'm not sure whether it's some dll's clashing or the hd needs to be wiped

If you have the client software installed on the machines, and the users have Admin rights, then I think that uninstalling and reinstalling it may be a better first option than rebuilding everything on the drive.

[Joffes]

I did have the windows intaller problem before, that was solved by reinstalling office on the machine.

[yyi]

thanks all for the ideas and suggestions. 1st attempted the repair in the tm1 setup option but failed on "could not stop service().." [didn't give name of the service so couldn't work out which one to stop] and was logged in xp with admin rights at the time. eventually looked in application event logs and found 2 errors. 1 was missing aphandler.dll for \nero and the other was mscomct2.ocx in win\sys32 - this seem to fix the win installer problem. still have no idea why tm1p.xla have anything to do with these files

[Steve Vincent]

it might not, MS Office products are notorious for throwing a wobbly at one piece of software that has nothing to do with what you are trying to do. I'd had similar issues with Hummingbird (a telnet type program) when a user had it installed but no security access to use it. On starting Excel, Windows would try to "load" Hummingbird but throw up errors. Might be what Nero is doing, its installed but not security to use it. Just a guess anyway.

As for stopping services, the installer for TM1 leaves a little to be desired. I wouldn't trust the repair option, but rather uninstall and reinstall it. The services you need to stop are "TM1 Admin Server" and anything starting "TM1 Server /" (eg. TM1 Server / pdata). The admin server should be stopped last.