The Task Pane Manager displays links to useful information and dialogs for performing essential tasks. Individual panes can contain static or dynamic information, gather content from the Internet, expose wizards to accomplish routine tasks, display Help, and present samples. Users can create customized panes that can be shared with other users. I know that a lot of VFP programmers don't use the Task Pane Manager but I do and I've discovered a bug recently, which I've fixed. Actually, there are two fixes. The XML DOM parser is specified as MSXML2.DOMDocument.4.0, which doesn't exist on my Windows 10 system (nor did it exist on Windows 8.x or I think Windows 7).
Task Pane Manager - updated
![Pane Pane](/uploads/1/2/5/8/125846580/705590615.jpg)
Task Pane Manager - updated
I know that a lot of VFP programmers don't use the Task Pane Manager but I do and I've discovered a bug recently, which I've fixed. Actually, there are two fixes.1. The XML DOM parser is specified as MSXML2.DOMDocument.4.0, which doesn't exist on my Windows 10 system (nor did it exist on Windows 8.x or I think Windows 7). I've replaced the four places where the object is created with a simple call to an object factory where it works backwards through more modern versions, all wrapped in try-catches.
![Display the task pane Display the task pane](http://carme.cs.trinity.edu/thicks/Tutorials/FoxPro-H-MultiUserApp/Image7.gif)
2. The contents of a memo field in panecontentdefault.dbf has been adjusted so that the pane.xml file that is generated each time you visit the Environment Manager tab has valid contents (the Data memo field for one of the Environment Manager records had an invalid xml:stylesheet line rather than an xml-stylesheet line).
This last bug only showed up because I'm trying to use a more modern version of the web control rendering than IE V7 and to debug, had to turn that on for vfp9.exe as well. (See Rick Strahl's blog for details)
My question is this - what is the best way now of sharing these fixes with the rest of the VFP community? Building the taskpane.app is not super easy since it relies on xsource and the ffc classes. Also, the fix for someone with VFP already in use requires updates to the contents of a database file buried in the users AppData folder tree.
I'm happy to share the pre-built taskpane.app with anyone who wants it but is there something better that I should do?
Rob Spencer
Caliptor Pty Ltd
http://www.caliptor.com.au/
Caliptor Pty Ltd
http://www.caliptor.com.au/
Active7 years, 9 months ago
I am attempting to migrate several Visual Fox Pro 9.0 apps from Win 2003 to Win 2008 R2 64 bit server.
The user logged in is the same user that the task is scheduled as to run.
When the app is run manually (browse to the folder & double click), it run successfully.
When the app is run via the Task Scheduler, it appears to run, but the app never ends in the task scheduler nor in the processes tab of the Task Manager.
AHIA,LarryR...
larryrlarryr67433 gold badges1212 silver badges2626 bronze badges
3 Answers
If your VFP app is running on a 2008 R2 server and your clients are running Vista or Windows 7, then you may be having problems with SMB2 and Oplocks. This problem will manifest itself in strange hangs, file corruption and messages such as 'Attempting to lock'. We found that it was necessary to downgrade our clients to Windows XP to correct the problem. (For any of the legacy apps written in VFP 6 or older). VFP 9 apps appear to run fine on Vista and Win 7 if SMB2 is disabled on both client and server. (Both will automatically revert to SMB1). Please sse the following Microsoft articles:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/296264http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/visualfoxprogeneral/thread/6c62418d-08f8-495a-bbd4-f93151ec1f05
Disabling SMB2 is a relatively painless process, though you'll need to do it on each and every workstation and server that runs a legacy app.
KarlKarl
Had this same problem where our VFP 8.0 application would run fine when executedmanually but hang without error when setup as scheduled task under Windows Server 2008 R2. Got the basics of the solution from Brian in this thread here (http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winservermanager/thread/d47d116e-10b9-44f0-9a30-7406c86c2fbe) and this fix worked for us:
Setup the scheduled task to call a batch file which then calls the application. Then check these steps:
- Make sure that the task is set to 'configure for Windows Vista orWindows 2008' on the first page of the task properties (under the'general' tab)
- Make sure that the task is set to 'start in' thefolder that contains the batch file: open the task properties, clickon the 'actions' tab, click on the action and then the 'edit' buttonat the bottom. In the 'Edit Action' Window there is a field for'start in (optional)' that you set to the path to the batch file.
- Make sure that the task is running as an account that has explicit'Full access' permissions to all these things: The .bat file itself,the folder containing the .bat file, and the target files/foldersthat are affected by the .bat script. Inherited permissions didn'tseem to work for me.
- Make sure that the account running the taskis a member of the local 'administrators' group for this machine
- Make sure that the task is set to 'run whether logged on or not'
- The Task should run successfully with expected output when youright-click on the task and select 'run' If it does that then itwill run successfully when you are logged off.
We had no problems with the same Visual FoxPro application under Windows 2003 so definetly a result of security/schedule changes in Windows 2008 R2.
DaveShaw42.7k1414 gold badges9494 silver badges127127 bronze badges
SSJONSSJON
If you wrote the app I would put some simple logging to file at various places in your code so at least you can see where it is getting stuck. The STRTOFILE() function is probably the easiest way.PS What is the relevance of the migration from 2003 to 2008? Are you saying it worked OK on 2003 and now doesn't on 2008?
CaltorCaltor