Crystal Reports XI - Printing Issue

Rachel Bock

We recently upgraded from Crystal Reports 8.5 to XI in preparation for our RE upgrade from 7.93 to 7.96.  At the moment, we're still on RE 7.93. Crystal Reports is only installed on my workstation (same as it was with 8.5). After I converted my reports to XI, I was able to run them successfully but if I tried to print the reports everything froze and crashed.  My IT team was able to fix the issue on my computer by renaming a DLL file as specified in this article https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/48446.  

But now everyone else on my team is having the same issue when they try to print reports. They can run and preview the reports in RE just fine, but everything crashes when they try to export or print.  Since they don't have Crystal Reports installed on their workstations, there's no DLL file to rename. I've contacted Support and was told we need to install Crystal Reports on every workstation. Does this sound right? It's going to take a long time to install Crystal Reports on each workstation, so before we do that I was curious if anyone else has experienced this issue and/or if it's common practice to install Crystal Reports on every workstation.

Chester Bammel

If they are trying to open a .rpt file, then they typically would need a license or at least a Crystal Reports viewer.  I'm not sure how they would be opening or reading the report file without one - even with 8.5.  You could also have Crystal export the file to PDF.

Marie Stark

 

we had the same problem when we upgraded to 7.96.  We resolved the issue by inatalling  a Crystal reports service pack. You can refer to knowledgbase article # 74812.

I don't know if this is your issue since you are still on 7.93. 

We do not have Crystal on every workstation but we have it on the server.

Aaron Rothberg

Hi Rachel-


I read the KB you linked to. It's hard to say exactly what is going on using the tools I'm using, but if I open Crystal from our hosted server and I use a program called Process Explorer to see which processes are using usp10.dll, I see 8 processes from Chrome reading that file (see screenshot below).

 

I can't tell from Process Explorer if any of those usp10.dll reads are a direct result of my opening an instance of Crystal, but I think it's fair to run further tests based on the assumption you are all experiencing the crashing from the same cause. I would follow the steps in that KB on one more computer where a user is experiencing the crashing to see if that fixes it and if it does, I think it is reasonable to apply the fix to all workstations working with Crystal. This, of course, may cause problems for any applications that require the newer version of usp10.dll, but pick your poison I guess.

 

John Heizer

Rachel Bock:

We recently upgraded from Crystal Reports 8.5 to XI in preparation for our RE upgrade from 7.93 to 7.96.  At the moment, we're still on RE 7.93. Crystal Reports is only installed on my workstation (same as it was with 8.5). After I converted my reports to XI, I was able to run them successfully but if I tried to print the reports everything froze and crashed.  My IT team was able to fix the issue on my computer by renaming a DLL file as specified in this article https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/48446.  

But now everyone else on my team is having the same issue when they try to print reports. They can run and preview the reports in RE just fine, but everything crashes when they try to export or print.  Since they don't have Crystal Reports installed on their workstations, there's no DLL file to rename. I've contacted Support and was told we need to install Crystal Reports on every workstation. Does this sound right? It's going to take a long time to install Crystal Reports on each workstation, so before we do that I was curious if anyone else has experienced this issue and/or if it's common practice to install Crystal Reports on every workstation.

Even if they don't have the full version of CR installed they do have many of the CR VIEWER files on every workstation (happens automatically when you install RE).  It is ILLEGAL for you to install the full version of CR on every workstation unless you buy licenses for it (about $300 each).


CR XI is a 32-bit application that can have problems dealing with newer 64-bit printer drivers.  This gets addressed in the upgrade to 7.96 which uses a newer version of the CR viewer.  So your problems may go away when you finish the upgrade to 7.96 on everyone's workstation.


The issue is further complicated by issues like the one in the BB KB where multiple versions of a DLL file can wind up on a workstation in multiple places, so if you continue to have problems after upgrading to 7.96 you may need to uninstall any evidence of RE and CR on those workstations (which make require manually deleting some folders that get left behind by the Windows installer).


I seem to remember when having this issue that if the user does a preview of the report before printing that it can bypass the problem.

Rachel Bock

Thanks everyone for your responses! I shared them with my IT team and I think we'll try the upgrade to RE 7.96 and see if that solves our problem. If not, we'll try some of the other ideas.  We're glad to know that we don't need to (and shouldn't!) install the full version of CR on each workstation.

Melissa S Graves

Um - don't just jump from 7.93 to 7.93 without preparation. Lots changes and your phone numbers need to be set up properly before updating. I did months of prep before making that update last fall.

Rachel Bock

Melissa Graves:

Um - don't just jump from 7.93 to 7.93 without preparation. Lots changes and your phone numbers need to be set up properly before updating. I did months of prep before making that update last fall.

We are not just jumping to 7.96 without preparation. We have been planning the upgrade for many months.

Ray Bergman

Hey everyone, if I could just remind you to be respectful of others here and watch tone a little bit.  Not everyone has the same experience lever with RE, but they all do deserve the same respect level.  Thanks!


Ray Bergman

Blackbaud Community Management Team