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mike0999
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| Posted: July 23 2010 at 01:38 | IP Logged
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Hi,
I had been running powerhome as a service on 32 bit XP SP3 and recently changed my OS to Vista 64 bit.
I've got the powerhome software installed, I copied over my database and pwrhome.ini file, and powerhome seems to start up fine when I start the application.
When I install the service, however, the service appears to start, but the powerhome icon fails to show up in the notification area of my taskbar. Also, if I try to start the powerhome application so that I can see the powerhome GUI, the ODBC configuration screen pops up when the app is starting. It is forcing me to enter a data source name. When I do that and hit enter, it tells me the database is invalid. If I stop the service, and then try to start the application, the app once again starts up fine with no problems.
Any suggestions? I don't think I ever saw that behavior when I was running XP.
I suppose I could just configure the powerhome app to start when I boot. But, I had used phservice on xp because it seemed a lot more stable for me at least. Maybe I won't have the stability issues in Vista, but still wondering if anyone has run across this issue and/or if anyone has suggestions on what I might try to avoid this.
The phservice actually may be operating properly even though I don't see the powerhome icon in the notification area of my task bar. (E.g. I've tested at least one macro, and it seems to be responding). So, I suppose I could just ignore the issue. But seems I'd have to stop the service whenever I wanted to modify my settings so that I could start the app to get to the gui. Not ideal obviously.
Thanks in advance for any help!
Regards,
Mike
Edited by mike0999 - July 23 2010 at 01:41
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dhoward
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| Posted: July 23 2010 at 12:59 | IP Logged
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Mike,
I don't have 64 bit Vista up and running but I do have a 32 bit Vista instance that I can test this on tonight. I'll let you know my results when I get a chance.
Dave.
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MrGibbage
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| Posted: July 23 2010 at 15:16 | IP Logged
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Is this that deal where you have to go into the .ini file and change the folder name for the database from
c:\program\files\powerhome
to
c:\Program File(x86)\powerhome?
I don't remember the specifics, but I had to change some lines in my ini file. And I also had to change the defaults
on the PH web server file locations.
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dhoward
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| Posted: July 23 2010 at 21:36 | IP Logged
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Had a chance to reproduce the problem. Loaded PowerHome as a service on Vista 32 bit. Could not get the service to install until I right-clicked the phservice.exe and set it to "Run as Administrator" under the compatibility tab. Once I did that, service installed and was able to launch PowerHome as a service.
Verified that phservice.exe, pwrhome.exe, and rteng7.exe were all running in the task manager. While PH was running as a service, no icon appeared in the tray. Manually launched PH via the desktop icon and was able to reproduce your problem exactly with the ODBC dialog coming up.
Spent a bit of time playing with this and trying to understand what was going on and it appears that Vista (and most likely Windows 7) loads services differently in their own virtual desktop (I havent yet had a chance to determine what is going on from a technical standpoint and these comments are based upon observation). As such, the routine in PowerHome that checks to see if a version of PowerHome is already running fails so PowerHome attempts to open a database connection. You can only have one instance of the ASA anywhere database running so trying to launch the second instance of course fails and you get the ODBC dialog.
Even though there is no icon in the tray, I could confirm that PowerHome was running without any issues as a service. Timed events executed normally and I could access and control PowerHome via the webserver. The biggest problem I see with PH as a service on Vista is if you use PH to interact with other programs that are normally running on the desktop. Just as these desktop programs were not able to see PowerHome, PH is also not able to see them (bringing up the Windows spy window from within the PH service showed PowerHome pretty much running all by itself).
Which brings us to the main issue...how to make the service version of PowerHome popup its main windows so you can interact/edit data? I tried several different ways to write an external program to recognize the PowerHome instance and send messages to it. These all pretty much failed. I was able to create a timed event in PH when I launched it as a desktop app and had this timed event execute a formula of "ph_show()". I then closed the desktop and launched PowerHome as a service. A few minutes in the future when the timed event fired, I was presented with a window (from windows) saying that a program was trying to display a window on the desktop but was unable to do so. I had an option to go ahead and display the window or "Remind me later". I chose the display the window and the other "virtual" desktop showed up with the main PH window in all its glory. This "virtual" desktop had no taskbar or any other visible programs and was basically empty except for the PH window. However, I was able to interact with PowerHome and do everything I would normally do. There was also a little popup window (from windows) with the option to return to the main window. This didnt seem so bad as long as I could consistently launch PH this way. This is where I encountered problems. Once I clicked the return to main window, I was transported back to my normal desktop but still had the "a program is trying to open a window" message allowing me to jump back to PH at any time. The problem occurred once I closed this window...it was tricky getting it to reappear again.
As far as getting the window to appear at all (other than a timed event), I thought of several possibilities and using the PowerHome webserver to trigger this window seemed the least painful. Initially, I just went to the "Formulas" link at the main webpage and typed "ph_show()" but utimately created a Control Center button that triggers this formula instead.
Still playing around with this and need to research this from a technical standpoint but wanted to give an update on what I had found so far.
Dave.
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mike0999
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| Posted: July 25 2010 at 04:55 | IP Logged
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Wow,
Thanks for the prompt and detailed reply guys. Dave, while you are playing around with this, I suppose I'll try just auto-starting the app to see how that works for me. But, I'll be interested if you figure anything out. No rush on this. I know you've got a pretty full plate.
Thanks again.
Regards,
Mike
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cmhardwick
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| Posted: January 25 2011 at 18:22 | IP Logged
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I've been way out of the loop for a while.
Just curious if there's been any progress on this, or testing with windows 7. I'm thinking of updating my system to windows 7. I don't currently run it as a service, but would like to if I upgrade.
Thanks as always!
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Cicero, Enjoying automation!
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PowerHome Messageboard : PowerHome General
Topic: phservice on Vista 64 bit
