New Palm setup on fresh XP - LB conduit not working with encoding?
This is mostly copied and pasted from emails to support, they've not yet responded but I got it (mostly) working, so posting here for others' reference. (LB Support - as stated in my email, I do still have the one issue mentioned at the end, please do respond when you get a chance, thanks!)
Encoding was one issue:
> OpenConduit
> ErrorCodeException, TextEncoding.cpp line 493, type unknown, error 13: thrown from
> TextEncoding.cpp, line 493. Error code 13.
Not sure if it this ended up being critical, currently got it working with "Windows Western European".
Once I got past the encoding problem, I started getting:
Unhandled exception: bad allocation.
I had a look at my Registry, and saw that LB's conduit install routine wrote the conduit information to "Application0" or "Application1" under:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PalmSource\Desktop
while my Palm Desktop's conduit information (Application0-13) was stored under:
HKEY_USERS...U.S. Robotics\Pilot Desktop
I managed to fix it by exporting the reg data from the former key, renaming it in the .REG file to Application14 under the latter key and then importing that into my registry. Here's the contents of that file (obviously you'd need to replace "[big number here]" with the appropriate big number from your registry:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
; Comparing: 9/15/2009 10:22:20 - 9/15/2009 10:23:44
; ADD section
[HKEY_USERS\[big number here]\Software\U.S. Robotics\Pilot Desktop\Application14]
"Conduit"="C:\\Program Files\\Llamagraphics\\Life Balance\\Life Balance conduit.dll"
"Creator"=dword:43616C6D
"Directory"="Life Balance"
"File0"="Life Balance data.lbd"
"Priority"=dword:00000001
Note that this didn't work the first time round, and that both LB 5.05 and 5.12 do the same thing.
I also started working with a file containing the default "virgin" data set rather than my production file, and tried deleting everything LB-related from my Palm and doing an "overwrite from desktop" sync.
I had to go back to my pre-Palm ghost image and redo everything a few times. Here's the installation order that finally worked for me:
1 Palm Desktop 4.1 (on device CD)
2 Upgrade that to 4.14 (from Palm's support website)
3 Install LB 5.12
4 Fix registry
I still have a remain issue in that the sync stopped working when I switched over to my working data file, telling me:
Your thirty day trial of the Desktop Edition of Life Balance is over.
You can no longer HotSync your data to this platform. To continue
using Life Balance on this platform, please purchase a license from
www.llamagraphics.com.
However, I've entered in/confirmed my license key on both Windows and the Palm.
Waiting for an answer from support on that last issue.
I realize that I didn't follow a rigorous enough troubleshooting process to really isolate the cause of the problem, but I hope this post helps someone having similar issues in the future.
So sorry... trying to get Stuart to look at this with me...
Good morning Hans,
I am very sorry about the delay on your ticket. Your question was complicated, and is not something that I've seen before.
I wanted to get Stuart to look at it with me, because I just didn't know where to begin.
More soon,
--Catherine--*
Okay... Stuart and I have had a chance to discuss this...
Okay... Stuart and I have had a chance to discuss this... and there are lots of possibilities.
We really do appreciate the clarity of the email you sent. It is very good and helpful in figuring out what is going on.
We usually test with the latest Palm Desktop, which for Windows XP is version 6.2.
As far as the registry edit is concerned, that might involve the distinction between installing the conduit for "current user" or for "all users." You didn't mention which option you chose. Choosing the other option might make the registry edit unnecessary.
The older version of Palm desktop may only support one of the two choices.
We attempt to use the installed conduit manager on the desktop, however if our installer can't find the version that is there, it will use the more recent version that we ship with Life Balance. That could cause unwanted consequences to have the conduit installed in the wrong part of the registry. It should only happen if the registration for Palm desktop is either missing or messed up. Depending on how you transferred Palm Desktop to the new machine, that could easily have happened.
Older versions of Palm Desktop, like Palm Desktop 4 did not follow Microsoft's rules about "all user" vs. "current user" installs, so this may be contributing to the overall picture. If you were using the latest Palm Desktop software, you might not encounter this issue at all.
All of that is probably behind the state of where you are now. If the problem is now with the licenses, first let's make sure that you have the correct info for the licenses, and that there are no typos. Always useful to check the easy thing first! :-)
If you've checked that, first thing to check is that when you enter the license code that it stays there after you quit out of Life Balance and restart it. If it doesn't "stick" then the problem is that Life Balance is having trouble saving its preferences.
That could be a permissions problem or a missing directory.
Life Balance will try to save its preferences in two different places.
The first place it tries to save the license code is:
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Llamagraphics\Life Balance preferences.dat
That folder is supposed to be world writable so that we can save the prefs there. We have seen situations where the IT department will have locked down a machine so aggressively that we can't save our prefs, even though that is what that directory is for.
The second place we try is:
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Llamagraphics\Life Balance preferences.dat
One of these locations should be available to Life Balance.
Other things to check....
- We have had some users who upgraded, who even though the install succeeds, there have been some files left over from prior installs. This is an artifact of the old Installshield installer that we used that didn't uninstall properly. (This is why we no longer use it.) To see if this is the case, you can go to this directory:
C:\Program Files\Llamagraphics\Life Balance\
And check that these two critical files are all from the same version 5.1.123.0.
LBEngine.dll
Life Balance conduit.dll
If they don't let us know and we can tell you how to work around the old uninstall issue.
Another thing to check is that they conduit directory that you have entered in the registry, and the shortcut that you are using to launch Life Balance match. The new Life Balance installer offers the choice of an "All User" and "Single user" install. These go to different directories. It is possible that you are running Life Balance from one directory, and the conduit from the other. This would confuse things.
Again, if that is the situation, let us know, and we can help you sort that out.
That's a pretty good set of things to check for starters.
Best wishes,
--Catherine--*
Closing the thread
Sorry I didn't come back sooner, but all's well now.
The licensing warning went away without me explicitly changing anything.
The conduit issue was resolved by my moving the Registry entries over to where the rest of them were (see above).
Unfortunately I'm using an old app with its own conduit that doesn't seem to like the v6+ Desktop, so I'm stuck at 4.14 for now. But bottom line is all's working fine now.
As a final suggestion, I'd make the installation dialogue about "all users vs just you" more clear as to whether it's referring to all the PALM users, or all the WINDOWS users, I had assumed the latter, and perhaps that was a factor I didn't isolate regarding the conduit registry problem.