Microsoft APP-V

EzWz · Post by **EzWz** » Fri May 04, 2012 11:04 am

Hi, we use the pdf Xchange viewer and some other viewers together in one control. This control gives a preview of a document and since that document can be of several extensions we use several viewers (PDF Xchange for pdf, another for images, another for office documents etc).

Since there are several forms that we show the user, there can be any nr of instances of this "preview" control.
Now, since we added the pdf xchange viewer to this control one of our customers has a problem.
This customer uses microsoft App-V for application virtualisation. The first form that is shown to the user has 1 preview control (and therefor 1 pdf xchange viewer control).
This viewer loads and works correct.
When the user starts a 2nd form, another preview control is loaded and this one also uses a pdfxchange viewer. This pdfxchange viewer however will not load. It gives "catastrophic failure" while loading.
This behaviour is only occuring in this App-V bubble and not on a normal system.

I dont know if you have any experience with this application virtualisation and if you can give any info about how we could resolve this issue.
To be complete: the customer uses Microsoft App-V 4.6.1.20870 Sequencer, windows xp sp3 and PDF Xchange viewer in that installation is 2.5.198.0

Regards, Erwin

Fri May 04, 2012 12:45 pm

Hello Erwin,

Before we try to reproduce this at our end - could you (or the customer) update the Viewer to the current latest build (2.5.201) - so that we can rule out a bug that was only present in an older release?

Best,
Stefan

EzWz · Post by **EzWz** » Fri May 04, 2012 1:55 pm

We've managed to reproduce this kind of installation in-house now and we are now able to reproduce the error the way our customer has it.
We will now test this with the latest (201 build) of pdfXchange.
I asked if this can be de-bugged in an IDE but this seems to be extremely difficult if not impossible in a virtual application environment as i understand it from our system engineering department.
I will let you know their results as i get them.

Fri May 04, 2012 2:10 pm

Thanks for the update EzWz,

We are looking forward to your tests with build 201!

Best,
Stefan

EzWz · Post by **EzWz** » Tue May 08, 2012 8:31 am

We tried 201 which gave a little trouble, apparantly you now have separate binaries for 32 en 64 bits operating systems?

Anyways, the 201 also gives the catastrophic failure when loading the 2nd instance of the viewer in the app-v environment.

Regards, Erwin

Tue May 08, 2012 11:56 am

Hi Erwin,

And thanks for trying with build 201.
I'll now check this with my colleagues and we will post back as soon as we have any advise.

Best,
Stefan

Post by **John - Tracker Supp** » Fri May 11, 2012 3:47 pm

Is it possible for you to please supply a complete sample app for us to test here so we can reproduce and investigate our end - as you will appreciate you are using in a very specific set of circumstances very difficult to reproduce and test.

To do so - we would need a complete set of install files (of your sample app - everything) and any sample files required to quickly replicate and test - without these we are powerless to intervene and test - also please supply some simple/idiot proof instructions on use and replication.

If possible relevant source code - or at least snippets (pertinent to the issue with the use of our Viewer) are going to be helpful in answering more efficently ... Please do not include any license info !

You can email us direct at support@pdf-xchange.com and include a link please back to this post for reference purposes - for the application you may prefer to upload to FTP and if so - we can supply a link by email on request with credentials for this purpose.

Thanks

EzWz · Post by **EzWz** » Mon May 14, 2012 10:12 am

I will relay the request to the appropriate divisions here and see what we can come up with. I realise this is a more difficult issue, at least for testing it etc.
I will let you know as soon as i have what you need.

Regards, Erwin

Mon May 14, 2012 12:40 pm

Thanks Erwin,

Looking forward to your next post with the requested info.

Best,
Stefan

EzWz · Post by **EzWz** » Tue May 15, 2012 11:46 am

We can reproduce the error by installing microsoft App-V (you can download this at microsoft or we can give you a private ftp link with this download if you want).
The link on the MS website says "App-V 4.6 Service Pack 1 is available as part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack 2011 and via MSDN or TechNet".
Simply take a trial of this i think.

We then made a bubble with app-V.
Then we compiled your sample from the sdk that installs as: "C:\Program Files\Tracker Software\PDF-XChange Viewer SDK\Examples\VBExamples\View", so we have an executable from that.
We then run this executable in the bubble. This works. Then we run a 2nd instance of it. This gives the catastrophic failure.

I presume you can modify your own sample in such a way that you can log any required info.
If you'd rather have me do that, you can send me an altered executable (or source).
But i think it makes more sense if you can test this yourself perhaps.

As an alternative our system engineers division let me know that it is also possible for you to "call in" to our server and witness this behaviour live.
I told them i would let you know, but i still think it's easier if your developers can debug on their own environments.

If you have trouble with making the bubble in app-v and can't easily get this from the documentation or so, i can have our system engineers make some sort of installtion instruction maybe.
But it should be pretty straight forward, so please let me know if this is needed.

If i can help with anything else, let me know.
I will check this forum regularly, but you ofc also have my email adress.

Post by **John - Tracker Supp** » Thu May 17, 2012 8:09 pm

We are now investigating and hope to have some further info in the next day or so.

Thanks for your patience.

Nico - Tracker Supp · Post by **Nico - Tracker Supp** » Fri May 18, 2012 8:48 pm

Hello Erwin,

We would like to ask you some specific questions regarding your description of the issue, most of them related with the App-V environment which would help us to reproduce the defect you are experiencing. So far, we have Microsoft App-V 4.6.1 Service Pack 1 installed on Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3 but we need more details about how to reproduce the defect.

When you say: "We then made a bubble with app-V"
1. How do you create the bubble?
2. What application are you sequencing?

When you say: "Then we compiled your sample from the sdk that installs as: 'C:\Program Files\Tracker Software\PDF-XChange Viewer SDK\Examples\VBExamples\View', so we have an executable from that."
3. Do you compile the View SDK example outside the bubble?

When you say: "We then run this executable in the bubble. This works. Then we run a 2nd instance of it. This gives the catastrophic failure."
4. How do you run View.exe on the bubble?
5. Do you have Visual Studio 6.0, PDF XChange SDK installed outside of the bubble?

We also believe any step-by-step description about how to reproduce the defect would be highly beneficial.
Thanks for your patience.

EzWz · Post by **EzWz** » Mon May 21, 2012 2:10 pm

The first 2 questions i will put to the system engineers (I don't know how they do this, as developer im not normally handling those things).
I will let you know.

The answer to point 3: I compiled the sample app from sdk on my machine (windows 7 64 bits), so outside the bubble. I then send this view.exe to the system engineers, who put it into their app-v environment and they then executed that executable twice.

In the bubble we dont have the sdk installed but only the components that we would put in a client environment, meaning in this case the 32 bits versions of "PDFXCview.exe", "PDFXCviewAx.dll" and "resource.dat".

On question 4: i dont think there is any special way to run apps in the bubble, just simple run the executable like you would anywhere else.
I will put the question through to the system engineers however, in case i'm wrong.

The answer to point 5 therefor is also simply "no". We only have those 3 components i mentioned registered on that machine (in the bubble).

EzWz · Post by **EzWz** » Mon May 21, 2012 3:20 pm

I asked the system engineers to answer questions 1,2 and 4.
They gave me the following "steps" for you:

Steps to create a virtual windows xp environment.
1. Install the Microsoft virtualisation sequencer (the rest of the app-V server parts are not required to install to reproduce this problem).
2. Start the sequencer application and "Create new virtual application package".
3. Install any simple application that has a setup, choose as installation directory the standard Q-drive (this is the default filesystem for app-v). The app you install can be anything you can install, it doesnt matter, so pick something easy like ehm winzip or acrobat reader

or any little tool.
4. Follow the steps until the step "Create a basic package or customize further", pick customize!
5. During the sequence process you can add stuff for debugging purposes. Take the windows registry editor, command prompt (cmd.exe), the pdfXchange components and your own test applications including the "view.exe" that you already compiled somewhere (since you dont have a visual studio installed in the bubble). You could add visual studio as lik i you need it there too.
6. You then reach the step "prepare for streaming".
7. This is where you actually start the bubble (the "Virtual environment"). Then pick cmd.exe and start the "view.exe" sample twice (from the Q:\ location). The start of the 2nd instance will give you the catastrophic failure.

You can also add and remove stuff later to an already made bubble. So you could make alterations to the view.exe for extra logging or stuff like that and then replace it on the Q drive.

So this was the reply i got (except that i got in dutch, so i translated it for you).
I hope this answers all. If not, dont hesitate to post, I'll happily answer more questions if i can.

Post by **Paul - PDF-XChange** » Mon May 21, 2012 4:42 pm

HI EzWz,

Nico is not in the office today but will be tomorrow. I'll make sure he sees this when he arrives. It is a public holiday in BC where we are.

regards

Nico - Tracker Supp · Post by **Nico - Tracker Supp** » Tue May 22, 2012 6:41 pm

Hello Erwin,

Thank you for your reply, the steps described were very useful. I followed the steps with no issues but I couldn't reproduce the catastrophic failure.

I want to confirm with you that these steps are correct. I opened the command line from the sequencer and executed as many instances of View.exe as desired. Also, I copied cmd.exe and View.exe to the Q drive and executed View.exe from there through the command line and the behavior was the expected one, several instances,
no catastrophic failures.

Here are the details:

Step 3: On "Select Installer" sequencer option, I installed WinZip (winzip16-32.exe.) on the folder "Q:\VBUBBLE". After the installation WinZip executed and I opened and closed a .zip file. Then, the sequencer proceeded to "Installation: Complete the application installer(s) before continuing". Here you have the option to install other programs. I didn't install anything here, just clicked on "Next". Then the sequencer went through
"Installation" option and then to "Configure Software". Here I selected WinZip32.EXE and WZQKPICK32.EXE and clicked on "Run Selected" button. Both programs ran without any issues. Then, I clicked on "Next".

Step 4: On "Customize" sequencer option (this is step 4), I selected "Customize" and then clicked "Next".

Step 5: At "Edit Shortcuts" option, I clicked on "Add..." button and added the programs you suggested:
_ Command Line: "C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe"
_ RegEdit: "C:\WINDOWS\regedit.exe"
_ View.exe from a local copy at Desktop: "C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\View.exe"

Step 6 and 7 : At "Streaming" sequencer option, I selected cmd.exe and clicked on "Run Selected" button.
I looked for View.exe at the "Q:" drive but I didn't find it there, so I executed the one at the location I have just added at the Desktop ("C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\View.exe"). Then, I executed many instances of "View.exe" (4 or 5) and no issues were observed. No catastrophic failure observed, I could use all features of the demo without any issues.

After I selected all the items at "Streaming" and clicked on "Run Selected" including View.exe, I clicked on "Next".
On "Target OS" sequencer option, I checked "Windows XP Professional 32-bit" and clicked on "Next".
Then at "Create Package" sequencer option, I chose the following location to save the package: "C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\VBUBBLE\VBUBBLE.sprj". Then I clicked on "Create" button and "Close" to finish the sequencer.

Then copied cmd.exe and View.exe to the Q drive and executed View.exe from there through the command line. The same results were observed, executed several instances of View.exe, no catastrophic failure, could select menu items from the Demo, and program works normally.

I look forward to your reply, please let me know if these steps are correct.
Thank you for your patience.

Nicolas.

Nico - Tracker Supp · Post by **Nico - Tracker Supp** » Tue May 22, 2012 7:08 pm

Hi Erwin,

We think it would be a good idea if you could show us how to reproduce the defect remotely, for example through TeamViewer.
If you agree, please feel free to give us some suitable times that work for you to carry out the demonstration.
Thanks.

EzWz · Post by **EzWz** » Thu May 24, 2012 8:40 am

Hello Nico, sorry for the late reply, i came down with the flu and was home for a few days.
I will relay the info and will see what the options are for remote viewing etc. I will get back to you soon.

EzWz · Post by **EzWz** » Thu May 24, 2012 10:02 am

Since you couldnt reproduce the error we tried to do exactly what you did (take winzip instead of our own suite and basicly follow the same steps).
We noticed a few things:
1. You dont mention installing the pdf-xchange components. Could you pls explain what and where/how you installed. Did you take the sdk installer for example or did you put the 3 redistributable components in the system32 and registered them or ...
2. If we don't install the 3 components during the installation, but simple "have them on the machine" before sequencing winzip, we get a catastrophic failure on the FIRST time we run view.exe. This might indicate it "can't find" the pdfviewer. We then installed them in the sequencer (after letting the winzip install run, we copied and registered the 3 redist components), so the sequencer then "finds" the new components in th windows\system32 folder and also the new entries in the registry. When we try the view.exe this time, the first run works fine and view.exe starts nicely. The 2nd instance however again fails with a catastrophic failure message.

So in conclusion we are guessing it has something to do with the way we installed the pdfxchange components.

We will ofc try the way you installed it if you answer us this, but it might be wise to also schedule an appointment for a remote session, so we dont drag this out by going to and forth.
We could make an appointment for either tuesday or wednesday afternoon (we are on gmt+1) (monday is a national holiday and this week is scheduled quite full). Perhaps we can exchange phone nr's in an email or so? We will then install teamview etc, so we can make that work.

Thanks for the good work so far!

EDIT: I think we are 9 hours apart, so it's not so easy to make an appointment perhaps. If you give me your preferred day, I will see if we can stay late that day (including the required people from system engineering).

Nico - Tracker Supp · Thu May 24, 2012 11:04 pm

Hi Erwin,

After reading your last post and reviewing the older ones, I strongly suggest that you use the following installer to install the PDF-XChange Viewer SDK on a client machine:
PDF-XChange Viewer ActiveX SDK, Dev Distribution Installer (32/64 bit) option. (link: https://www.pdf-xchange.com/product/downloads/sdk ).
We don't recommend manually copying the "PDFXCview.exe", "PDFXCviewAx.dll" and "resource.dat" files into the "C:\WINDOWS\system32" folder to install our product, use our installers instead. Communication between App-V and COM objects registered in the system outside the bubble (outside Q drive) should be transparent and managed between Windows and the App-V sequencer. If this approach does not work, we will research further but you should try this first. This is the proper way to install the PDF-XChange Viewer on a client machine.
Thanks Erwin, I look forward to your reply.

Nicolas.

EzWz · Post by **EzWz** » Fri May 25, 2012 8:49 am

Actually, when we started using the PDF Xchange viewer, I asked how i should be redistributing this to our customers (who dont develop, but just use our suite and our suite uses these viewer components). Tracker answered that i sould redist these 3 components into 1 folder on the client system and referred me to the sdk manual. If you now say this is not recommended, perhaps you need to make a redist setup for us, which we then run from our setup (cascade) or something.

Anyways, i will ask sytem engineering to try the sdk setup and see if the same problem still occurs.

EDIT: I looked it up in the manual and paragraf 1.1 states:

To redistribute your own application to your end users, the following components should be included in
your installation and you must also register the components as outlined below:
PDFXCview.exe
PDFXCviewAx.dll
Resource.dat

Note:
There are both 32 and 64 bit versions of the PDF-XChange Viewer control and you should
accommodate both in your distribution – please see the appropriate SDK installation folder to
locate the 32/64 bit versions provided. For details about this, see ActiveX Control Installation.
Important: The PDF-XChange Viewer SDK requires Windows 2000 or later!

Nico - Tracker Supp · Fri May 25, 2012 10:41 pm

Hi Erwin,

The quote from the manual is correct. There are three ways to register the PDF-XChange Viewer ActiveX SDK and all of them are
described in the manual:
1. Automatically, by using the .exe installer you can download from:
https://www.pdf-xchange.com/product ... ctivex-sdk
2. Manually, by following the steps from section 1.2 from the manual document (PDFV_AX.pdf), which involve using
the /RegServer switch for PDFXCview.exe and the regsvr32.exe binary.
3. Without system global registration by using manifest files, also described in section 1.2 from the same manual.
If you choose this method, examples are provided at:
C:\Program Files\Tracker Software\PDF-XChange Viewer SDK\Examples\Registration-Free COM

Any of these methods should work and they are independent from App-V.

In fact, I followed the method #2 and installed the ActiveX SDK library from outside and inside the App-V sequencer, then
copied the PDFXCview.exe to the bubble (Q drive) and executed as many instances as required.
Try the following:
1. Make a new folder and call it, for example: "RegisterKit"
2. Inside the folder, copy the following files:
cmd.exe
PDFXCview.exe
PDFXviewAx.dll
resource.dat
3. Make a batch file with the following commands and save it with the name "PDFXCviewInstall.bat" inside RegisterKit folder
PDFXCview.exe /RegServer
regsvr32.exe PDFXCviewAx.dll
4. Sequence WinZip. At "Installation" step of the sequencer, click on "Run..." button. Browse the RegisterKit folder and open
the PDFXCviewInstall.bat file. cmd.exe will execute the script and a message dialogue will inform PDFXviewAx.dll was registered
successfully. Continue with the sequencing process.
5. When sequencing is done, copy the PDFXCview.exe to the Q drive. Open the viewer, go to Edit/Preferences/General and
check "Allow Multiple instances". Click on "Apply" and "OK". Then try open several instances of the viewer.

I also ran the .bat file from the Desktop location and registered the components, then copied the PDFXCview.exe to the Q drive
and opened several instances from there.

Post by **John - Tracker Supp** » Sat May 26, 2012 6:26 pm

If I may interject and stress here - YOU should always use the packaged installer we provide for developer distribution unless you have specific technial or other reasons which preclude you from so doing - and yes we do provide other methods for your use and convenkience - but if the packaged installer works - which I suspect it will - we will not spend valuable support and development time investigating issues you may have with the manual methods without Very very good reasons for doing so - especailly in enviroments where we have little or no experience and therefore cannot invest productively in the process.

In any investigation we are asked to participate in our first course of action if using Team Viewer or similar will be to test the installer we provide - if this works - then we will need to be seriously persauded by you to investigate further and invest valuable resources.

EzWz · Post by **EzWz** » Tue May 29, 2012 7:27 am

John - Tracker Supp wrote:If I may interject and stress here - YOU should always use the packaged installer we provide for developer distribution unless you have specific technial or other reasons which preclude you from so doing - and yes we do provide other methods for your use and convenkience - but if the packaged installer works - which I suspect it will - we will not spend valuable support and development time investigating issues you may have with the manual methods without Very very good reasons for doing so - especailly in enviroments where we have little or no experience and therefore cannot invest productively in the process.

In any investigation we are asked to participate in our first course of action if using Team Viewer or similar will be to test the installer we provide - if this works - then we will need to be seriously persauded by you to investigate further and invest valuable resources.

I would not have expected anything less.
Also: we are NOT talking about the SDK, we are talking about the redistributables. And there is NO executable version of that as far as i know. That is why the manual says we need to include those 3 components into our own setup. And that still has to work!

Post by **John - Tracker Supp** » Tue May 29, 2012 3:45 pm

Hi,

The redistributables for the SDK are packaged in an exe for you to use and call (silently if required) for both ease of use and ensurance of a correct installation - the file is listed here ;

https://www.pdf-xchange.com/product/downloads/sdk (Dev Distribution installer is the link name) and also can be directly downloaded here;

https://www.pdf-xchange.com/PDFXV_dev.zip

and unless you ahve some specific reason or compliance issue peculiar to your own needs - we would always reccomened using this - rather than manually installing and registering ...

There is even a link directly to this file at the bottom of page 14 of the Viewer ActiveX manual

EzWz · Post by **EzWz** » Thu May 31, 2012 9:55 am

We just tested with the dev-installer from your link.

We took the clean environment and added a bubble with the dev-installer as "program to install" (where you used winzip in the earlier test).
We also copied the "view.exe" for that version of the sdk onto the "Q-drive" and continued the sequencer.
Then in the "customize" step we installed "cmd.exe" and "regedit.exe" and again the "View.exe"
Then we executed cmd and from the prompt executed 2 instances of "view.exe".
The 2nd instance still gives "catastrophic failure". So the behaviour is identical to the behaviour we had when we installed the components manually. Point of interest here is that we CAN run as many PDFXCview.exe's instances as we want, this works ok. I dont think we've tried that before, so can't say if we had the same behaviour there earlier.

On a sidenote of that: the dev-installer you link in your post is still the complete sdk!
In our opinion that means this installer is suitable for a developer machine. For our customers however, we don't want to install the complete sdk with all documentation, samples etc etc.
We just want the files that are needed for our suite to run properly.
So i'm looking for the recommended way to install just those required files! But as said, this is a sidenote of the real issue.

Since the issue is still unresolved and this is really taking a lot of time on both sides i recommend we do this with a teamviewer session.
This ensure's we're on the same page. Since we are 9 hours apart (between vancouver and us) we'd need to do that in the late afternoon/early evening for us and early mornings for you OR you let some1 from your london office do this if possible?
Mail us for details perhaps?

Post by **John - Tracker Supp** » Thu May 31, 2012 2:33 pm

Thanks for the information - and we will discuss here and come back - however ;

On a sidenote of that: the dev-installer you link in your post is still the complete sdk!

RE: https://www.pdf-xchange.com/PDFXV_dev.zip

The dev installer link provided is NOT the full SDK !!!!

The full SDK for developer use includes examples and doc's etc for developer use - the link provided includes only the required files needed for a complete end user installation for a developers clients!!!

I just installed and checked this for myself and this is correct. I am concerned that if you do not fully understand the difference between the Developers full install and this limited end user full install provided via the link - then your other information may be equally incorrect ....

Post by **John - Tracker Supp** » Thu May 31, 2012 4:11 pm

Having discussed this further here - we have some difficulty in understanding why you are installing the Viewer distributables into the 'Bubble' when in our tests - by instaling onto the host system (e.g. on the C: drive) just once - generates a useable install for the bubble to utilise when invoked - without any reliability issues.

At least this is true in all our tests here - can you please confirm that you have tried and tested this method - and what the results were.

Thank you.

EzWz · Post by **EzWz** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 7:50 am

Yes, we tried this last thursday.
This is where we where not "on the same page with you".
We could not figure out why everything worked on your end and we consistently had the errors.

We finally figured out that you installed the sdk OUTSIDE the bubble. We tested that and this works in the sense that the view.exe application then works inside the bubble.
This however defeats the point of application virtualisation. The reason customers do this is that they have a "clean" installation on their workstations. One of these workstations then uses one or more bubbles streamed from a server with just those applications they require. So one bubble could be office applications, another could be an accounting programs etc etc.
Each bubble has the complete set of all that is needed for that application. When running such an app, the content of the bubble is "grafted" onto the local system. So the folders with content, registry keys etc etc, all is "merged" into the local system (seen from the bubble). When you quit the app, the bubble and all that was in it, is also gone. This enables customers to use several different versions of the same software simultaniously and it ensures no application can "touch" other applications in another bubble, giving a nr of security features. EDIT: It also ensures system engineers only need to install software once, and not once per workstation.

So the customer would like our application in one bubble, including all required 3rd party components and one of them is the pdf xchange viewer. We are proposing the installation outside the bubble as workaround but we dont think the customer will go for this, since that moots the whole point of the virtualisation.

In short: we are trying to see what we can do with this info on our end.
On your end, the only thing left for you to try would be to install the sdk or redist components inside the bubble and see if this gives you any clues as to why the catastrophic failure occurs. If that could be easily solved it would make the best option. If not, then we are propably going to have to tell the customer we can no longer support virtualisation. This could become an issue, since more and more customers are taking this route (by my knowledge there are now like 6 or 7 bigger players in this field).
I heard one customer tried putting the pdf xchange viewer in another platform for virtualisation and that gave the same error, so it might still be something you'd like to look at perhaps.

Regards, Erwin

EzWz · Post by **EzWz** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 7:55 am

John - Tracker Supp wrote:Thanks for the information - and we will discuss here and come back - however ;

On a sidenote of that: the dev-installer you link in your post is still the complete sdk!
RE: https://www.pdf-xchange.com/PDFXV_dev.zip

The dev installer link provided is NOT the full SDK !!!!

The full SDK for developer use includes examples and doc's etc for developer use - the link provided includes only the required files needed for a complete end user installation for a developers clients!!!

I just installed and checked this for myself and this is correct. I am concerned that if you do not fully understand the difference between the Developers full install and this limited end user full install provided via the link - then your other information may be equally incorrect ....

I'm sorry, this was my mistake. We had a PDFXV_Dev zip overwritten with the sdk, so i thought they installed the same things.
I understand you DO have a redist installation now and i will propose this is integrated into our setup instead of the "loose" components.

EDIT: i am trying to include this redist installer into our setup. I took the 201 redist installer for that. For this reason i was trying to find the releasenotes to see what happened since 2.5.198.
But in the download section i can find a link to "history and releasenotes" but there are no notes in that site, only the download links. Am i missing something??

EzWz · Post by **EzWz** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 8:04 am

One more thing our system engineers asked me to report is that when they install the sdk inside the bubble, the behaviour is that the 2nd instance of "view.exe" fails with the catastrophic failure.
But the thing they found remarkable was that they can run as many instances of the pdfxcview.exe as they want without any errors. Meaning there is a difference in the way you call your own library from the pdfviewer executable than from the samples. I don't know if this gives you any clues as to why one works where the other fails.

Erwin

Post by **John - Tracker Supp** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 5:15 pm

Hi Erwin,

Can you please ensure that you do not 'Install' within the bubble specifically - but on the host machine in the C: drive once (only) and use our prescribed installer only - the bubble should then create its own instance automatically from the host machine without intervention on your part - please also use our distribution installer and do not register manually - then please provide the results of this exercise.

In our tests here - this works perfectly.

I do not think at this point the multiple instances are relevant - at least not to our fundamental tests - if necessary we can investigate this later.

Will await your results.

Thanks.

Nico - Tracker Supp · Post by **Nico - Tracker Supp** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 6:09 pm

UPDATE: We have installed the PDF-XChange Viewer SDK from inside the bubble and successfully ran the View.exe C++ example from the bubble installation (Sequencer program). Now we are working on running the same example from the bubble, not by using the Sequencer but the bubble client. We'll get back to you soon.

Thanks,
Nicolas.

Tue Jun 05, 2012 12:51 am

Hi,

after a further day on this our results seem to suggest that whilst the viewer is being installed within the bubble - the actually application instance is running on the 'Host' machine - as after opening the Viewer and a document - and then closing - all the file viewing history etc that we store in the registry is not on the 'Bubble' machine and its registry - but located on the host machine - suggesting strongly to us that it is not actually running within the bubble at all !

As previously explained we have zero previous experience of working with MS APP-V and regrettably whilst it would I am sure it would be interesting and possibly beneficial to us and our clients to investigate this technology further in the long run - this is not an opportune moment to be doing so and we have other priorities and commitments - so far we have invested 3 days or more of an engineers time ...

So if we are to invest any further time in attempting to assist we are going to need your engineers to explain to us how we can identify where the application is running with certainty and how we acquire detail on the application when running and the environment info etc - we can see no info in the bubbles registry whatsoever in this regard ?

EzWz · Post by **EzWz** » Tue Jun 05, 2012 8:25 am

John - Tracker Supp wrote:Hi Erwin,

Can you please ensure that you do not 'Install' within the bubble specifically - but on the host machine in the C: drive once (only) and use our prescribed installer only - the bubble should then create its own instance automatically from the host machine without intervention on your part - please also use our distribution installer and do not register manually - then please provide the results of this exercise.

In our tests here - this works perfectly.

I do not think at this point the multiple instances are relevant - at least not to our fundamental tests - if necessary we can investigate this later.

Will await your results.

Thanks.

Yes this works as i mentioned earlier (my first post yesterday). When we install with the redistributable installer on the host system (so we install normally on c:) and the later run a bubble on that system with "view.exe" in the bubble we can run multiple instances of "view.exe" without problems. This however defeats the purpose of the bubble (i.e. the customer wants the pdf viewer installation inside the bubble, so he won't need to install it on every client system (which for ministry's etc are a lot of machine's)).

Nico - Tracker Supp wrote:UPDATE: We have installed the PDF-XChange Viewer SDK from inside the bubble and successfully ran the View.exe C++ example from the bubble installation (Sequencer program). Now we are working on running the same example from the bubble, not by using the Sequencer but the bubble client. We'll get back to you soon.

Thanks,
Nicolas.

Did you try this twice?? Since in our tests the first instance of view.exe works perfectly, only the 2nd one will get the catastrophic failure. Also, we tested using the vb6 example of view.exe (from the bin\vbExamples folder), since we use vb6 in our suite.
Looking forward to any results in that area!

John - Tracker Supp wrote:Hi,

after a further day on this our results seem to suggest that whilst the viewer is being installed within the bubble - the actually application instance is running on the 'Host' machine - as after opening the Viewer and a document - and then closing - all the file viewing history etc that we store in the registry is not on the 'Bubble' machine and its registry - but located on the host machine - suggesting strongly to us that it is not actually running within the bubble at all !

I'm no expert on this and i will verify this with the system engineers, but perhaps this makes sense in the way that a user would like his "preferences" remembered and he can't really save them inside the bubble, since that bubble will be used by multiple people? Also the bubble will be streamed from a server (i.e. read but not written back). You need to view this as if 500 people simultaniously make a "copy" of that bubble from the server onto their client and then run it. Any settings they save inside the bubble are gone when the bubble is destroyed (when the app is terminated). When they run the app again, a new copy of the bubble is made from the server, so any settings would have to be saved locally in a local registry in this case. But i'm just guessing here.... I will ask a system engineer to check this for you.

John - Tracker Supp wrote: As previously explained we have zero previous experience of working with MS APP-V and regrettably whilst it would I am sure it would be interesting and possibly beneficial to us and our clients to investigate this technology further in the long run - this is not an opportune moment to be doing so and we have other priorities and commitments - so far we have invested 3 days or more of an engineers time ...

So if we are to invest any further time in attempting to assist we are going to need your engineers to explain to us how we can identify where the application is running with certainty and how we acquire detail on the application when running and the environment info etc - we can see no info in the bubbles registry whatsoever in this regard ?

I understand and value the efford you put into this. I will ask a system engineer to join this forum. This would ensure you got the info first hand, you can then better asces what additional effords you can make.

Post by **John - Tracker Supp** » Tue Jun 05, 2012 6:27 pm

It would appear we can get 2 instances running - but then they do not both appear to behave as we would expect ...

However - I think its best we suspend this and pick up again once there are 2 engineers discussing this - and then all the ionfo both ways is first hand and more likely to lead to resolution - or at least an understanding of what is happening.

Will wait to hear from you as to when this is possible.

thanks

EzWz · Post by **EzWz** » Wed Jun 06, 2012 7:27 am

I agree. I asked system engineering to join this thread, but they where rather busy. They told me it could be as late as early next week before they get the time for this.

Wed Jun 06, 2012 8:57 am

Thanks for the update EzWz,

So we shall continue this investigation when your engineers are ready!
Do post here in this topic when they can assist - though 24 hours notice would be appreciated - so that a new Team Viewer session can be arranged.

Best,
Stefan

EzWz · Post by **EzWz** » Thu Jun 07, 2012 1:50 pm

We had an evaluation of this issue with one of our CEO's and system engineering present because several customers now found this issue and are escalating this.
Therefor we ask that we show you the issue in teamviewer and answer all relevant questions in that session.
The best time for us would be next wednesday (13-6-2012) at 1700 or 1800 gmt+1.
We hope you can agree to this appointment. If so, pls email us some information for this pls and if it doesn't fir in your schedule please let us know some times that are convenient for you.

Regards, Erwin

Sun Jun 10, 2012 10:01 pm

Good for us Erwin - will make sure we are available - but please email support@....

the day before to confirm and remind us ...

thanks

EzWz · Post by **EzWz** » Mon Jun 11, 2012 7:28 am

Sure, I can do that. Will you email me a phone nr so we can easily setup the teamviewer session wednesday?

Mon Jun 11, 2012 12:31 pm

All we will need is the TeamViewer session ID and password for the machine in question.

When you are ready on Wednesday - perhaps 15 mins or so before - please simply email this to support@...

and advise you are ready and we will respond ASAP

thanks

EzWz · Post by **EzWz** » Wed Nov 13, 2013 3:24 pm

Hi Stefan and John!
If you might recall this issue was ended with the news from your developers that App-V fails to redirect a certain API call that is used by the PDF viewer, which was not posted here, but was done by email.
The issue should be solved when we would use the pdf xchange viewer in-process which would be possible with V3 of the SDK (because then that API is not used any more). Either that or a bugfix in the microsoft components for App-V. Since then we have been regularly checking the newer versions of both.

Is there any news about a V3 release yet? I have checked the website and the blog posts, but can't seem to find any recent info. The developer SDK version now lists 2.5.213.

Best regards, Erwin

Post by **Vasyl - PDF-XChange** » Wed Nov 13, 2013 8:05 pm

Hi, Erwin.

The issue should be solved when we would use the pdf xchange viewer in-process which would be possible with V3 of the SDK (because then that API is not used any more).

If you talking about new Editor SDK (V3) - yes, I believe that problem will gone because the new SDK is in-process ActiveX fully.

Is there any news about a V3 release yet? I have checked the website and the blog posts, but can't seem to find any recent info. The developer SDK version now lists 2.5.213.

Regarding Version 3 which is now named the 'PDF-XChange Editor' the new features and functions in this are currently being released and fine tuned to End Users and we expect this process to be complete in the first quarter of 2014 and all functionality to have reached a mature and stable state - once this is achieved we will then begin work on the developer SDK examples and documenatation - so it will be late Q1/Q2 2014 before the SDK is anticipated for release to developers - at this time I cannot offer a firm date as you will appreciate this is not possible until the End User release is satisfactorily concluded.

Best
Regards

EzWz · Post by **EzWz** » Thu Nov 14, 2013 8:23 am

Thank you. A "guestimate" is quite enough for me at the moment.

Thu Nov 14, 2013 11:20 am

Hello EzWz,

so it will be late Q1/Q2 2014 before the SDK is anticipated for release to developers

is the best one we can give at the moment.

Regards,
Stefan