Crystal Reports Viewer - Physical Database Not Found

I was assigned to troubleshoot a problem with an old application that had been written in our shop using Visual Basic 6 and Crystal Reports 8.5. The application when installed on brand new machines would crap out with the following generic error message "Physical Database Not Found".

 

Well it turns out the problem has nothing to do with the database itself, but with the dependencies that Crystal Reports has on other dlls.

After a lot of muddling around here is how I got the issue to go away. You need to get your hands on the following dlls:

• CRAXDRT.dll
• craxdrt_res_en.dll
• p2smon.dll (the p2xxx.dlls are the Crystal Reports Physical Database DLL for xxx. p2smon are the physical database dlls for Active Data Reporting)
• crviewer.dll

And then do the following:

1. Copy craxdrt.dll and craxdrt_res_en.dll into the Windows\System32 folder
2. Register craxdrt.dll.
   - at the command prompt type regsvr32 craxdrt.dll
   - verify that you get a dialog that confirms that registration was successful
3. Drop p2smon.dll and crviewer.dll into the same folder as your application's executable.
4. Run your application and verify that Crystal Reports viewer shows up.

Other stuff:

The above instructions work with an application that was created using CR 8.5.

If the above instructions dont work then try dropping the following files into the application folder and see if the application begins to work: (These files might be needed by CR to correctly connect to the database. In my case, we were connecting using ADODb and it worked with p2smon. You might need one of the other p2 dlls - the physical database dlls)

p2solap.dll
p2soledb.dll
p2sodbc.dll

into System32 and registering them.

CRAXDDRT.DLL
CRDESIGNERCTRL.DLL

Other dependencies that might be needed are:
IMPLODE.DLL
CRPAIG80.DLL
SSCSDK80.DLL
PG32CONV.DLL
COMCAT.DLL
OLEPRO32.DLL
crxf_RTF.DLL
crxf_PDF.DLL
crtslv.dll
exportmodeller.dll
CRXLAT32.DLL

Unfortunately - you will typically need a Crystal Reports installer CD to get most of the files referenced above. If you dont, then look for them on a machine where the application works. It is a shame that SAP (they currently own Business Objects and Crystal Reports), dont provide a way to download these redistributables for their API.

BTW:

If you have dsr files in your VB6 project and you are unable to open them. And the dsr file when opened in NotePad has a reference to a COM object with GUID "BD4B4E61-F7B8-11D0-964D-00A0C9273C2A". And if the referenced object has an attached binary file with extension dsx. Then it most probably was created using Crystal Reports Designer. (To confirm, search for "Crystal Reports ActiveX Designer" in the DSX file).

You will need to install Crystal Reports to be able to view or edit these files. A word of advice: If you have Crystal Reports working on your machine, then export these files to .RPT, so that you can open them in a later version of Crystal Reports. These files are becoming less and less used and soon no one will even remember how they are edited or used.

More useless information - the CR designer needs the craxdui.dll. But in my experience just copying this dll and registering it - isnt enough. It obviously has some dependencies that I havent been able to figure out as yet.