File is Empty - reports were just working

[Former Member]

I have several hundred simultaneous users running a system that uses Crystal reports. The system has been running for a number of months and we've recently been issuing a server reboot at 3AM because it appeared to correct some issues. This is a wintel VM environment. It's an ASP.NET application developed in Visual Studio 2010 and uses the Crystal 13 engine.

Last night the reports suddenly stopped working and instead were displaying the File is Empty message.

I'm at a loss as to where I should start looking to see if there's something that can be fixed. My management wants me to convert all the reports to the Microsoft Report Writer as they see that as a reduced risk.

[former_member183750 · Accepted solution]

Hi Chris

Info I see on the error:

1663340 - Error: The report file name was empty - using ReportDocument1.Load method

Parameters also appear to cause the issue. However since this used to work, check if there were any changes on the database side - client updated? DB tables modified? Etc. See if the report will run in the CR designer when connecting to the same db.

Knowing printer drivers have the potential to cause all kinds of issues - any change there?

- Ludek

Senior Support Engineer AGS Product Support, Global Support Center Canada

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[former_member11696 · Accepted solution]

And what patch level are you using?

Any windows OS patches installed recently? MS changes security rights often, every time someone reports any security bug they tighten up permissions on IIS.

I assume the reboot every night is due to MS's inability to defrag memory on the fly and MS actaully recommends rebooting IIS for this exact reason.

You'll find MS Report writer is very limited in comparison to CR Reports and I doubt it would fix this issue.

You should also setup a batch file to delete everything in the system \temp folders so it frees the space and removes any left over temp files not cleaned up by the OS.

Look in the IIS logs to see if it captured any specific error in specific components. System and App Event logs may show something also.

You may need to add hard drive space to the image too.

Then look in the Recent patches installed to see if MS changed security and permissions on you with one of their recent Kbase patches.

You'll have to dig into it more, not much to go on...

Don

[former_member11696]

Hi Chris,

I suggest you may want to get the Wintell peolpe involved, sounds like a Virtual network card issue, possibly disconnecting from the network.

Which just reminded me possibly somehow the power settings have changed and in idle mode it's turning off the network card, stranger things have happened.....

Don

[Former Member]

This particular behavior is most interesting because we'll get the error message for awhile and then it mysteriously goes away. The only thought I have at this point is that maybe there's not enough RAM available to properly serve the report, given the number of users. However this has not occurred during the day when the server is most heavily loaded with people. It only happens after hours when backups get run.

To be specific about the error. I can choose a particular report to produce which represents an investigation. One minute it won't run and then a half hour later the reports runs, with no changes made to anything.

[former_member183750]

Hi Chris

It may be interesting to see the behavior if the following options are enabled:

Verify on first refresh

Verify stored procedures on first refresh

Also, do ensure you have the latest update for your default printer driver (or what ever printer driver the report would be using).

- Ludek

[Former Member]

Please clarify "Verify on first refresh" . Is this a line of code? Is it a viewer option? Is it code that goes into the code behind where the viewer is called? I looked this up and found a picture of an options panel but there was no explanation of where to access the panel.

-Chris

[former_member183750]

You can do the verify in code, see the SAP Crystal Reports .NET SDK Developer Guide and the

SAP Crystal Reports .NET API Guide

You can also enable the options on the report it's self. In the designer go to the file menu and then report options.

- Ludek

[Former Member]

Ludek, I've downloaded that .chm before and I can't get it to function. That is, when I open it I have all the chapters and articles listed on the left but when I click on anything I get nothing in the right hand text panel. Any suggestions?

- Chris

[former_member11696]

See this Kbase article:

1271550  - CHM Error "This program cannot display the webpage" when trying to view Developer Documenation for XI 3.0 / 3.1

You have to search for the number.

Bottom line is MS changed security on chm files, kbase explains how to make them work again.

Don