No Go News
Within Office 2003, the ability to launch a newsreader is turned off by default. Why they changed this from previous versions, I?m not quite sure. All the same, I ran across a fairly ridiculous issue common to the 2003 package. To turn on this feature, you must go to the Tools menu, choose Customize and then select the News feature from the Go options. Cool, right? Initially, yes, but the News option will either disappear or instead of launching the newsreader, will open an Explorer window that shows several DLL files. If the menu option disappears, if you go back to Customize, it no longer shows up there either. Hmmmm?well after a bit of research and tooling around on my own PC (I wound up experiencing the same problems), I came up with a simple, if not odd solution.
According to the research I came across, this issue comes from setting Outlook Express as the default newsreader. OK then?yeah, that makes sense. *ahem* The solution is to go into your Internet Options in the Control Panel and set the default newsreader to Outlook Express on the Programs tab. You then launch Express and select No to the default newsreader question. Once you launch Outlook 2003 again, you will now have full newsreader functionality. If all else fails, create a shortcut that points to the following "C:\Program Files\Outlook Express\msimn.exe" /outnews
Common Language Barrier
Another interesting lil issue I ran across recently was a ?Common Language Runtime not loaded? error within Visual Studio .NET. This was accompanied by the issue of not being able to see the properties of a particular project. The properties were completely blank. VS .NET 2003 was also installed on the machine, but it appears not to have contributed to this problem and was functioning properly. Research online returned very few helpful results, so I was pretty much on my own on this one. I didn?t think a repair would fix the solution, so maybe it was a third party plug-in. I ran .NET using the /safemode switch to see if running the program without any plug-ins would resolve the error. No such luck. I had seen a few mentions of .NET Framework, but this PC already had 1.1 installed. I honestly didn?t have much faith in a repair or reinstall fixing things up due to what I had seen in my error research, but I thought I would give it a shot. When I launched the Add\Remove, the option to reinstall or repair was grayed out. Hmmmm?odd. I ran the setup and decided to try the components update and see if that was holding things up. It indeed, was. The component update was pretty standard; web extensions, setup runtime files and the .NET Framework. I knew there had been revisions to version 1.1 and that?s all it took. Once I ran the update and restarted, all was well. No more errors within .NET and the project properties were showing up perfectly. I have to say, luck was on my side with this one.
Comments
Congratulations! I just searched the Web for "Common Language Runtime not loaded" and guess what.....you're web page was the only result returned.
Just thought you might like to know.
Still no closer to fixng my problem but your little bit of info has at least given me a start on where to look.
Thanks and all the best to you - keep on blogging.
Ay-Jay Olly - AudioJockeez Studios.
Posted by: AyJayOlly | May 4, 2005 11:15 PM
Sorry it didn't work out for you AyJay, but if you find an alternate solution, let me know.
Good luck!
Posted by: Princess | May 5, 2005 12:09 AM
WARNING - Longer than necessary comment ahead!
Dear me, Microsoft stuff can be a pain in the butt sometimes.
Many moons ago when software development tools were going through a major face-lift, I installed the Visual Studio.NET 2002 Beta, just to see what the fuss was all about.
I used this for a while and one day I had the CLR error using this beta package. MS beta packages are time-bombed to become non-functioning by a certain date and any certificates associated with the VS.NET installation are timed-out or disabled. This includes access to CLR.
So, via add/remove programs, I uninstalled this package (which took well over an hour if memory serves me correct) and then installed the Visual C++ 6 package as this was all I really needed for my development needs. As it is not dependent on any Framework.NET installations it works with no problems and the CLR error doen't apply.
Recently. after visiting Windows Update, I was browsing MS site and noticed that the new .NET Express Betas were available. So I thought I might as well download the C++.Net one and give it a try. I have been thinking of upgrading my C++ for some time now anyway.
This is where the old Beta I originally installed comes back into play. Even though I had removed the program, the associated certificates were still timed-out or disabled.
My solution was first - to go into the Installer folder. Some .msi files of the old Beta components were STILL THERE! I had to manually remove these via right-clicking on the relevant .msi files and uninstalling them from there.
Then, I checked my registry via Norton Registry Cleaning tool and it found around 1100 invalid registry entries, most of which were VS.NET entries. I deleted them all.
I regularly clean my registry, scan for spyware and virii, defrag my hard-drives, etc. So why didn't all these invalid entries show up before? .... because the add/remove programs didn't really uninstall my VS.NET. It just removed it from view to stop it from being used.
Anyway, hey presto, I have got C++.Net working, it's a bit buggy but I think I will be purchasing it soon.
If anyone happens to read this comment, do yourself a favour and check the Installer folder in the Windows folder. You might be surprised at what is still lingering on your PC, even after a few years or so. The "Add/Remove Programs" doesn't seem to do what it says on the tin.
All the best to you.
Posted by: AyJayOlly | May 10, 2005 12:45 AM
Damn AyJay, it sure sounds like you went through plenty to get that working...glad to know you finally got it worked out :)
Posted by: Princess | May 13, 2005 10:06 PM