Hi all,

I am new to this board but it looked pretty helpful. I recently installed Mappoint 2004 Euro edition on my laptop. Its specs are excellent so I know that is not an issue. It has a AMD 64 bit proc, 1GB RAM, 60GB HD 7200rpm, etc. etc.

I am running XP Pro with SP2. I recently installed SP2 and while I think that might be part of the issue, the OS will not let me uninstall it. It doesn't show up in the ADD/Remove part of the control panel. I also made sure the little check box to show updates is checked.

I have plenty of HD space on the laptop. What happens is when I click on icon, the Mappoint 2004 splash screens comes up. The first time it ask me if I wanted to register on line. I clicked yes and the program should have continued to load.

I tried clicking the icon again and same thing, splash screen but no program. I then tried to force the program to start in W2k compatibity mode and nothing still worked. I tried NT4 SP5 mode and nothing there as well. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling with no luck as well. I have admin rights to my PC of course so that isn't an issue.

I had this program installed sucessfully a few months ago and Mappoint 2004 worked fine then but I had to reinstall the OS a few weeks ago when my original HD died. At that point I was reinstalling all my apps again and did the SP2 update as my laptop is our "test platform" for our company. With SP2 I can't seem to Mappoint to work again and I can't uninstall SP2. Also it would screw up all my settings for Activesync if I have to do it again from scratch.

I also tried the US version of Mappoint with the same results. They aren't exactly the same program even though they luck similar. Any ideas on how to proceed? I contacted Microsoft but they want $245 to open up a case on it. I need to resolve this soon.

Almost forgot 1 thing. When I installed the US version it at least generated a Dr. Watson error and wanted to send the info to Microsoft. The Euro version doesn't even do that.

Any and all help or ideas are appreciated!

Thanks,
Tim

I hate to tell you the unless someone here comes up with something to try, reloading from scratch might be the quickest way to get over this?

This is the first I've herd SP2 stopped mappoiont. Its 6:30 am here and I'm not fully awake but I wonder if the XP Firewall is on and mappoint got hung doing the "register on line" it was trying to do as you stated?

Anyway, I recommend making an image of your laptop as soon as you get it the way you want it. You can get an Iomega USB2 external HD (80Gig model will work for around $109) bundled with Norton Ghost. The Norton Ghost CD will boot to DOS and has a DOS USB2 Driver for the HD so you can make an image. This will save you the next time.

John- I tried a fresh install of Mappoint 2004 on my laptop. No luck. I also had a software that would allow me to roll back changes on the HD but SP2 buggered those too. Now this is where the story gets really interesting.

After trying to uninstall and reinstall Mappoint 2004 Euro edition numerous times, it still didn't work. SP2 also mucked up my US version as well. I made sure the firewall was disabled. I had an older ghost image but a lot of changes had been made since then and the other rollback program worked well UNTIL SP2.

Anyway to make a long story much shorter, I wiped my HD and installed a FRESH build of SP2 directly from an XP Pro SP2 disc downloaded directly from MSFT. I loaded exactly one app Office Pro 2003 before I attempted a new Mappoint 2004 EU install. Guess what? Mappoint goes through its usual muck like its going to start and same exact issue.

So I thought just for grins I'd try a fresh install of Windows XP Pro SP2 and have Mappoint 2004 EU on my laptop. It still will not load even when it was the sole application installed on my laptop. Upon additional searching I have learned I am not the only person who has had this issue.

http://www.pcreview.co.uk/thread-7323-1.php

Clearly other people have as well. I would have thought that on a totally clean install of SP2 Mappoint had the best chance of working. So now I am going to download SP1a and give it a go.

I keep an ext USB 2.0 HD just for images of my laptop. I will have to find another program though to work with SP2. I had some issues with ghost and SP2.

Any other thoughts are appreciated.

Thanks,
Tim

Hey Tim,

By now I guess you have reloaded a fresh copy of XP (without SP2)? Thanks for the link, quite a long list!

I wonder if anyone else has installed SP2 with MapPoint?

John

John,

You are quite right, I have installed XP Pro again from scratch. I went about it also in a very methodical manner as well but it was very time consuming. I installed XP Pro then I installed Mappoint America and Euro versions.

I then checked to make sure they worked, rebooted the PC and checked again. I rebooted yet again as XP has a little quirk that sometimes changes don't take place until you have rebooted twice. This is very important to know. MSFT did this so that XP would boot more quickly than Windows 2000. It makes XP appear faster than 2000.

I then applied service pack 1a and then other security fixes and updates individually and checked compatibility with the Mappoints. I have then systematically installed the other software I need such as MS Office 2003, Visio Enterprise, MS Project etc and rebooted twice after each install so all .dlls are registered and working.

I have taken 3 images of the OS at various points to make sure I can easily recover to a previous working config. At this point I just need to load Adobe Photoshop CS and a few other programs and I'll be almost finished. So far everything is working smoothly and without issues.

I will keep everyone updated if I find a service pack or update that breaks everything. I have 5 that I haven't downloaded yet.

-Tim

OK- at long last found the culprit for my Mappoint issues. It appears for some odd reason there is a conflict with a printer. This is where it becomes really odd.

I have 2 printers installed on my network. An HP4000 and a Konica Minolta 2010F. I installed both printers just fine and no issues. The problem becomes evident if and only if I make the Konica my default printer.

I have never seen this issue ever in my life before. It kills both the US and Euro versions of Mappoint. I can have both printers and their drivers loaded but when I make the Konica my default printer, Mappoint will not load. It didn't affect only my PC and it also affected MS Streets and Trips as well!!!!

Anyone else ever seen anything like this?

-Tim

Yes, actually.. there have been several people who have found this before. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a Microsoft Knowledge base article on the topic.

I'm only finding a couple references on here, but I'm sure you turn up more with the right terms:
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%...ngs%29+printer

Eric

I have had the same issues. MapPoint used to work flawlessly, but recently it just stopped working and gave the the famous "Unable to Load" error whenever I tried to open it or use the OCX in VB. I found that if I logged onto my computer as a different user, it would work fine. It worked, but it was terribly inconvenient.
After noticing your post regarding the printer issue, I disabled my network printer and everything works fine. Wouldn't you think that MS could fix this issue in a downloadable update?

Thanks,

Dean