PVB blues

After placing the four VB runtime files for CE 2.0 (from http://www.hpcfactor.com/developer/ ) in \Windows on my Mobilon (MIPS) and PA-2400U (SH3), I have been able to successfully run several .pvb apps. (There never were many written, and most were written by Vincent Collura, who later rewrote them - and wrote lots more - as .vb apps for Pocket PCs. I got most of them from CE software CDs; a few I found through archive.org.) With my 360LX, though, I'm having no success. Despite installing the runtime files on the 360LX as well, I still get the error message "There is no application associated with . . . ." Anyone have a clue why the different result? I checked the registry and found a key for .pvb in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, with the default string value "PVB.ProjectRun." I tried to look in the key "PVB.ProjectRun," but I got the spinning hourglass forever. Is there a file association utility for CE 2.0?

Ah, I've seen this on CE2 SH3 before, there seems to be a combination of events which can create a corrupted registry value (which breaks the key)
If PVB.ProjectRun is spinning the hour glass, try deleting it at the next level up and create it by hand / import it from the mobilon's registry.

I can't delete it at the next level up - that's HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT.

Just to be clear, I only have to single-tap to get the spinning hourglass, so I can't just highlight the key itself to delete it. Also, I'm using an older version of TRE that is compatible with CE 2.0.

Funny this hasn't happened on my PA-2400U, which I've had far longer and installed lots of programs onto.

Okay, problem solved. I used TotalCommander to view the registry keys, and found that there was no "Shell" key in PVB.ProjectRun (which would include the subkeys to point the system to pvb.exe to open the apps). Instead this key and its subkeys were under the ".pvb" key - but with no value entered under Shell/Icon/Command. So I entered the keys manually under PVB.ProjectRun, reading from my PA-2400U's registry, and deleted the subkeys from the ".pvb" key. Lo and behold, each of the .pvb apps then opened when tapped on. Another error in PVB.ProjectRun, though: for some reason "DefaultIcon" was a string value instead of a subkey, while it there was a DefaultIcon subkey under .pvb. So I created the DefaultIcon subkey manually under PVB.ProjectRun, and entered the value given in .pvb/DefaultIcon: a default string value of "\Windows\pvbrt.dll, 1." Then I deleted the DefaultIcon subkey from .pvb. At this point, however, the apps were still represented by the generic Windows icon. I checked my PA-2400U, which had this value as "\Windows\pvbrt.dll, -2." So I changed the value on the 360LX to that, and now the VB icons appear for these apps. (pant, pant)

Wonder why the registry entries were wrong, given that I hadn't installed any VB/PVB-based apps on the 360LX before or since copying the runtime files and .pvb files to the device.

Sorry I never saw your reply to this one. The next level up is HKCR, yes - thus killing it all (FROM the next, not KHCR itself ).

Like I said, this is something that crops up on CE2 from time to time. Different runtime installations and confusion between the VBS and PVB systems likely do not help

I can say it was a major learning experience for me about VB on CE devices.

You can kinda' see why there wern't that many takes for writing applications in it can't you