"This prevents Actinic Ecommerce working"

[jxm28788]

My system crashed last night, and now when i try to open actinic it says -

"Actinic Ecommerce failed to open the database DSN=ActinicCatalog6. This prevents Actinic Ecommerce working.
The error was:Data source name not found and no default driver specified"

pressing ok then leads to a message waffling on about this error usually being caused by the wrong version of MDAC, and to update MDAC and re-install actinic.

If this was a fresh install then fair enough, but this was working fine until the crash so I expect something somewhere is corrupted or needs to be reset - any ideas?

[Bruce]

Hi There,

There is a solution to a similar problem posted on the community. You can access it by clicking here (http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=4817)

If this does not solve the problem then post back up here and we will look into other aspects that could be causing the problem.

Cheers!!

[jxm28788]

Make a backup of your site1 folder. Rename ActinicCatalog.mdb to somthing else. Then rename either Backup.mdb or Previous.mdb (whichever has the most recent timestamp) to ActinicCatalog.mdb.

Tried both backup and previous, but I get the same error.

I installed 'IOMEGA Backup Pro' software last night. This also came up with an DB error today. I assumed both were screwed up by the system crash, but it's possible the other SW may have done something to actinic and the crash was a red herring. A reinstall of the backup software fixed that error.

I like the new look board btw, just dying for an opportunity to use this smiley - :eek:


:D

[Pneumatus]

In 'Data Sources (ODBC)' in 'Administrative Tools' on Windows XP or in the Control Pannel in other Windows versions, is there a data source listed for 'ActinicCatalog6'

If there isn't you need to re-create it - select the *.mdb driver, Call the DSN 'ActinicCatalog6' and press 'Select' under the 'Database' heading and locate your ActinicCatalog.mdb in your Site1 folder and select it.

[jxm28788]

there was one there called actinicoriginal6, but I renamed it to actiniccatalog6 and now it works.

soooo.... why did it change to original in the first place and why does it work now...?

[Pneumatus]

Both ActinicOriginal6 and ActinicCatalog6 should exist... for some reason the crash has deleted your ActinicCatalog6 DSN. I've had this happen in the past with previous versions of Actinic but not with 6 as far as I can remeber... Just a 'feature' of Windows I guess.

[jxm28788]

yes, my windows installation has a growing number of 'features' at the moment - I think it's time to format and reinstall...

Thanks for your help. Lucky this was just my dev box and not my live shop!

[Pneumatus]

I wish I had the luxury of a 'dev box' here ;)

[jxm28788]

My dev box is an ASUS terminator barebones system - you can get them from scan.co.uk for about £60 these days. just add cpu, ram & hard disk and a keb/mouse/monitor switch and your laughing... mine were < £200 each (yes I got two :D). For actinic and day to day stuff there's not that much performance difference between them and my expensive super ninja desktop PC...

[jxm28788]

WOW - Totally screwed! :eek:

Both of the entries have dispeared now. I have totally uninstalled, reinstalled MDAC from the CD, reinstalled actinic developer from scratch and I still get that error. both entries are missing from the odbc window.

What's more, when I go into the ODBC window the 'add' doesn't actually add anything (it didn't do that yesterday either, I just renamed one). So I tried renaming the 'microsoft access entry' to actinicoriginal6 and pointed it at the right DB, and now that entry has disappeared as well... what's that all about?

and how do I fix it? it *was* working on this pc before...

[Nadeem]

Hi John

Please could you explain the following:

What's more, when I go into the ODBC window the 'add' doesn't actually add anything (it didn't do that yesterday either, I just renamed one).

Do you mean, When you go into ODBC Data Source Administrator, and click on the "Add" button, you don't get a new box appear called "Create New Data Source"?

If this is the case, then you seem to have a windows issue. If you can't get the new box to appear and the ActinicCatalog entries to appear in the ODBC Data Source box, then Actinic will not function at all.

Your first step is to fix Windows first, then Actinic should function correctly.

Kind Regards

[jxm28788]

Your first step is to fix Windows first, then Actinic should function correctly.I'm way ahead of you, it was all getting too messy for my liking.

I'm 'fixing' windows in the only tried and tested way that works - destroy and reinstall from CD... :D