Run-time error '438':

[William Martin]

I get this error with the note: 'Object doesn't support this property or method' when I try to import any plan that used to run before the crash. New Win 11 pc replacing a Win 10 pc with a crashed hard disk. Been struggling for months with other Win 11 issues with equipment drivers.

[William Martin]

I think I have found the issue. All of the setup information for ACP has been lost in the transfer from Win 10 to Win 11. Non of the standard scripts, Planner and Scheduler work, of course, without the setup info. Sigh.

[William Martin]

Well, that wasn't the problem. Planner has the filters greyed out in Preferences so I can't create a plan. The Maxim button to import the filters does nothing. I can find only one plan that Planner will import, my default flats files and it immediately launches Plan Checker which fails it because no times are included. Dragging plans to Checker launches something that immediately closes. This is a new Win 11 pc with latest versions of ACP and Scheduler. I have been fighting an ASA telescope driver which has finally been fixed.

Is this some sort of compatibility problem between Maxim 7 and/or Win 11?

[Bob Denny]

"Moving" software from one system to another is frought with traps and oopsies. My suggestion is to run (or re-run) the installers for ACP and Scheduler. Please don't uninstall/reinstall. Then on the old system, save ACP's profile and restore it onto the new system. This assumes you are running the same versions of ACP and Scheduler on the old and new systems. If not, upgrade the old system and only then save the profile (ACP menu, Save profile as..."). It will be a zip file you named in Documents\ACP Astronomy\Profiles. Put it onto the new system in that folder and restore.

[William Martin]

Hi Bob,

Right, this gets to the heart of all the problems. My old Win 10 pc had a fatal SS disk failure and was unrecoverable. The old profile was not recoverable from the backups but all the ACP Document files were. So, to date the new Win11 pc has all the equipment working again but I can't get ACP Planner to either read old (txt) plans or create new ones since I can't enter filters. New installation of everything but ACPPlanner-4.2a-Setup.msi doesn't want to play. On my identical Win 11 desktop it will not even install. I have an idea it's a Registry problem but not confident to change that.

[William Bristow]

Bill.

Have Maxim DL open, DL6 or DL7, both still work with planner, start ACP Planner and delete any plans currently showing in the Target list, open Tools > Preferences, make sure that in the box 'Imager Characteristics' you have the check box selected for 'Multiple filters' then click the 'Get From MaxIm' button to upload the filter names directly from MaxIm.

When the check box 'Multiple filters' is deselected in Pref's then you can't import from MaxIm, and you can't import old plans that have filters assigned (AFAIK).

Review your other Planner Pref's and click the 'OK' button to save and see if that fixes the problem.

Provided Planner now works as expected, and once you have the Pref's setup as required, be sure to use the 'File' > 'Save Observatory Profile' and export the current Planner profile to a removable drive for recovery after a system crash.

I can use Planner here with Windows 11 Pro 24H2 and MaxIm DL7, and despatch a plan to ACP, although it's not a tool I use much these days.

William.

[William Martin]

Hi William,

No joy I'm afraid. Same result even if I create a plan and save it then try to open it I the get 438 run time error. Loading Planner on a Win 10 machine and it all works.

I tried loading Planner on another of my Win 11 pcs and I got the attached screen shot.

[William Bristow]

Hi Bill

Ok, the runtime error '438' when importing a previous created plan I can also reproduce here on three different Windows 11 Pro systems of different builds and different hardware, so this error seems inherent to Windows 11 and I'm afraid I doubt there will be an answer for that as Planner Import references an old Windows library that I think is either missing or unsupported in Windows 11.

The latest error you posted when trying to install Planner I can't recreate here, maybe the installer file is corrupt or your copy has a double extension ending xx.msi.exe, also, Windows 11 gets touchy about running installers from the desktop.

Provided the installer ends with the .msi extension and is run from the downloads folder, or any other location except the desktop, then it should be permitted by Windows 11.
You could try holding down the shift key while simultaneously mouse-right-click on the installer and select the "Run as Administrator" option to see if that gets past the Windows Security pop-up ..but Shhhhh, don't tell Bob

Even if that installer works on your 'other' Windows 11 system you still won't be able to import old plans, only create new ones.

I'll have a fresh look later in the week and see if anything obvious stands out that is prompting the '438' error and maybe Bob will have got back to you before then with a solution.

William.

[William Martin]

Hi William

My pcs do not have a 'Run as Administrator' option with the shift-right click. They do have a 'Repair' option and I clicked this on my office pc and voila! Planner installed correctly. Trying the same thing on the telescope pc did not change the '438' error. Since they were identical when bought, I conclude this is a Microsoft eccentricity or some sort of voodoo.

I can ignore this for now but it would be nice to have a reason.

[William Bristow]

Hi Bill.

Sorry, I should have been clearer, I meant to imply -- hold the shift key + mouse-right-click on the Planner installer file (ACPPlanner-x.xx-Setup.msi) then 'Run as Administrator', not the desktop shortcut link to the already installed application, however you have resolved that now.

I spent most of yesterday recording and examining the function logs created when attempting to import a pre-existing plan into the Planner app using Procmon (Process Monitor) from Microsoft Sys Internals on Windows 11, where it crashes the app with the run-time error 438, and on Windows 10 where is doesn't.

Procmon records around a thousand lines of events attributed to Planner alone when attempting to open a pre-existing plan and although I can filter and see many recorded differences in the logs between importing a pre-existing plan into Planner running on Windows 11 and when it is running on Windows 10, I could not find any reference to which object or process is spawning the run-time error 438 and can take this no further myself.

Only Bob has the tools necessary to test the source code for the Planner application against the current Windows 11 24H2 platform and maybe identify which library is either missing or wrongly registered, there's only so much an end user can do with the compiled .exe or .msi files and I don't have the skills needed to dig deeper.

Bob has already stated he isn't releasing any further updates to ACP software in this final year of support so I guess that is the end of Planner as far as full functionality goes for Windows 11 systems, you can create and despatch plans to ACP on Win 11 but not import an existing plan.

If you stick to Windows 10 then you have the ability to import existing plans into Planner and edit and transmit them again to ACP.

I guess the only current workaround for Win 11 is just to open the pre-existing plan in Notepad, read the plain-text plan and then enter the plan contents manually for editing into the Planner U.I. and despatch to ACP.

Unless Bob is prepared to take a look at the Planner source code and compile it to run on Windows 11 24H2 then I think there nothing much else we can do ourselves.

William.