ActiveX "Catastrophic failure"

[Dallas]

Hi,
I'm trying to do an ActiveX call in labview and I get this cryptic error, "-2147418113 Catastrophic failure". I use Automation Open vi, select the MS VB6 .ocx file then I create a property to read. The property should read the parallel port address. Finally, I close the reference. Has anyone else got these Catastrophic failures? Do the API file or .ocx file in VB6 have to be compiled in a certain special way for them to be called from Labview? When I "explain error" this is what I get,

"Error -2147418113 occurred at Catastrophic failure
in Reg_Write.vi.

Possible reasons:

Windows GetCommError: The hex value of this code is xFFFF.

Interpret it bit-wise as follows: x4000: serial port VI error; x0001: receiving queue
overflowed or character was received after end-of-file character; x0002: character was lost by overwrite; x0004: parity error; x0008: framing error; x0010: break condition; x0020: CTS timeout; x0040: DSR timeout; x0080: RLSD timeout; x0100: transmission queue was full when new character arrived; x0200: parallel device timeout; x0400: parallel device I/O error; x0800: parallel device not selected; x1000: parallel device out of paper; x8000: requested mode is not supported or the idComDev parameter is invalid."

Thanks,
Joe

[BrandonS]

ActiveX in LabVIEW conforms to all the standards set for ActiveX so there really isn't anything special that you need to do when you compile your code. There are KnowledgeBases on the NI web site that list this error but they seem to always relate to picture controls. Have you registered your OCX file with the operating system using REGSVR32.EXE?

[Dallas]

Yeah, I did a search for the error message and the "picture control" wasn't too helpful. I did register the OCX file with the operating system but to no avail. Any more suggestions?

[Spaz]

The error code returned is most likely an error code of the ActiveX object. A good place to start would be the MS Knowledge Base. A search of '-2147418113' will yield results that contain the 'catastrophic failure' verbage. Without identifying the ActiveX object I can't help you further. Even if your ActiveX object is not listed, the description of the problems that are listed will hopefully point you in the right direction.