Problem solved. I reported the whole thing to Microsoft Support and, after a lot of trying this and that, it appeared that the merge modules shipped with VS.NET 2003 had problems. Crystal have made available a fixed set of modules available at http://support.businessobjects.com/fix/merge\_modules.asp Installing these (on the development machine) solved the problem. :)

Hi Joel And thanks for your reply. The problem is, as you say, maddening. I have now reported the issue to Microsoft Support - who seem to agree that I'm not the first to suffer it. Watch this space and I'll report what happens. I'll try the 'verify database' you mention but I must admit that I'm not exactly sure what you mean. How would I do this? Many thanks Alan

Is anyone else having problems with logon boxes when trying to show a Crystal report? We have an application which stores data internally as a set of collections. When we need to print the data on a report, the application loads the data into a set of tables within a dataset, applies the logon information, writes the data to each table, assigns the relevant report to the Crystal report viewer and .Shows the report. All of this works and has been working for months. Yet a recent deployment on a Win XP Home (SP2) machine invokes the logon box for a single table at the reportviewer.Show statement. I.E. the table has already been logged on to - and data has been written to it. Other tables in the dataset do not suffer the problem. Other reports suffer the same problem - a single table, not always the same one, requires a logon at .Show time. And all other machines continue to work OK. I can see from searches on the net that this logon issue for datatables and Crystal is problematic - so what gives? Is there a known issue here? Any ideas/info gratefully received ...

Dave - many many thanks. I've been looking for this solution for what seems like days - good on ya!:)

:)I'm building an application to read and write formatted files on disk. I have associated the file extension (.fod) with the application and this works fine. When I double-click on a file in, say Windows Explorer, the application starts as it should. But I now need a way of finding the name of the clicked file within the application so I can open it. How do I do it? I've been searching the help systems and just not been able to find it, probably because I'm using the wrong terms. I've tried 'parameter', 'external parameter', "%1" and a whole host of others. Many thanks in advance for your help. Alan Hallett