He has found the cause. A call to DirectX was changing the floating point (double) precision ..

Not it's not just you. Thanks for pointing it out. I've fixed the link.

In case anyone else needs the answer, I had to use the MS_ADOX::_Catalog COM interface which is imported from msadox.dll. For example: MS_ADOX::_CatalogPtr catalogPtr; catalogPtr.CreateInstance(__uuidof(MS_ADOX::Catalog)); catalogPtr->Create("Provider=Microsoft.SQLSERVER.CE.OLEDB.3.5;Data Source=C:\\Temp\\sqlcedemo.sdf;"); The above crap non error checking code creates the C:\\Temp\\sqlcedemo.sdf database, which can then be opened and populated using ADO in the normal fashion.

Only thought Intellitrace was available in Visual Studio Ultimate. Quite amazed how many are paying for the extravaganza version when looking at the price tag. modified on Saturday, January 8, 2011 7:30 AM

Ooops. Thanks.

Thank you. Unfortunately it only tells us the DLLs. What we really would like to know is the merge modules. We can of course go through the DLLs, and locate the matching merge modules, but that is fairly time consuming.

In case anyone is interested, we have pretty much reached a conclusion after evaluating numerous installers. My brief impressions follow: Inno Setup: Restricted features. Tarma Installer: Unable to create merge modules. Nice interface, and cheap. Install Shield: Feature rich but expensive. WiX: Complex, and not easy to learn, but very powerful and flexible. And free. InstallAware: Claims to be powerful, but the unprofessional feel scared us away, and it looks to be developed by one person who engages in online slanging matches with critics. It appears to b a copy of Install Shield by an ex-IS employee. There are other products, but they all lacked essential features such as custom dialogs, or creation of merge modules. I am fairly sure we will go with WiX. Commercial install products such as Tarma and InstallShield are easier to use for simple projects, but anything more complex is no easier than WiX.

Never mind. I found a far simpler solution was to represent a link as protected text, ensuring the user could not edit it, but could see the link as simple text. Unfortunately using OLE objects would have meant one application running per link, which is inefficient and, well not good.