Is it possible? Sure. Would anyone sane want to do it? Absolutely not. Tape drive access is a very low-level, huge set of operations. You'll need to P/Invoke so many functions and declare so many structs and consts/enums that you'll probably never get to the meat of the development, unless you can find some COM control to interop or a wrapper DLL that you can P/Invoke, but you probably won't since this is not something that consumers typically "play with". The software you use with your drive (Veritas Backup, et. al.) may have some undocumented APIs you could P/Invoke, but as they're most likely undocumented for a reason you'll have a REALLY tough time. See the Windows DDK (driver development kit) for details. It's huge and it's ugly. Microsoft MVP, Visual C# My Articles

It depends on the share locks. If a program locks the file for writing, then other programs can read it. If it locks it for reading, the other apps may be able to write to it. If it's locked for both (exclusive), then you'll have to wait. See the documentation for FileStream class in the .NET Framework, which includes samples. Also see the FileShare enumeration documentation as well. Backups are an entirely different story and this is a very low-level feature. Also, backup accounts typically (and should) have the backup security privilege that lets those accounts do much more than allowed by other accounts (including administrative accounts if they don't have those privileges. Microsoft MVP, Visual C# My Articles

isn't a DIB just the method bitmaps use to store? and do you want to convert in realtime or just with an application? if it's the latter you might want to use something like PainShopPro or AdobePhotoShop etc. but if it's in realtime i'm not sure. wouldn't you use the System.Drawing.Imaging controls? surgeproof. ----------------------------------------------- looking for hosting?ithium is good.

Why are you posting as Anonymous, you don't want anybody to know who you are?

I haven't personally found (or really needed) a good printing resource for Win32. However, my impression is that it is primarily generic Win32 GDI calls, with a different dpi and size. So, a reasonable way to test your code would be to separate the code that does actual drawing into a separate function, then send that function any DC handle. When trying it out, you can draw straight to the screen. Once that works, you can draw to the printer DC. SetTextColor() is what my memory tells me about changing the text color. John "You said a whole sentence with no words in it, and I understood you!" -- my wife as she cries about slowly becoming a geek.

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By, "works with", I meant "compiles to". Yes, you can specify in your app's config file that you'll support more then one version of the .NET framework (which VS.NET does for you when you change this field in Project Properties), but that doesn't guarantee that your app will actually work with that version. You're basically just telling the CLR that it's ok to run your app with the framework versions listed. The question I answered was about configuring VS.NET 2002 to compile to the v1.1 version of the framework, which cannot be done. Charlie if(!curlies){ return; }

MSHTML is what is used to render the HTML within the SHDocVw control. Check out the following article, it should point you in the right direction. Using MSHTML Advanced Hosting Interfaces[^] also, this site may be of some help: The HTMLEditor[^] - Nick Parker   My Blog

.NET sends _all_ data to a printer using Raster images. This means if you only send plain taxt to a printer, it still converts it into a raster image. If you communicate with the printer via the Serial port it takes quite a while. If you only want to send text you can develop a component in VB (VS 6.0) that sends plain text to a printer and use this in .NET. can't help with the image though...

Nevermind, I just needed to set the parameter value to DBNull.Value instead of null.

You could try extending ComboBox, then override WndProc. For the CBN_DROPDOWN notification message (msg id 7), return instead of calling the base.WndProc: protected override void WndProc(ref Message m) { if (m.Msg == 7) return; base.WndProc(ref m); } That may stop it, but the documentation for that notification message doesn't mention how to stop it. By not passing the notification message to the ComboBox, though, it shouldn't display the popup window that represents the drop-down. It's worth a shot. Also, you should consider making your own from scratch. If the above doesn't work, it's often easier making your own controls that trying to change existing ones. Remember that almost every control in System.Windows.Forms is just a wrapper class for their Windows Common Controls equivalent, so the true behavior of the control itself is defined by native code. If you must make your own, I suggest you download something like .NET Reflector[^] to peer inside how the System.Windows.Forms.ComboBox works for things that aren't apparent in the documentation. -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.21 GCS/G/MU d- s: a- C++++ UL@ P++(+++) L+(--) E--- W+++ N++ o+ K? w++++ O- M(+) V? PS-- PE Y++ PGP++ t++@ 5 X+++ R+@ tv+ b(-)>b++ DI++++ D+ G e++>+++ h---* r+++ y+++ -----END GEEK CODE BLOCK-----

Thank you very much. That worked

If you mean like ASP.NET, then you'll actually need an application host to host your AppDomain in which your executable runs. Once an AppDomain is created and your application is executed in it, you can't change the config settings. ASP.NET uses its ISAPI filter to host the CLR. When the ASP.NET application detects changes to the config file, the AppDomain is unloaded and the host recreates it. Also, if you're doing plug-ins, all you can specify is assemblies or types. Obviously, you cannot specify an instance (though serialized data could help create an instance). In either case - even if the plug-in was originally disposed - you need only re-instantiate the Type to create a new instance of your plug-in. Basically, don't store the objects in a collection - store the types and have a method that creates an instance from that type. For example, I wrote a custom configuration section that stores such types (like is common in many of .NET's configuration sections) and creates an instance of class that contains not only that collection of types but a static method that creates an object based on a friendly type name that I pass in (searching the collection for that name, creating the type, and returning the object to me). Basically, my section handler and configuration object act like the Windows registry when it comes to COM objects. One other option is to have a class that is initialized from the configuration object created from your configuration section handler that also watches the config file for changes (you can easily get the path to the .config file from AppDomain.SetupInformation.ConfigurationFile) and then uses similar code as the section handler to re-read the values into the object. It's a cluge, but it might be better than having to create a CLR host for your application (which can be either native or managed, BTW). -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.21 GCS/G/MU d- s: a- C++++ UL@ P++(+++) L+(--) E--- W+++ N++ o+ K? w++++ O- M(+) V? PS-- PE Y++ PGP++ t++@ 5 X+++ R+@ tv+ b(-)>b++ DI++++ D+ G e++>+++ h---* r+++ y+++ -----END GEEK CODE BLOCK-----

You could also use SNMP rather than the networking APIs. I've seen several examples of this. Either way, you're going to be redefining a lot of structures and P/Invoking a lot of functions. In any case, there's a little thing called google that comes in really handy. There's no pure way to do this in C#, but there's a ton of examples for C/C++ using various APIs like the Win32 networking API. I've seen many when searching for "MAC address". (hint hint) -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.21 GCS/G/MU d- s: a- C++++ UL@ P++(+++) L+(--) E--- W+++ N++ o+ K? w++++ O- M(+) V? PS-- PE Y++ PGP++ t++@ 5 X+++ R+@ tv+ b(-)>b++ DI++++ D+ G e++>+++ h---* r+++ y+++ -----END GEEK CODE BLOCK-----

Your welcome, glad I could be of help! Rocky Moore <><

Yes, they are built to common bin directory. Shaun