It’s been a rough few weeks here for us due to a number of technical issues. The complete failure of our Windows 7 build machine kicked it all off. We decided to move to Windows 10 for our build process and that took a bit longer than expected. Throw in some issues that Windows 10 caused, a fairly significant problem with the installer for Time Clock MTS version 6.1.1 that raised issues with a number of users, a false positive virus scan on the program installation file, an obscure Windows XP bug, and dealing with time clock computers with broken Windows Fonts and you’ve got a set of circumstances that have tried us. Never the less, we’re sure we’ve seen all of that off and as a result we’ve come out the other side with a better, more reliable product. Two releases have happened in the last two weeks, versions 6.1.2 and 6.1.3. The changes should be invisible for most people, but I’ll detail them anyway.
Windows Font Issues
There were at least two users who (somehow) didn’t have the regular version of the Times New Roman font installed on their computer. The reporting system of Time Clock MTS is dependent on this being present, and given that it’s a default Windows font you can (usually) rely on it being present. The software was failing silently if the font was missing. This error is now caught and presented to the user. Fixing the missing font is as simple as finding the valid times.ttf file on another computer, copying it to the broken computer, and installing it.
Client First Run Issues
The first run process for the Time Clock MTS Client software was broken. It would allow users to connect to a shared time clock data file but reports could not be run and employees not punched in or out immediately after connecting to the data file. Restarting the software fixed the problem. Clearly this was not satisfactory and has now been resolved.
Windows XP “Multiple Steps” Error
One Windows XP user was getting a “Multiple-step OLE DB operation generated errors” error message whenever they started their software. According to this Microsoft Knowledge Base Article it’s due to a malformed or missing Windows registry entry. We followed one of the suggested resolutions in the article which was just a tiny change to the software, and the problem was resolved.
Referenced Backward Compatible ADO Library
Moving to a Windows 10 build process lead to us adopting the latest version of the Microsoft Active Data Objects library which is used for all of the database systems in Time Clock MTS. It turns out that this library is not compatible with Windows versions prior to Windows 7 Service Pack 1. As we are committed to supporting old versions of Windows for as long as possible we’ve now started using a backwards compatible version of the Active Data Objects library and the software now runs properly on Windows Vista and Windows XP. It’ll also work on Window 7 if you don’t have Service Pack 1 installed, but to be honest, if you’re using Windows 7 without Service Pack 1 you should strongly consider installing it.
Version 6.1.1 Installer Issuers
Version 6.1.1 included a brand new component that moved some old forms into a .NET library. This was part of our on-going future proofing development program for Time Clock MTS. Unfortunately we messed up how this component was included in the installer and as a result some users were getting strange application crashes and “file not found” errors. We’ve reviewed the installation processes now and identified where we went wrong and fixed up those issues.
False Positive from Mcafee Antivirus
We had one report of the installer being identified as containing a virus by a user with Mcafee anti-virus on an Acer laptop. Obviously this was a false positive. We were unable to replicate the false positive with our install of Mcafee. We made some adjustments to the software build process and had the user re-test the new installer and it no longer is identified as containing a virus.
