Control panel broken on Windows 7 and Windows Vista


Firebird does run on Vista and Windows 7, but there is one feature that can create problems for your operating system. The default Firebird installer provides a Control Panel Applet to start and stop the Firebird server. This applet was built for earlier versions of Windows and it can make Windows Explorer crash when you try to open the Control Panel.

Firebird server can be started and stopped via standard Service manager (in Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Services), so this applet is not really needed on newer systems. The simple solution to this problem is to prevent it from happening by making sure that the installer option to install the Control Panel Applet is turned off during installation. This option is even removed in newer installers to avoid confusion. Here's a screenshot of what it looks like:



If you have already broken your system, the easiest fix would be to uninstall Firebird and install it again without the applet. However, you cannot uninstall it because you cannot open the Control Panel. In this case you can manually delete the Firebird2Control.cpl from SYSTEM32 folder of your Windows installation, and then you'll be able to open the Control Panel applet and uninstall Firebird. Alternatively, you can go to the folder where Firebird is installed (something like C:\Program Files\Firebird...) and run the uninstaller from there. The uninstaller executable is named: unins000.exe

You can track this issue in the Firebird bug tracker:

http://tracker.firebirdsql.org/browse/CORE-1109


Do you find this FAQ incorrect or incomplete? Please e-mail us what needs to be changed. To ensure quality, each change is checked by our editors (and often tested on live Firebird databases), before it enters the main FAQ database. If you desire so, the changes will be credited to your name. To learn more, visit our add content page.



All contents are copyright © 2007-2024 FirebirdFAQ.org unless otherwise stated in the text.


Links   Firebird   News   FlameRobin   Powered by FB: Home Inventory   Euchre  
Add content   About  

Categories
 Newbies
 SQL
 Installation and setup
 Backup and restore
 Performance
 Security
 Connectivity and API
 HOWTOs
 Errors and error codes
 Miscellaneous