SAPGUI crashes after installing Internet Explorer 9 RC (Updated: Fixed.)

 

After installing Internet Explorer 9 RC, if you use SAPGUI 7.x, you will notice that while doing practically anything, it quits to the desktop ending even the saplogon.exe process. Which is puzzling is that there is no error message or nothing. It just disappears.

This is due to a change in mshtml.dll, which SAPGUI uses extensively for its themes. When SAPGUI passes parameters to this file, an “access violation” ensues and the application crashes.

Until Microsoft or SAP release a patch to address this issue (In SAP’s case it may be patch 5 for SAPGUI 7.20), there is a workaround: Go to SAP GUI Configuration and choose “Classic Theme”. This theme doesn’t use mshtml.dll, and so the app will work without any further issues (plus you get to experience SAP’s “retro” look once more)

Update (03/22/2011): Since Microsoft released IE 9 Final (http://www.beautyoftheweb.com/), SAP released SAPGUI 7.20 Patch 5 – Hotfix 1 (gui720_05_1-10007878.exe), which corrects this error. Download it from http://service.sap.com (with your S-id and password), apply it and you no longer have to revert to SAPGui’s “Classic Theme”, unless you have grown fond of it :)

Quick Tip: Removing GRUB loader and restore Windows (Vista/7) loader

If you have repartitioned your Vista/7 hard drive to make space for Ubuntu (or some other Linux flavor) , you may find that (should you decide to remove Linux because you find that it doesn’t suit you, or that company policies prevent you from installing it in their hardware *ahem*) while it’s easy to recover the space for Windows using Disk Management, the GRUB boot loader won’t go away that easily.

What happens is that you are stuck with a boot-time menu that lists a long list of “phantom” options (if you already deleted Linux’s partitions) besides your Windows option (which, if you are as lazy as I am, is NOT the default, so you have to manually select it every time you boot the system). Not very nice.

The official “clean” way to remove it involves your original (or any copy of the) media of your windows installation. What you have to do is boot your system from that media, and select the “Repair Windows” option (yes, there actually is an option for that in Vista/7 installation media and yes, it’s quite handy).

Once in the “Repair Windows” menu you then have to select the “Command Prompt” option (DOS FTW!) , change to your hard drive letter (by typing c: <return>), and run the following commands (one at a time):

bootrec.exe /FixBoot
bootrec.exe /FixMbr

These commands won’t take more than a couple of seconds each and, essentially, what they do is write a new boot sector and a new master boot record into your hard drive.

Once you have done that, reboot the machine (it will boot straight into windows) and delete the Linux partition(s) using Disk Management (if you haven’t already done so). After that, expand your Windows partition to recover the used space into it.

Vista and wireless networking...

In the company I work for, the standard is windows (duh!). One of the most "critical" aspects for the people who work there is wireles access to the network. See, a lot of people (myself included) have laptops (in my case, right now is a Lenovo ThinkPad X61), and they roam freely around the office building in meetings and so.

Since I upgraded to Vista (Ultimate first, now Business) my wireless connection SUCKS, and I mean SUCKS BIG TIME. Its slow as molasses and drops every 2 or 3 minutes. I know, all you windows lovers out there should be thinking its the wireless LAN itself, but I happen to have with me my trusty old iBook G4 running Leopard right beside the lenovo and the wireless is excelent. Speed normal, and NEVER drops.

In XP I didn't have that problem, so I could safely assume it was vista related. After some digging, I found out that vista has now an auto-tuning "feature" (it's not a bug, it's a feature :D) that in my case was, to put it mildly, not working as it should. In case any of you experience that particular issue, you could try disabling that feature by opening up a command prompt (as an administrator) and issuing the following command:

netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disable

In case you want to enable it back, use the following command:

netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal

And that's it!