We have a reporting system online which uses Crystal Reports, specifically these are reports done in crystal reports (version 7) and they are viewed using Crystal smart viewer. We have several users who have upgraded to Windows XP Professional and they are using IE 6 they are now unable to retreive these reports. They just get a grey screen with the little x in the corner. Upon some research in the Microsoft Knowledgebase I discovered that 32-bit ActiveX controls do not work on 64-bit Internet Explorer 6 which is installed on a 64-bit Windows XP computer, thus explaining the problem, because the smart viewer uses the 32-bit ActiveX. Microsoft has offered a work-around for this, which said to run the Iexplore.exe program from the Syswow64 folder and this procedure will install the 32-bit version of the IE, but this file or folder does not exist on the XP machine I'm working on.

I don't think the current WinXP Pro is 64bit, they are still using 32bit. 64bit Windows XP is designed for 64bit CPUs such as Intel Italium and AMD Hammer series. if you purphased the winxp pro from retail store the windows should be 32bit. Did you try reading the report in IE6 but using win9x/ME? I'm leaning towards it's a IE6 compatibily problem.

This could be the case, but would you know where I could check this out? This is a problem with my company, the whole company is upgrading to XP, so I have no choice but to resolve this problem. I was able to read the report in IE 6 on a Win 98 machine with no problem, so it can't be an issue with IE 6. This only happens on the XP machines.

is that viewer a plugin for IE or it's a seperate program that you need to install with a CD/disk?

The program is Smart Viewer and it is a part of Crystal Reports. It is supposed to auto install on a users machine if it is their first time acessing these reports, it does not...the html code on the gray screen they get refers to many active X controls...this could be a XP security issue, but we did change the security settings in IE 6

Try disable any security settings in IE6 and try again. If that still doesn't work then sorry I can't help you with this problem.

We already tried that one...thanks for your help...seems as if noone can help us, not even Seagate who developed the Crystal Reports software.