BUG: "Unspecified error" When Running VB Program That Hosts an ATL Control (216278)

The information in this article applies to:

The Microsoft Active Template Library (ATL) 3.0, when used with:
- Microsoft Visual C++, 32-bit Editions 6.0
Microsoft Visual Basic Professional Edition for Windows 6.0
Microsoft Visual Basic Enterprise Edition for Windows 6.0

This article was previously published under Q216278

SYMPTOMS

When you run a Visual Basic program that contains an ATL ActiveX control, you may get the following error message:

System Error &H80004005 (-2147467259). Unspecified error.

CAUSE

If you created the control using the ATL Object Wizard and added the "HWND" option in the Stock Properties tab, you will get an entry in the .IDL for a [propget] function for the "Window" stock property.

In addition, the property map will contain a PROP_ENTRY(HWND...) macro. When the control is first initialized, the persistence code will go through the property map and call the [propput] functions for each entry via ITypeInfo::Invoke(). Because there is no [propput] function in the .IDL for the Window property, the type library won't have this function, and ITypeInfo::Invoke() will fail.

RESOLUTION

Persisting an HWND doesn't make sense; just comment out the PROP_ENTRY(HWND...) macro in the property map. To prevent this line from being added in the future, remove the following line from Control.h in \Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\Common\MSDev98\Template\ATL:

[!if=(SP_HWND, "TRUE")]	PROP_ENTRY("HWND", DISPID_HWND, CLSID_NULL)[!endif]

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a bug in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

Modification Type:	Major	Last Reviewed:	12/2/2003
Keywords:	kbBug kbContainer kbCtrl kbCtrlCreate kbpending kbPersistSt KB216278