invalid file reference.

[vb_student]

Hello

Can you guys tell me how to find out which picturebox does a picture refer to.

in this existing project, i removed these pictures and i ended up with this error line in a log file.

Line 8: Property Icon in cars had an invalid file reference.

i looked in the cars.frm and could not see property icon on line 8

[Electroman]

basically whats happened is you've opened the project yet the cars.frx file was missing. VB then removes the control which relied on the .frx file (these are controls that have any images in basically) most the time it replaces the control with a empty picturebox though.

When you add a image to your project, by putting it in a Picture/Icon property VB saves the picture in the .frx file for that form. This is so if the image file changes or is lost it doesn't effect your project. But as you see if you loss the .frx file it can't find the image anymore .

[vb_student]

thanks for the reply, i have been looking for that picture high and low

i guess the .frx contains all the pictures that go with that form, correct?

does it contain anything else?

so if i create say a new pic box, and point that piture box to a new picture, would that picture get stored and the .frm is updated, so thateven if i remove the picture i am pointing to, everything will be ok?

what did it mean by the line reference?

[Electroman]

thanks for the reply, i have been looking for that picture high and low

i guess the .frx contains all the pictures that go with that form, correct?

does it contain anything else?

so if i create say a new pic box, and point that piture box to a new picture, would that picture get stored and the .frm is updated, so thateven if i remove the picture i am pointing to, everything will be ok?

what did it mean by the line reference?

As far as I can remember yea its just images, but basically its a big chunk of data, and in the .frm file it contains a line referance which tells the compiler where abouts in the .frx file that pictureboxes image is. Think of the .frx file and a load of chunks of data head to tail which no dividers, the only way to know where the pictures are is the .frm's referance. Thats why you get that error message, because the file doesn't exist (or rather it recreated a blank one in memory and the line referance is invalid for the new blank one .

[Hack]

In addition to picture references, the .frx file contains references for controls that have been added to your project. If you add, say a ListView, and save the project, and then move the .frx file to another folder, when you reopen the project, you will get a message indicating that it couldn't load the .OCX file that contains the listview control and the control itself would show up as a blank spot on your form.

[vb_student]

is the line reference present in the .frm file

i cant find it!

[Hack]

is the line reference present in the .frm file

i cant find it!

No, it will be embedded in the .frx file which is a binary file.

[Electroman]

is the line reference present in the .frm file

i cant find it!

If you make a simple project, just a form with a picture box on it and a image in the picturebox. Then save it and open the .frm file in Notepad or simplar and you'll find:

   Begin VB.PictureBox picIcon 
      AutoSize        =   -1  'True
      ClipControls    =   0   'False
      Height          =   540
      Left            =   240
      Picture         =   "frmAbout.frx":058A
      ScaleHeight     =   337.12
      ScaleMode       =   0  'User
      ScaleWidth      =   337.12
      TabIndex        =   1
      Top             =   240
      Width           =   540
   End

This was taken from a form of mine which had other things on, notice the picture property says the name of the .frx file and gives a location in the file (the line referance). I had an Icon property set further up thats why its not "frmAbout.frx":0000 but it did have that for the first one.

Also just a little extra, all images when you put them in a VB project get converted to 24bit bmp's. So knowing this the compiler will know how long the block of memory is in the .frx file that belongs to this control. However that bit was me guessing as it could actually hold that info at that location in the .frx file.

[vb_student]

thanks for clearing it all up

so the line the log file was mentioning was actually in the .frm file, only i had to open it in notepad.

what happens if i delete the .frm file and then point the picture box to a new picture, does it create a new .frx file with the right picture in it. or is the creation of the .frx file triggered by some other event, like compiling all the .frm files into an executable??

[Electroman]

It'll create the .frx file next time you save the project (or save just the form too).

[vb_student]

thanks

makes sense