After the Dofus installer finishes, Adobe AIR installer starts. The AIR installer displays a non-progressing progress bar indefinitely.

Exactly the same problem as in the Dofus forum:

1- Donwnloaded the install file
2- Ran the update/patch durng installation (includes Adobe Air)
3- Tried launching the game using Play button from the small black screen.
4- I get a *pop-up* from adobe air with terms and conditions etc. I click AGREE, window comes up with progress bar; nothing happens…..
5- I quit after a while (like a long while really)
6- uninstall adobe air
7- get an error message; can’t launch the game without adobe air.
8- got adobe air streight from Adobe website.
9- same thing happens over and over again. tried uninstalling whole game, used adobe cs3 cleaner tool (console commands…) it just won’t work!

Tools: AIR Fix Apple Script

Solution:

1. Uninstall Adobe AIR and Dofus.

2. Run AIR Fix Apple Script from Adobe

3. Download Adobe AIR from Adobe

4. Install Dofus again

More info:

more Adobe AIR fixes from Adobe forums

Tools: AlonWeb, DeAnonymizer, ItsHidden

Solution: I discovered VPNs, virtual private networks.

There’s a few free VPNs out there, How to Hide Your IP has reviews on a lot of them.  AlonWeb looks interesting. I’m going to try it out and update this with a review. The DeAnonymizer tests to see how well your hide IP tool works.

—update—

I followed the instructions on How to Hide Your IP’s website, but it seems AlonWeb triggers firewall detection settings.  Some applications that detect for internet connection and/or firewall blockage will will trigger the detection. Also, AlonWeb doesn’t appear to be high/elite anonymity. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m not setting it up right.

I’m using ItsHidden right now, and it seems to be working perfectly.

More Information on How to Hide IPs:

What is my IP address and how do I hide it?

How to Hide Your IP – an excellent blog with reviews on VPNs and proxies

This is to document random problems (and their solutions) I’ve encountered with my PC.

I’ve spent many hours searching for these solutions on the internet. Hopefully, the solutions/workarounds here will benefit someone (and save the many hours of searching).

Microsoft has a good guide on the actual coding part.

Part A -  The type or namespace name ‘Interop’ does not exist in the namespace ‘Microsoft.Office’ (are you missing an assembly reference?)

So, as it turns out, following the guide to add Microsoft Excel 11 Object Library wasn’t enough.
You have to manually download the Microsoft PIAs (Primary Interop Assemblies) and add it as a reference.

To add the reference, after downloading the PIAs:

Project>Add reference>Browse

Part B – Exception from HRESULT: 0x800A03EC

For saving, I kept running into this exception. In the end, “save as” worked instead of “save”.  “Save as” the file with the directory and file name in the parameter and close without saving the workbook.

wb.SaveCopyAs(fileName);
wb.Close(false, true, true);

The “false” is prompting if you want to save the file.

Part C – Excel process didn’t terminate

The xlApp.Quit() didn’t quit like it was suppose to.
So I imported System.Diagnostics to force terminate the process, and set all variables to null.
I also did garbage collection at the end.

using System.Diagnostics;

     Process[] currentProcesses;
     currentProcesses = System.Diagnostics.Process.GetProcessesByName("Excel");
     currentProcesses[0].Kill();

     ws = null;
     wb = null;
     xlApp = null;
     GC.Collect();

Tool: SendKeys

It’s a Python module for Windows that sends keystrokes (mimicking actual key presses ) to the active window.

SendKeys(keys, pause=0.05, with_spaces=False,
         with_tabs=False, with_newlines=False,
         turn_off_numlock=True)

SendKeys doesn’t have a hold-down parameter.
To mimic holding down key presses, set the keys to a large string of the key you want to press,
and pause to 0.0.
Example:

SendKeys(“T”*50, 0.0)

This will send 50 “T”s very rapidly, and for most applications, will be interpreted as holding down “T”.