I've got an SDK that installed a dll & a sample vb.net project. It came
with a parallel port hardware dongle.
There's a sample vb.net application which I'm opening up in vb.net (vs.net
2003). The form is essentially blank aside having 1 instance of an activex
control, derived from said dll. In the sample app, I can clearly see where
the control is being defined & added to the form's control collection.
So if I switch over to 'design view' to view the form, I should see the
activex control, but I don't. The activex control does not appear, and in
the task list I see these two errors:
The variable 'AxControl' is either undeclared or was never assigned.
You do not have a license to use this ActiveX control.
But the variable 'AxControl' *is* declared and assigned, so I assume that
this error is somewhat of a red herring and that the root of my problem is
the licesning (it's preventing the control from being instantiated or
something along those lines).
I presume the parallel port dongle contains the design-time license for the
activex control. Is there a "standard" way in which I can tell my project
(or the control) to "go out to the parallel port and read the license
information from the dongle"? Or is this a proprietary situation where I
need to contact the makers of the SDK? (who are unfortunately in china, and
I don't speak chinese so I'm somewhat forced to make this work w/o their
help).