Error message launching Cumulus

[George Pearce]

Hi all,
I'm a new member having recently purchased a WH 1080 and have been looking for an improvement to the EasyWeather software. Cumulus is so much better, but of course, you all know this!

I have a problem launching Cumulus, the error message reads 'Could not convert variant of type(string) into type (date)'. Any thoughts gratefully received. I have, until today, used the short date format in XP (SP3) as d/m/yy and wonder whether that is the problem. I have now changed to dd/mm/yy, but Cumulus stillloads with an error message. I can continue passed the error message and Cumulus will try to download data from the WH1080, but without success. The only way to get a downlaod is to completely uninstall Cumulus, reinstall, launch, continue passed my error message, detailed above, and then I get a successful download. Help, please.

[steve]

Cumulus can't cope with the system date format changing, because for some dates it writes them out in the current system format and then uses system routines to read them back in again, and the system routines expect the format to be the same, otherwise they can't parse the date.

Your easiest solution is to delete the contents of the data folder and start again; if you don't want to do that, you'll need to correct the date(s) causing the problem; these will most likely be in today.ini, alltime.ini, or cumulus.ini. If you can't find them, zip up the contents of the diags folder, together with those three files, and attach it here. Note that cumulus.ini may contain passwords if you've set up any internet uploads; you could edit those out.

[George Pearce]

Thank you,

I have looked at all of the .ini files and the dates appear to be written consistently and correctly. The error appeared when first loading Cumulus and I was thinking that, maybe, Cumulus could not understand a system date in the format d/m/yy. I have attached the bugreport.txt file showing the exception message and also an error in thread $1524. Thank you,

George.

[steve]

It can't parse the 'Timestamp' line in today.ini. If you upload that and the diags files I can see what the problem is with your date/time formats.

[George Pearce]

Dear Steve,

Many thanks,

Files attached.

George

[steve]

There seems to be a problem with the time format setting on your PC. When the today.ini file doesn't exist, Cumulus generates a default timestamp of 'now' using the current date and time, but your system is generating an invalid string for that, so you end up with a timestamp in today.ini that has a date, but no time:

Timestamp=03/09/10

This generating of incorrect timestamps continues once Cumulus starts logging data, for the same reason.

Further evidence is in the log, when Cumulus starts processing your logger data:

01/09/10 00:25:41.484 : EWUSB: timestamp = 31/08/10 PM 10:58:41

Note the timestamp '31/08/10 PM 10:58:41'. The 'PM' should come after the time. It looks like you have set your time format string in Windows to 'tt hh:mm:ss' or something similar, so you are getting invalid times generated. You need to change it to put the AM/PM indicator (the 'tt' in the string) after the time.