How to troubleshoot the most common issues when installing FastReport VCL

The FastReport Online Installer program is used to install FastReport VCL and its components. The program has a simple, intuitive interface. We strongly recommend that you use the latest version of the installer. You can download it from this link.

However, in some cases, you may have problems during the installation process. In this article, we will look at how these problems can be solved or prevented. 

When launching the FastReport Online Installer, it automatically starts checking the installer for updates and offers to download the new version.

Next, using the browser (selected as the default in the system), your account is checked for already purchased FastReport components. If there are no purchased products on your account, you will only have access to the demo center with the Trial versions of FastReport.

Important! The account (email) on which your FastReport instance was purchased must match the account you used to log in to the "Fast Reports Inc" personal account. If you are having trouble logging in with the right account, try clearing the cache of your running browser and logging in again. 

If your license allows installation on multiple computers (e.g., Team, Site, OEM), you must log in to the "Fast Reports Inc" personal account under the user that the license was purchased for on each computer.

Alternatively, you can use an alternative method with access rights transfer. To do this, you need to go to Settings -> Profile in your personal account, and on the Accesses tab, add access to the required products and their versions for the user. Then click the "Add access to license" button. In the appeared window, specify the user's email and the required product, and also select the necessary version from the list of available ones.

During installation, the installer will prompt you to close all currently running IDEs. If any IDEs are open, you will see the following window:

Manual registration

If, for some reason, you cannot use online identification, you have a manual registration option. To get your registration code, copy the text from the "Registration Information" field and send it to support@fast-report.com. If you want to receive a registration code for an email address different from the one you are writing this email from, please specify the email address used to log into the client's personal account in the body of the email.
. 
Do not close the installer until you receive the registration code with the .dat files in the reply email. Then put the .dat files in the same folder as the installer and continue the installation.

There is another third way to install FastReport components. Start the online installation on a device connected to the network. Then transfer the .dat files and the installer to a computer that does not have network access and complete the installation on this computer. Preliminary request for the registration code from technical support as described earlier in the article.

Remember that you cannot close the Online Installer until you receive the registration code! 

*.dat files can be transferred between computers, provided that the installation will be for the same user (to the same email address). Moreover, .dat files can be transferred to another computer even during online installation (also for the same user), thereby saving time downloading them.

Component installation process

Next, you have the ability to "Install," "Modify" (if the products are already installed on your computer), "Recompile," "Repair," and "Remove" FastReport components.

"Recompile" means reinstalling the FastReport library on your computer. This may be necessary when you have made changes to the library's source code and need to reinstall it in the IDE.

"Repair" allows you to reinstall FastReport on your computer with the current selected settings. This function can work without an internet connection.

"Remove" completely uninstalls the library from your computer.

"Install" or "Modify"—when you select this option, the next window shows the IDEs in which you can install FastReport. You select the components you want to install, as well as the installation type—Trial or Source. The set of available components depends on the license you have purchased.

Please note that at least one IDE must be installed on your computer where FastReport can be installed.

This can be Delphi starting from version 2010 or the latest versions of Lazarus. You can view the list of Delphi versions supported by FastReport here. If you need an older version of FastReport, for example, for Delphi 7, please contact technical support. The installer can install different versions of FastReport for each installed IDE.

Preliminary installation of additional components

Important! Before installing FastReport, you must install the additional components that you intend to use together with FastReport.

For example, if you plan to use BDE components in FastReport, then before the installation, BDE must already be installed in your IDE. Otherwise, the installer will simply not be able to build the FastReport packages that use BDE. For other components, you similarly need to pre-install FIB, TeeChart, and so on.

We strongly recommend that before starting the installation, you remove all old versions of FastReport, as well as FastReport Embarcadero Edition, from your IDEs. This is necessary for the normal operation of the installer. It is also necessary to remove ".bpl" format files for old versions of FastReport. If the installer finds them, it will not be able to continue its work.

Such files can be located, for example, in the following folders:

C:\Users\Public\Documents\Embarcadero\Studio\23.0\Bpl\
C:\Users\Your_User_Name\AppData\Local\VirtualStore
C:\Windows\SysWOW64

The .bpl files have the following format (where XX is a number in the name that depends on the IDE version you have installed):

• fr*XX.bpl,
• fs*XX.bpl,
• fqb*XX.bpl .

The table with the dependencies of the Delphi IDE version, the compiler, and the package versions can be found here.

If the system still has .bpl files from old versions, and the installer did not find them for some reason, the following error may appear when launching the IDE: 

In this case, all the old .bpl files should be deleted.

The installer searches for the installed IDE versions in the registry. If there were errors during the IDE installation and/or the registry keys are missing, then installation for that IDE is not possible! This IDE will also be absent from the list of available installations.

Error "bpl of the remote version not found"

Sometimes the installer incorrectly removes the old version of FastReport. The files are deleted, but the registry links to the .bpl remain. In this case, when launching Delphi, the following types of windows will appear:

To solve this problem, click the "Cancel" button in each window or press the "Escape" key. This will prevent these windows from appearing again. If the .bpl version number in the error matches the version number you wanted to install, then this error is not related to the .bpl. Most often, such error messages can occur due to the lack of installed Steema, TeeChart, or Interbase Express (IBX) Components.

Sometimes FastReport components are selected for installation, but after the installation, they do not appear in the component palette. In this case, the Repair function in the installer may help. 

If this method did not help you, you should check if these components are selected in the IDE Components -> Install Packages window. You can also try to manually install these *.bpl files. They are located (when installed by default) in the following path:

«C:\Program Files (x86)\FastReport VCL\<FRVersion>\Sources\LibRS<CompilerVersion>\VCL\Win32\» 

Error during compilation and installation of packages in the IDE

If the installer was able to download the FastReport library but, for some reason, could not compile and install the packages in the IDE, you can try to compile and load them manually. To do this, use the installation instructions at this link and the Embarcadero documentation at this link. 

Ensure that the paths to these libraries are in the IDE's PATH variable and the paths to the FastReport source code are set up correctly. You also need to check the existence of the IDE FRL variable. By default, it should be a path roughly like this:

«C:\Program Files (x86)\Fast Reports VCL\2024.2.6\Sources»

You can check how the library compilation went by running the logging during the installation. To do this, write the "-log" key in the properties of the installer shortcut.

VCLOnlineInstaller.exe -log:"c:\test.log".

With this parameter, we strongly recommend using an absolute path so that you don't have to search for the file of the resulting log in the future.

If you need to specify additional directories where the libraries required for FastReport compilation are located during installation, you can run the installer with the "-addCustomPaths" parameter.

VCLOnlineInstaller.exe -addCustomPaths

After selecting the FastReport components, a window will appear where you can set the search paths for the libraries for the compiler.

Also, during the installation process, you may have the following situation: after installation, there are no FastReport components in the IDE. To solve this problem, you need to check the presence of the *.dat files of the installer. If they are missing or very small (the smallest should be more than 280 Kb), restart the installation with the firewall and antivirus disabled (or add the installer to the exceptions).

Useful information

It should be noted that when updating FastReport, there may be a situation where a report saved in the new version cannot be opened in the old version. This happens due to the addition of new properties of report components, as well as new components themselves. The old versions do not know anything about these properties and components. In general, outdated reports in the .fr3 format should open normally in new versions of FastReport.

If you want to install the free FastReport Embarcadero Edition, you can do so using GetIT in the Delphi IDE.

To install, go to Tools->GetIt Package Manager and select FastReport Embarcadero Edition. 

But be aware that this version of FastReport cannot be installed in Delphi CE.

Also, note that the delivery package includes many examples of using FastReport. By default, they are installed in the folder "C:\Users\Public\Documents\Fast Reports VCL\2024.2.6\Sources\". The offline documentation is also located there. The package also includes a Demo Center (you can install it separately), which you can use to get acquainted with some of the capabilities of FastReport without installing it on your computer.

FastReport is constantly evolving, with new features and functions being added. If you have any questions about their use, you can always contact our technical support!