Can't get Excel 2010 to activate an RTD COM Add-in

I have installed Sterling Trader Pro (a stock trading application, for which I have a Sterling account) with the Excel RTD (Real Time Data) option. I plan to update my Sterling-oriented Excel trading application to use RTD instead of DDE to access Sterling's real time market feed. The installation was uneventful and reported as successful, including the RTD add-in, and the add-in's dlls show up where I expect them to be.

Excel 2010 lists the add-in in Options > Add-ins as an inactive COM add-in. However, the Location is identified only as mscoree.dll, which is a system file in Windows\System32. Unlike all other listed add-ins, active and inactive, there is no path given. When I select this add-in in Manage COM Add-ins, Load Behavior states "Not loaded: A runtime error occurred during the loading of the COM Add-in". And of course the add-in doesn't show up in Excel's Add-ins ribbon.

Sterling tech support confirms that I have all the Excel Add-in and Trust Center options set correctly; and .Net Framework 4, Client & Extended, is installed and up-to-date, as is Win 7 Pro. I tried using RegSvr32 (cmd prompt, as admin) to register the add-in's 5 dlls; but in each case it said the dll was loaded, but "entry point DllRegisterServer was not found". So far nothing that I or tech support has tried has helped. Otherwise my PC, on which I recently did a clean reinstall of Win 7 Pro, works like a champ.

Can anyone suggest how to get this add-in to activate and work? I'm going to write an RTD tutorial for SevenForums once I get it to work.

rcdunbar said:

I have installed Sterling Trader Pro (a stock trading application, for which I have a Sterling account) with the Excel RTD (Real Time Data) option. I plan to update my Sterling-oriented Excel trading application to use RTD instead of DDE to access Sterling's real time market feed. The installation was uneventful and reported as successful, including the RTD add-in, and the add-in's dlls show up where I expect them to be.

Excel 2010 lists the add-in in Options > Add-ins as an inactive COM add-in. However, the Location is identified only as mscoree.dll, which is a system file in Windows\System32. Unlike all other listed add-ins, active and inactive, there is no path given. When I select this add-in in Manage COM Add-ins, Load Behavior states "Not loaded: A runtime error occurred during the loading of the COM Add-in". And of course the add-in doesn't show up in Excel's Add-ins ribbon.

Sterling tech support confirms that I have all the Excel Add-in and Trust Center options set correctly; and .Net Framework 4, Client & Extended, is installed and up-to-date, as is Win 7 Pro. I tried using RegSvr32 (cmd prompt, as admin) to register the add-in's 5 dlls; but in each case it said the dll was loaded, but "entry point DllRegisterServer was not found". So far nothing that I or tech support has tried has helped. Otherwise my PC, on which I recently did a clean reinstall of Win 7 Pro, works like a champ.

Can anyone suggest how to get this add-in to activate and work? I'm going to write an RTD tutorial for SevenForums once I get it to work.

Hi there
I use some professional Market trading add ins too -- I found that most don't work with the 64 bit version of Office / Excel -- try and see if they work in the 32 bit version of office even on 64 bit version of Windows..

For example I trade options (on the US markets) - I get real time option prices plus a load of other data also in real time downloaded from the CBOE via an EXCEL addin - this doesn't work with the 64 bit version of EXCEL - worked fine with the 32 bit version.

Other than that I would just suggest contacting the supplier.

Meanwhile if you NEED this for trading I'd suggest you run your previous OS as a Virtual machine so you can keep using the trading software until the problem is fixed.

Cheers
jimbo

Thanks Golden & Jimbo45

I have long had UAC turned all the way down, which I assume is the same as turning it off. Sterling requires it to be off, and I have always found it to be a pain in the back side.

My Windows 7 Pro is definitely 32-bit.

Why would the Sterling RTD Add-in in the Excel Add-ins page appear as mscoree.dll? Intuitively I would expect it to show as C:\Sti\RTD\StiRTD.dll, which is the installed dll I would expect to use in a RTD worksheet formula as the RTD server. Sti = Sterling Traders Inc. Could there be a registry setting somewhere that needs to point to that dll?

Thanks, Golden

I have good news, sort of. Last night I installed Trader Pro (with RTD) on my laptop, and the Excel RTD add-in works! The COM add-in appears (as mscoree.dll) in the active list, and RTD shows up in Excel's Add-ins ribbon. Unfortunately nothing has changed on the desktop PC. The laptop runs Win 7 Ultimate and Excel 2007, whereas the desk machine runs Win 7 Pro and Excel 2010. I don't see that either of these differences should be an issue, but, who knows.

I will try to compare various settings to try to spot the problem. Maybe, for instance, there's a service on the desk PC that isn't running, or a permission that isn't set right. Can you suggest areas to look at, or perhaps some logs to compare?

I did run sfc /scannow (admin cmd) again, and it reported no integrity violations. I've seen it written that one should run sfc two or three times, because it may be quietly fixing things each time. Do you have insight about that?