Error: "Abnormal program termination" when opening Contacts, Employees or My Work

This support note applies to:

AE Practice Manager (AU)
Profiles (AU)
AE Tax Series 6 & 8 (AU)

These instructions require technical expertise

Make sure you know what you're doing and are using one of the products listed. If you're not sure, ask your IT professional or MYOB.

Article ID: 28965

In MYOB you may see the error "Abnormal program termination" when attempting to open the Contacts, Employee or My Work modules.

The error will appear if:

you don't have a CHOME line in your ceedata.ini file
you don't have security rights to read the ceedata.ini file, or
there's no ceedata.ini file in your home directory.

Where is my ceedata.ini file?

The location of the ceedata.ini file can change depending on the machine type.

Here are the standard locations:

Machine Type	Location
Workstations	C:\Windows\ceedata.ini
Terminal servers	C:\Users\<username>\Windows

The user's copy of the ceedata.ini file on a terminal server environment resides in the home path for the user. The home path may differ to the standard C:\Users\<username> directory. Please consult with your I.T. Provider for more information.

To determine your home path

At the Windows desktop, click Start and select Run. The Run screen appears.
Type cmd and press Enter. The C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe screen appears.
Type set_homepath, where _ represents a space, and press Enter. The location of your home path appears.

If there is no ceedata.ini file in the respective directory, run a workstation setup, for example, from S:\MYOB\setup\setup.exe if your program directory is S:\MYOB\bin.

To check the CHOME path in ceedata.ini

Run these steps on a machine that is not experiencing the error message, and note the CHOME directory.

At the Windows Desktop, click Start and select Run. The Run window appears.
Type ceedata.ini in the Open field and click OK. The ceedata.ini - Notepad window appears.
For users on a terminal server network, type <your home path>\windows\ceedata.ini in the Open field.
Under the Environment section check the contents of the CHOME line. If the CHOME line is missing, type the line as noted from the other ceedata.ini file.

To check security settings of the Ceedata.ini file

At your Windows desktop, click Start and select Run. The Run screen appears.
Type c:\windows and press Enter. The windows screen appears.
Navigate to you ceedata.ini file, right-click and select Properties. The Ceedata.ini Properties screen appears.
Select the Security tab. A list of Groups or user names appear.
Select the relevant group. The Permissions for <security group> are updated.
Ensure the Full Control Permission is set to Allow.

What if the Ceedata.ini does not exist for the user?

For users on a small business server environment, run a workstation setup. For details see Running a Contacts or Client Compliance workstation setup

For users on a terminal server environment, copy a ceedata.ini file from the home path of a user not seeing the error to the user's home path that is receiving the error.