Having in the past week passed all my usual tests for web browsing IE9 was sent off to users for UAT (my confidence was pretty strong as that group included my management and general managers 
). Yet I wasn’t surprised to find something in SAP was broken, because advanced SAP users always break something. Until the day my dream of eliminating SAP GUI becomes a reality I had to fix the issue. The component that was broken was advanced reporting functions that hook into the SAP GUI. Although this worked fine in IE8 on IE9 users were receiving a message “Do you want to open or save tx.sapssd from sap url?
A quick search of this prompt found many people experiencing this same issue on earlier versions of IE when file registration was configured for the extension .sapssd. There was no file registration information for this extension, and re-installing SAP GUI didn’t make the error go away. So I wondered what is the IE8 and IE9 version doing differently?
To do this i went to my all time favourite tool ProcMon (http://live.sysinternals.com/ProcMon.exe) and set a filter where “Path” Contains “.sapssd”
I just refreshed the page and did not click Open Save or Cancel and looked at the ProcMon log. What I notice
1) The file gets created in the temporary cache area
2) HKCR\.sapssd and HKCU\.sapssd are both checked to see if file extension is registered, but it is not
3) The registry entry HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.sapssd is created (not shown in below screenshot)
4) After that pretty much nothing exciting happens, even if you click Open you just get prompted what app to open it with
I then launched a ThinApp’ed (http://www.vmware.com/products/thinapp/overview.html) instance of IE8 on the same machine to compare the difference:
The launch was almost exactly the same, except this time the key HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.sapssd did not get recreated
Importantly we got to a point where SAP GUI was launched:
With the first instance of saplogon.exe selected I then reset my ProcMon filter using Ctrl+R so I could work back to find out how IE new to load saplogon.exe:
Actually I had a lot of events to go through, I just wanted to get to start of saplogon.exe so I hit Ctrl+T to bring up Process Tree, then found saplogon.exe and clicked ‘Go To Event’ This took me to the Process Start even for the process.
At this point I just wanted to find the Internet Explorer events again so I right clicked Internet Explorer and chose include
I scrolled up through a few pages of events until I saw what I was looking for. A CLSID entry – this can trigger the app to launch. Right clicking the Registry Value I used the “Jump To” option to take me straight there…
An export of this key demonstrated this was what I wanted to launch. The key is included below for the benefit of anyone who ever has SAP nightmares again. But in this case the value I looked at here was the default value for CLSID\{83658045-6571-3232-7082-797884697869}\ProgID which gave me SAPFront.App I then also found and exported HKCR\SAPFront.App
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{83658045-6571-3232-7082-797884697869}]
“SapCreateKey”=dword:00000000
@=”SAP Logon Application”
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{83658045-6571-3232-7082-797884697869}\AuxUserType]
“SapCreateKey”=dword:00000000
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{83658045-6571-3232-7082-797884697869}\AuxUserType\2]
“SapCreateKey”=dword:00000000
@=”SAP Logon”
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{83658045-6571-3232-7082-797884697869}\AuxUserType\3]
“SapCreateKey”=dword:00000000
@=”saplogon”
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{83658045-6571-3232-7082-797884697869}\DefaultExtension]
“SapCreateKey”=dword:00000000
@=”.gui, Filetype (*.gui)”
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{83658045-6571-3232-7082-797884697869}\DefaultIcon]
“SapCreateKey”=dword:00000000
@=”\”C:\\Program Files\\SAP\\FrontEnd\\Sapgui\\saplogon.exe\”,0″
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{83658045-6571-3232-7082-797884697869}\DocObject]
“SapCreateKey”=dword:00000000
@=”0″
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{83658045-6571-3232-7082-797884697869}\InprocHandler32]
“SapCreateKey”=dword:00000000
@=”ole32.dll”
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{83658045-6571-3232-7082-797884697869}\Insertable]
“SapCreateKey”=dword:00000000
@=””
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{83658045-6571-3232-7082-797884697869}\LocalServer32]
“SapCreateKey”=dword:00000000
@=”\”C:\\Program Files\\SAP\\FrontEnd\\Sapgui\\saplogon.exe\” /Inplace”
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{83658045-6571-3232-7082-797884697869}\MiscStatus]
“SapCreateKey”=dword:00000000
@=”32″
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{83658045-6571-3232-7082-797884697869}\Printable]
“SapCreateKey”=dword:00000000
@=””
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{83658045-6571-3232-7082-797884697869}\ProgID]
“SapCreateKey”=dword:00000000
@=”SAPFront.App”
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{83658045-6571-3232-7082-797884697869}\Verb]
“SapCreateKey”=dword:00000000
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{83658045-6571-3232-7082-797884697869}\Verb]
“SapCreateKey”=dword:00000000
@=”&Edit,0,2″
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{83658045-6571-3232-7082-797884697869}\Verb\1]
“SapCreateKey”=dword:00000000
@=”&Open,0,2″
; SapFront.App
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SapFront.App]
“SapCreateKey”=dword:00000000
@=”SAP Logon Application”
“EditFlags”=hex:00,00,01,00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SapFront.App\CLSID]
“SapCreateKey”=dword:00000000
@=”{83658045-6571-3232-7082-797884697869}”
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SapFront.App\DocObject]
“SapCreateKey”=dword:00000000
@=”0″
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SapFront.App\Insertable]
“SapCreateKey”=dword:00000000
@=””
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SapFront.App\protocol]
“SapCreateKey”=dword:00000000
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SapFront.App\protocol\StdFileEditing]
“SapCreateKey”=dword:00000000
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SapFront.App\protocol\StdFileEditing\server]
“SapCreateKey”=dword:00000000
@=”\”C:\\Program Files\\SAP\\FrontEnd\\Sapgui\\saplogon.exe\””
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SapFront.App\protocol\StdFileEditing\verb]
“SapCreateKey”=dword:00000000
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SapFront.App\protocol\StdFileEditing\verb]
“SapCreateKey”=dword:00000000
@=”&Edit”
~
OK but the strange part is – these keys exist on the machine with IE9? Why aren’t the working? This time I went back to Ie9 and hit F12 to bring up the most wonderful developer toolbar I’ve ever found in a browser. On the Network tab I hit Start
What do we find here…HOW AWESOME IS THIS INFORMATION? I don’t have to go and download & install Fiddler for some basic analysis. Great. This file it’s trying to download has a fancy MIME type… application/vnd.sap-gui
I then went back to ProcMon and hit Ctrl+F to search on application/vnd.sap-gui
Sure enough Internet Explorer 9 had looked for it but come up short:
I created the following registry key to register the MIME type to the CLSID I had found earlier:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME\Database\Content Type\application/vnd.sap-gui]
“CLSID”=”{83658045-6571-3232-7082-797884697869}”
After adding this key I immediately refreshed IE9 without restarting:
and instantly SAP menu is back alive & kicking
The best part, all done without reverting my UAT user back to IE8. Despite the “end of financial year pressure” (We operate on Japanese financial new year, so the end is two days away) 
I hate to go backwards…
chentiangemalc 
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This saved me hours of research and worked first time.
Any idea what IE9 did that broke it in the first place? I can’t believe that IE9’s install would have mucked with those registry entries.
I don’t believe IE9 trashed the reg key, it was not required for previous versions of IE. I believe this is increased security in IE9 as it verifies MIME types downloaded against registered applications. I think in earlier versions of IE this was always recommended practice but wasn’t enforced.
Awesome, thankyou for this!!! I searched SAP’s OSS site and sdn.sap.com and couldn’t find any solutions so I’m very happy to find this solution.
I found that I have to have the sapgui running already in order for this to work though. If it’s not already running on the PC then I still get the prompt to save the file.
Thanks again,
Robin
You need SAP GUI installed but you shouldn’t need it running. What version of SAP GUI are you using?
First step would be to make sure no file registrations exist by removing the following keys if the exist:
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.sapssd
HKCR\.sapssd
HKCU\.sapssd
In particular the top one, which will get created automatically if you have tried opening these files without the MIME type fix.
If you still get the problem after that let me know.
Hey thanks for the reply.
I’m running 7200.2.5.1057, build 1230744, patch level 5.
If I don’t have saplogon running then I get the prompt that says ‘Do you want to save tx.sapssd from xxxx.xx.xx’ and it only has the option to Save or Cancel.
If I have saplogon running already then it opens up the SAP session fine.
I’ve now deleted the entries that you specified above and have verified that I no longer have any .sapssd related entries in the registry. Still the same issue, any other ideas?
Thanks for your help.
Regards,
Robin
Thank you so much. It all worked perfectly after following your very well layed out explanation. Top Marks to you. I picked up some additional info on using ProcMon more thoroughly, and the IE9 info on the developer toolbar.
Regards,
Mag.
Wow. That is briljant! Very cool to read how you troubleshot the problem. And it works like a charm.
Marcel
Pingback: Case of the IE8 Download Opening with Wrong Application | chentiangemalc
thanks!
michael
Just a quick FYI – SAP has released a note on this now:
Note 1592282 – SAP EP / NWBC: starting SAP GUI via SSD iView on IE9 failed
Thanks for your previous help!
Regards,
Robin
Thank you for your good information.
In my case, it did not work. Is it because I am using 64bit windows 7 with IE9 ?
When I searched in my registry, there is no information about the class-id: 83658045-6571-3232-7082-797884697869 under the key “HKCR\CLSID\”, but I could see the ID under “HKCR\SapFront.App\CLSID” & “HKCR\Wow6432Node\CLSID\” only.
Do I have to register more information except what you taught ?
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME\Database\Content Type\application/vnd.sap-gui]
“CLSID”=”{83658045-6571-3232-7082-797884697869}”
Thank you for your research and fix! Great work
THANK YOU! you are the man ;)
Hi, I am having a similar problem with tx.sap, through win 7 ie9. we are using the sap portal to login. using your excellent guidance, it looks to be using application/x-sapshortcut with the same clsid above. I put the entry in the registry which changed the behaviour a bit. i now get a popup window asking me to open, save or cancel, then after saying open, it continues with the do yo u want to open tx.sap bar at the bottom as before but without the open option. any thoughts on what i could try. cheers
1) Make sure HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.sapssd does not exist already
2) if you copy/pasted the reg file from my site i just realized web press has messed up my quotes, re-type those quotes as straight-down quotes.
also what version of SAP are you using?
If you run http://live.sysinternals.com/ProcMon.exe and filter on IExplore.exe you need to look for file extension registrations / or CLSID registry queries just before you get the do you want to open or save prompt? If those are missing…then you may have a problem.
I would also try applying my fix on machine which nobody has yet launched SAP. If this works then it is likely some other key got created (like the HKU one mentioned above causing the problem)
What a solution … You save me a lot of time.
We get this save this file when users try to print from the internet portal for sap 7.20 on windows 7 and i think it asks to launch excel viewer to print what the users are working on in sap via the portal.
Thanks for the great post — I actually got here looking for something else but read the whole article once the ProcMon tips started flowing! Great info on using that tool more effectively.
Thanx , you saved my time…
chentiangemalc –
I want to preface this message with, I am not a developer, but an IT professional trying to deploy SAP 7.20 on Windows 2008 Server R2 (64 bit), Office 2010 (32 bit), via Citrix XenApp. Here’s my issue. The company uses the Enterprise Portal to launch SAP and all of its components. If you launch any of the SAP components devoid of the portal, everything works as expected. If you launch them via the Enterprise Portal, nothing works as expected. Some components may launch, but do not operate properly. If you launch SAP GUI from the portal link, and do a Help, about, system information, it shows Windows 2000. From the same server, if you launch the SAPLOGON.EXE by itself, help, about, system info, it shows Windows 2008. I dont understand where its pulling this. One component in question is BEx Analyzer/Reporter. If you launch it by itself, works fine. If you launch it via the portal, comes up with an error stating “The Operating System is not configured to run this application”. This is a very generic error, and since I am not a SAP developer, its like finding a needle in a haystack. All the issues seem to be the SAP Enterprise Portal and I am out of ideas. I appreciate any assistance you can provide.
Thanks,
Kyle
If you have SAP support account you should refer to this article for known issues on SAP & Citrix deployment https://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/0000138869?nlang=E
as well as these Citrix Knowledge bases
http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX127399
http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX126941
When running under SAP GUI under Portal or from the server directly are you using the same user account in both cases? Typically an application would report an older version OS if it was running in compatibility mode.
If none of these help…If you are able to run ProcMon on the server (but should be careful as it may impact performance while running) you can capture the ProcMon of when it works & when it doesn’t work. From that you may get clues as to why it’s not working. If you get the logs and can’t see anything obvious drop me a msg here and I’ll give you a location to upload the logs and I’ll take a look
regs
malcolm.
Wow, you ROCK!
Hi,
I am working as support engineer for a large enterprise, we are in a test phase of IE9. some of the users testing ie9 has encountered ‘Do you want to open or save tx.sapssd’… i checked for the file association but i didn’t find the file type ‘.sapssd’ in the default programs. SAP Version – final Release 7.10 | Version 7100.4.16.3151. I am quite confused whether to do the registry changes you have recommended since your version 7.20. If possible please cut me the required keys i should add again.
thanks
khan
I don’t know the reg keys for 7.10 – but you can use Process Monitor as described in this article to identify what MIME key it is looking for /etc. As I describe “How” I found the solution you could apply the same process to other versions or other applications. However version 7.10 was not designed for Windows 7 and you will probably find even more issues down the track. Windows 7 & Microsoft Office 2010 support was added in 7.20. Also as of April 2011 SAP GUI version 7.10 went out of support, SAP’s advice is to upgrade as soon as possible. Refer to http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/sap-gui
Thanks for the quick response, we are in a process of upgrading to 7.20, however it takes some time due to large no. of users (55000). We are still on Vista and might directly move to win 8 (after service pack 1 releases) I have gone through your procmon procedure and the keys are the same.
Many thanks
Khan
you save my life，thank you very much，so i can use windows 7 sp1 with ie9；
thanks again from Jiangsu China
Hi, I have no issue with “tx.sapssd” file autodownload with IE9, “tx.sapssd” is being used if you want to have SAPGUI opened inside the SAP Portal iView, whereas “tx.sap” file will trigger the BW Report (BEX) from SAP Portal and still have the IE9 message “Save/Save as / Cancel” download message.
The TX.sapssd issue has since been fixed by SAP. If similar issue occurs with other file types the fix will be similar process as here.
This is great ! ! ! thanks for doing all the work, saving us tons of time. I’ve noticed this solution works for Windows 7 32bit but not for 64bit operating systems… any ideas if there is another registry key I have to change for the 64bit OS?
Thank you,
Alex
It should work on x64, are you using 32-bit IE or 64-bit IE? 32-bit IE some requests will be redirected to WoW6432Node keys
Works 100% Win7x64 IE9
once i changed the quotes… IT WORKS!!!! thank you so much
Great! it worked for me as well! I created the KEY
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME\Database\Content Type\application/vnd.sap-gui]
“CLSID”=”{83658045-6571-3232-7082-797884697869}”
Worked for me too. Win7 x32 IE 11
Thanx!! :)