RoboHELP 8.0.2 and windows 7.0

[Guest]

Hi all,

We're running RH8.0.2 and are on XP service pack 3. We're being asked to upgrade to windows 7.0 in the near future.

So does robohelp 8.0.2 run ok under windows 7.0 or are there any problems I should be aware of ?

Thanks

Steve

[M_Jha]

Hi,

Officially the latest release of RoboHelp, Adobe RoboHelp 9 supports Windows7.

Thanks

[Peter Grainge]

RoboHelp 8 was also supported on Windows 7 but only on 32 bit machines.

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[EileenPalsson]

True, it is officially supported, but there are problems, especially in combination with RoboSource Control -- see other threads.

For example, Windows Explorer crashes constantly.

To anybody else out there reading this thread: Check into it more thoroughly before upgrading to Windows 7. I recently upgraded to Windows 7 (32-bit) and deeply regret it.

If anybody knows of a list of troubleshooting topics for RoboHelp 8.0.2 on Windows 7, please post it here.

Thanks!

Eileen

[Captiv8r]

Hi Eileen

Wishing I had more to offer here. Unfortunately RoboHelp 8 runs fine on my Windows 7 64 bit. Actually running better than 9 is for me at this point!

Does anything change if you take Source Control out of the picture? (I'm wondering if it's Source Control making it gag)

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links RoboHelp Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Begin learning RoboHelp HTML 7, 8 or 9 within the day! Adobe Certified RoboHelp HTML Training SorcerStone Blog RoboHelp eBooks

[Gravenstein]

We have RH8. To combat our Win 7 (32-bit)/ Windows Explorer crashing problem, we removed RoboSource Control and the extendscript utility. We also disabled automatic checking for updates. My group had a BAD problem with the crashing, but making these changes cured it.

A couple of other observations...  Early on, it appeared that Visio, SnagIt, and Adobe Air were implicated, as there were suspicious errors in the logs. When I uninstalled all three, my problems stopped. (And I still had RoboSource Control installed then.) However, at the suggestion of one of our IT folks, I changed my display driver, and the crashing started all over again, worse than ever. (There's that lesson again, "If it ain't broke...") I was unable to replicate my earlier success with removing Visio,etc. It wasn't until I removed RoboSource Control and company, as described above, that my Explorer crashes stopped again.

Just thought I'd share, in case this helps someone else.

G

[Peter Grainge]

Interesting. Way back in RoboHelp's history there was a crashing problem that people often attributed to RoboHelp but it was found to be a display driver issue. My thinking here is that Eileen's problems started when she upgraded to Windows 7 and that would have meant new display drivers.

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[EileenPalsson]

THANK YOU, Gravenstein, for those leads. I am still struggling with the crashing problem on my 32-bit Windows 7 PC. So far I've been disabling Windows services as suggested by others, and for one entire day I was crash-free. However, when I reactivated some of the other services (which supposedly weren't causing the problem and which our IT dept. says I need) the next day, the crashes began again and I haven't been able to stop them again. There may have been some other temporary change someplace else that didn't have anything to do with the services I was disabling. Crud.

Anyway, now I have a few more clues. I will post back here when I find the remedy to my problems. To be continued.....

/Eileen

P.S. I'm quite sure that the problem has something to do with RH or (more likely) RoboSource. My system is quite stable when I'm working on a RH project that is not kept in RSC. But what else can I do - we are a team that is working on a big project with several authors. I don't know of any other source control programs that we can use with multi-author RH projects. (I'll have to start shopping around for one, obviously, if we can't find another solution to this problem. And maybe we'll ditch RH, while we're at it.) Adobe, WAKE UP!

[Peter Grainge]

Eileen

Is it just your machine that has this problem or is it happening to your other authors and are they on different types of PC? I'm picking up on Gravenstein's point that the problem went away when she changed the video driver, at least until she then made other changes.

I'm not trying to shift blame before anyone suggests that. It's just that while others have seen problems, things are working for most people which does make an environment or project problem more likely.

Can your IT people put you on another different type of machine temporarily to see if that crashes with the same project? I appreciate it is not a five minute task but in the absence of anything else working, it might be preferable to switching to another HAT as that will take much longer.

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[EileenPalsson]

Thanks for your post back, Peter. My colleagues who have Win7 (32-bit) have the same problems. The one team member who has not yet switched from WinXP but works on the same projects with us does not have this problem. And I did not have any problems until I switched to from XP to Windows 7, though I'm working on the exact same projects as before.

I can see the point that it could be a driver or something else on the Windows 7 PC that is causing it to crash. But in that case it seems to be a conflict with RH + RSC, because there are no crashes until I open RH8 + RSC.

Enough people are having these problems that it seems like Adobe would want to figure out what is going on and let people know what the specific conflicts are. It's easy enough to switch to another driver or disable a specific Windows service or something. The hard part is figuring out what to change.

[Captiv8r]

Hi Eileen

Actually, if you are in a medium to large organization, the fact the same issues occur on your colleague's machines makes total sense because companies generally acquire hardware in bulk configurations. Further, they often have their own "stamp" or base configuration of the operating system so that all of them are identical. While this is great for support purposes, it can cause real headaches when chasing a problem such as this.

Question for you here. Is this a new PC for you? Or did they simply load up Windows 7 on existing PCs?

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links RoboHelp Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Begin learning RoboHelp HTML 7, 8 or 9 within the day! Adobe Certified RoboHelp HTML Training SorcerStone Blog RoboHelp eBooks

[EileenPalsson]

Exactly, Rick. We are definitely getting the same basic setup, including drivers, anti-virus, and all that. So it does make perfect sense that we all have the same problems. If we had someone who didn't have these problems, I'd be looking at his PC to see what was different about it.

At least our IT department is interested in our problem and is willing to change/disable/adjust whatever is causing this -- once we figure it out.

These are brand new, powerful PCs we got.

/Eileen

[Peter Grainge]

So maybe they all have the same video driver? Sorry to harp back to that one but it did fix things for Gravenstein.

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Captiv8r]

Hi all

Personally, I have a gut feeling that Peter has something. Although I'm not 100% convinced it lies with the video drivers. It may well be, but it's also worth checking something else.

Hurting my pea sized brain here as what I'm about to say goes back a loooong way. I recall deploying Windows 98 (OUCH!) and we ran into a dickens of a time with crashes galore with the software the company I worked for had created. And the regular "fix" was to completely disable a feature called "Hardware Acceleration". I've not heard of it in a long while, but it's worth trying (if you are able).

Click the link below for information on how to adjust this in Windows 7.

Click here to view

Best of luck to you! Rick

Helpful and Handy Links RoboHelp Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Begin learning RoboHelp HTML 7, 8 or 9 within the day! Adobe Certified RoboHelp HTML Training SorcerStone Blog RoboHelp eBooks

[Gravenstein]

The video driver is a good lead to follow, but let me reiterate that updating the video driver was a BAD thing, in my case. After my initial fixes, my PC had been behaving, and then with the new driver, the crashing started all over again.

A couple of other comments...We didn't have to be actually running RoboSource Control to have a problem. In fact, we haven't been using it for a while. Just having it installed was enough. Now, that might be due to the RSC services that are associated, but I did still experience crashes with the services turned off. Also, I'd encourage you to check your PC error logs. That was where I initally found Visio, SnagIt, and Adobe AIR errors that looked like they were linked to the Windows Explorer crashes.

Oh, and try turning off the RH option for automatically checking for updates. Every time I got notified of a Flash update, Windows Explorer crashed.

HTH,

G

[Peter Grainge]

My apologies to all, I misread that post, he says with a very red face.

That said this has been escalated to Adobe so hopefully they will be able to suggest something.

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Gravenstein]

No need for the red face, Peter! The answer might very well lie in finding and using the right driver. Heaven knows, our IT guy thought that it would be our answer. It wasn't, as it happened.

On the flip side, finding a solution that worked for us earned me a big hug from a grateful developer! (Like I said, we had it bad.)

G

[EileenPalsson]

I agree - it was worth a shot, as was reducing Hardware Acceleration. I tried that first, but the Change settings button was disabled because my driver did not have any adjustable settings.

So I attempted to update the driver automatically, but Windows said that the (Windows) driver was the latest one for my monitor.

So then I went online and downloaded a different driver from the manufacturer of my monitor (LG) and installed that, and rebooted.

Result: It made no difference whatsoever, and there was still no possibility to reduce Hardware Acceleration.

But it was worth a try and I appreciate all suggestions!

Meantime, I've been contacted by Adobe so hopefully there will be an end to this soon. I will post back with the results, eventually. (I don't expect the solution can be found overnight.)

Thanks, all!

Eileen

P.S. I also tried turning off the Adobe auto update function. (I try everything I read here.) No difference.

[EileenPalsson]

Ok, people! 

I got a solution from an Adobe developer, and it is working for us -- at least so far.

A recap of the problems we were having: Having RoboSource Control installed on Windows 7 can cause these symptoms:

• Windows Explorer crashes frequently.
• RoboHelp also crashes occasionally.
• Microsoft Office programs and Internet Explorer crash.
• Skype crashes occasionally

Note: These symptoms can occur even if you do not use RoboSource. So, for example, if you installed Technical Communication Suite 2, where RoboSource is included by default, you can have these problems. The first two bullets above happened on 32-bit Windows 7 at our company; the second two on 64-bit Windows 7 (where RoboSource was not being used, though it was installed with TCS2). I would consider any crashing problems on Windows 7 a prompt to use the below procedure. (Especially since it's easy to undo if the problems aren't solved.)

Solution: Use this procedure to unregister three DLLs.

1. (Find out your local installation path to RoboSource Control. It is probably C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Technical Communication Suite 2\Adobe RoboSource Control 3.1 or C:\Program Files\Adobe\RoboSource Control 3.)
2. Select Start > All Programs > Accessories.
3. Right-click Command Prompt and select Run as administrator.
4. If the User Account Control dialog is displayed, click Yes.
5. At the command prompt, type this:
   regsvr32 /u "<Path To RoboSource Control Directory>\FileTime.dll"
   Replace <Path To RoboSource Control Directory> with the path where RoboSource Control is installed.
6. Press Enter. You should see a confirmation that the DLL has been successfully unregistered.
7. Do the same for DirBkgndExt.dll.
   Tip: Instead of typing that whole command again, press F3 to repeat the previous command. Then back up and just replace the DLL name.
8. Do the same for NGMenu.dll.
9. Reboot.

This should solve the problems.

Explanation: When RoboSource Control is installed, it installs some Shell Extensions. These are the DLLs that are integrated with Windows Explorer. If they crash for any reason, then Windows Explorer can also crash.

There is little functionality loss from within RoboHelp if you unregister these DLLs. They provide some capability in Windows Explorer where from right-click menu you can perform some RSC functions. Most of us do not use them anyway. But if needed, the above shell extensions can be registered again by running those commands without the /u option.

Hope this helps others!

Eileen

Message was edited by: EileenPalsson - added info about 64-bit Windows, plus additional symptoms.