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A
AIR-Chayah
Inspiring
October 13, 2014
Answered

Critical: Adobe RoboHelp 11 has stopped working from Visual Studio Professional 2010 Source Control

  • October 13, 2014
  • 2 replies
  • 736 views

We have contacted Adobe for assistance, but I also wanted to post this question in case someone has experienced this and can quickly provide a solution.


Environment

Windows 7 Enterprise

RoboHelp 11.0.3.268

Generating WebHelp

Team Foundation Server

Visual Studio Professional 2010 Source Control

Problem

I'm the original author of the Touchstone Help system. Last week we started getting two colleagues on board to work with me. On their systems, we configured RoboHelp to work with TFS in Visual Studio using MSSCI Provider 2010.

The original project had lots of conditional build tags. I removed them all and the expressions and checked everything into Source Control. When my colleagues got the latest files from Source Control and opened the project from Version Control, we noticed that their projects still had the conditional build tags along with other items that had long ago been deleted. After some research, we deleted the CPD and PSS files from Source Control and let RoboHelp create them when we opened the project. That solved those problems -- no more conditional build tags in the project.

Last Friday colleague A began experiencing significant problems. When she right-clicked a topic to view properties, RoboHelp stopped working. She has not been able to do anything in RoboHelp since.

That same day I attempted to look at the Version Control settings (which I'd had no problem accessing all week). RoboHelp crashed as soon as I clicked Tools > Options. Colleague B experienced the same problem today.

This morning I experienced colleague A's problem.

Bottom line: we are suddenly not able to run RoboHelp 11.

Our in-house Help desk person tried running the Visual Studio debugger. We get "An unhandled win32 exception in RoboHtml.exe [5404]". We also unhandled exceptions at various address with an Access violation reading location hex address.

After looking at Willem's site that lists the RoboHelp updates, we thought about installing them, but we were not sure whether to install ALL the patches or only Patch 11.0.3. If all the patches, we were not sure whether to install them in a particular sequence.

Many thanks for any assistance any of you can provide while we also wait to hear from Adobe Support.

Carol

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Peter Grainge

I was recently advised that the patches have now changed and you only need to install the latest.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

2 replies

A
AIR-ChayahAuthor
Inspiring
October 15, 2014

Update

Here's how we resolved the problem:

  • Closed RoboHelp 11.
  • Found an old CPD file in Visual Studio Source Control that we thought had been deleted last Friday October 10.
  • Deleted the old CPD file from Source Control.
  • Deleted/renamed the CPD file in each of our local workspaces.
  • Opened RoboHelp 11. Everything works correctly. No Win32 exceptions.

Thanks, everyone, for all your suggestions, and for many of your old posts that helped me to see that the CPD was probably a big part of the problem.

Along the way we also learned about the patches -- thanks, Willem and Peter -- and installed the latest patch. The files installed with our RoboHelp 11 are more up-to-date than the files in the other patches.

Best regards,

Carol Levine

Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Peter GraingeCommunity Expert
Community Expert
October 15, 2014

My understanding is that you should not be checking the CPD in.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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A
AIR-ChayahAuthor
Inspiring
October 15, 2014

Good morning, Peter.

We thought we had removed the CPD file from source control last Friday when we were removing the files noted in your snippet. We don't know what happened to the Delete status on the file, but are very happy to have found it and deleted it.

The odd thing is that we had all set RoboHelp to delete the file automatically.

Thanks again.

Carol

Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE smartphone

Willam van Weelden
Willam van Weelden
Inspiring
October 14, 2014

Hi,

Installing the patches is always a good idea. I'd normally advise to first install 11.0.1, then 11.0.2 and then 11.0.3.

When you say your colleague can't do anything in RoboHelp, does that mean for this particular project? Or do other RoboHelp project still work? Try the example projects or create a new project. Do you experience the same issue?

In TFS, which files were changed right before you started experiencing problems? Perhaps one of the FPJ or APJ files became corrupted.

Kind regards,

Willam

Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Peter GraingeCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
October 14, 2014

I was recently advised that the patches have now changed and you only need to install the latest.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

Use the menu (bottom right) to mark the Best Answer or Highlight particularly useful replies. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here.
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