RoboHelp 2020.8.34 CHM isn't opening in Windows 11

Forum|Forum|8 months ago
May 28, 2025
2 replies
440 views

I have been creating CHMs using RH 2020 for several years now. All of a sudden, the help file won't open within the application. We recently upgraded to Windows 11. Is there some compatibility issue with Win 11 all of a sudden?

Output presets

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

I believe this is an issue related to where you are running the CHMs (on a server) rather than the upgrade to Windows 11.

See https://www.grainge.org/General_Authoring/CHMs/CHMs_on_a_Network.htm where you will see that following an Microsoft update some twenty years ago, CHMs would not work comfortably on a server. There were solutions but you will see that a few years back those did not work either.

Now the CHM must be installed on the user's desktop. I think you need to discuss with your developers where the app the CHM reside. Part of that conversation could be moving to a Frameless output. Going forward Adobe will be focussing development on frameless outputs so I recommend considering frameless templates for your project. Other than bug fixes, it is unlikely there will be any changes to HTML5 outputs. The calls for frameless outputs are different using URLs so you need to discuss that with your developers if you use context sensitive help.

________________________________________________________

My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

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

Kathy Zem

Participating Frequently

Thank you everyone for your feedback. Since the project is so old (created 25+ years ago!) and they're planning on sunsetting the program, no one wanted to invest time in changing code. I am not skilled enough or confident enough to do it myself. What I ended up doing so to go to a backup I had from when the CHM was working and rebuild it slowly until I got an almost completely updated CHM.

FYI, I found an article on GitHub with the same topic that I linked here: https://github.com/sumatrapdfreader/sumatrapdf/issues/3486

Thank you all so much!

Jeff_Coatsworth

Community Expert

That would be Win11 question, not a RH one. Is the CHM local to the Win11 machine? Is it "unblocked" in its Properties?

K

KathyZemAuthor

Participant

Hi Jeff,

Yes the CHM is generated on a Win11 machine and then copied/pasted over to the application folder on a virtual machine with Win 11 Server on it. Where can I find if it's blocked? I've having trouble finding that.

Jeff_Coatsworth

Community Expert

Right-click on the file - Properties - but CHMs on servers have to have special rights granted to them from the server end of things iirc - they're such antique tech that MS plugged security holes in them years ago.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded