RoboHelp 6.0 crashes on opening RH X5 projects

You are so gracious eNerd. I spent hours trying to resolve this working with one of your colleagues. With the project I was sent that demonstrated the problem on my PC, I found a solution that worked on my installation.

OK it didn't work for you but the emphasis on OUR IT team as opposed to others here who spent their free time trying to assist indicates that you have no gratitude for the effort.

Good luck next time you encounter difficulties.

What you eventually found was not conclusive that RH was the cause.

A shot in the dark -- do you have any file names that contain spaces or special characters? I think of special characters as anything besides hyphen and underscore.

Also, no extra dots, such as weekday.monday.htm.


H

If you ever installed the RH X5.02 upgrade, you must uninstall it separately. Perhaps you have already done so.

If you had installed RoboPDF with X5, did you uninstall it? Did you run the RoboPDF cleanup utility?

In addition to the recommended registry cleanup, did you try searching the registry for any stray RoboHelp and eHelp entries that may remain?

Also, please clarify: Earlier you said it works if you kill the hhk file, but it crashes after you create a new index. Later you say it varies by user.

If the hhk file is common to all failures, have you checked (assuming you're running Win XP -- you haven't said which OS you use) the file association for the .hhk extension under "Folder Options" in the Control Panel?

Harvey

Hello eNerd -

First of all I am NOT an expert with RH. That being said, I think this is the clue:

"The existing project opens in RoboHelp 6 IF and only if X5 version was not ever installed on that machine."

Just thinking out loud here...could be a DLL, a Register entry, left over X5 files/directories, master boot record entry not correct, a flakey Microsoft patch (the June, July and especially August updates have caused us a number of problems to the point where the updates had to be uninstalled).

Just for grins, could you try reinstalling to a "problem" workstation but NOT accepting the RH default installation directory (try creating C:\RH6)? Also, before doing the install, log in as "Admin" and not a "User" who has full admin privileges.

Regards,
GEWB

You know you have been over them but I don't know what you have been over. There's no "of course" about it.

First I have ramped this up for you with Adobe. It's not something we do often but it seemed to be needed here.

Second, please accept my assurance, and bear in mind I see every post on these forums, that this has not come to light before. I've upgraded loads of projects and not hit this, not even once.

Third, I offered to try to open one of your projects and I have a pretty good track record. No guarantees but it must be worth a try.

Hello eNerd,

I apologize that you had a difficult support experience. I assure you that this is not the norm. Hopefully either Peter or I can help you out.

At this point, I see three possible failure points:
• RoboHelp itself
• The project you are working with
• A 3rd part application/service conflicting with RoboHelp

With the information you provided, I am unable to determine which one is the culprit. Let’s try opening up one of the sample project provided with RoboHelp 6. If this works, then we know for sure that RoboHelp and or any 3rd party items on the system are fine.

I will also collect the project from Peter once you have distributed to him to see if I can help identify any issue(s) with the project itself.


Thank you,

Bobby Walker
Adobe Technical Support

Let me make it clear I am not an Adobe employee, I am a user like yourself. You are the first to report anything like this problem with the crashing on opening so I would urge you to hold off any such comment for now. Such comment would only be reasonable if it were common. I am not saying it is anything to do with your projects but it is a possibility.

On the support issue, I have flagged your observations with a senior person at Adobe.

I can understand your frustration but posting it here will not get you anywhere with Adobe as they do not monitor these forums. Let's first try to deal with this constructively. Do you have a project that fails in this way every time and that you could send to me? If you do, please post the size of it zipped up and I will see what happens when I open it.

Would you please also advise the following:

Are these projects on a network? If they are have you tried moving them locally to see what happens then?

Was RH installed with the users logon and with admin rights attached?

Is there any form of source control being used?

Have you tried on at least one PC uninstalling and reinstalling with your virus checker disabled? Yes I know everyone blames the virus checker, I'm not but it has to be considered. What virus checker do you use?