Force Update == Crash

[______3]

After getting one file imported and working I auto-created a TOC and Index.

I also created a folder within my project and moved the Frame file into that folder.

Following these (seemingly innocuous) operations I can no longer 'force update' without crashing the application; however I can generate help. The 'force update' operation crashes the application consistently.

Each time, it crashes at the end or the operation when the status bar indicates 'Updating FrameMaker File'.

Frame is open when the crash occurs. I tried having the actual file open, and the book, etc, ; however these states made no difference the application still crashed.

[octechwriter]

I'm experiencing this, also. Same conditions. Hopefully, someone is looking into this.

[voxwoman_]

I am getting an out of memory error during an update or force update operation as well - and all I'm doing is changing the style sheets and mappings.

EDIT: I have now experienced the same thing you are. RH7 dies during a forced update.

[JainVivek]

RoboHelp maintains special rights for FrameMaker files that are added as live links. Probably the move operation is breaking the link.

[voxwoman_]

I wasn't doing any move operations - only importing a frame file by reference, and then doing a forced update. To test this, I reduced the frame file to a heading tag and a body tag (2 paragraphs on 1 page with the words "test" in them), and it still crashes.

[______3]

I had a project break in this way on me yesterday. It no longer updates. Using 7.01.001

[Daniel_F2]

I got it too:

"The instruction at "0x7830511c" referenced memory at "0x0000000c". The memory could not be "read".

What do you expect from a null pointer?

This is URGENT!

[Daniel_F2]

Further to this: I noticed that the forced update actually carried out the update before RH crashed. What was missing were the variables! See my post on this list, "Forced update ignoring changed FM variables".

[LoneTechWriter]

Hello,

Did you get an answer for this? A patch? A tip ?

This happens to me just today when I was updating my book. I am using FrameMaker 8.0 and the last updates are loaded.

I tried moving the files, closing all other applications, removing the ckl (or clk) file, ... Opening is sometimes OK but never updating.

I also get this error message when opening the files *.fm "already in use".

Someone has an answer? I tried looking in the forums but could not find anything remotely concerning the problem but the freewheel stuff.

Thanks for helping me out!

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Not only can I get RH8 to fail on the Force Update, I can get it to crash catastrophically in a Windows error!

I'm using the TCS 2.0 with FM9 and RH8. I have one master book in FM that consists of 4 .fm docs and 60 sub-books. Each of the sub-books has 4 .fm docs within them. Those docs are fairly empty right now (since we're just starting the authoring process) but are expected to run 50-200 pages each when finished.

Even trying to do the initial linking to a project this size is causing issues - RH seems to choke on large FM books. At first I thought it was the network causing issues, so I created local c:\ RH projects to test that (while still continuing to pull the FM content off the network). That didn't work either, so I copied the FM content locally too - still no luck.

I contacted Adobe Support and they suggested shortening the FM filenames to remove any spaces and ampersands that I had been using. After doing that I had better luck initially linking the master.book, but RH will still choke when doing an Update when it gets about 50 sub-books into the task. At that point you get the silly "Import session failed. If this error continues please contact Technical Support" with an OK button to continue. Clicking OK still lets the "Processing FrameMaker Document(s)" dialog continue processing, but it racks up immediately on the next .fm doc with the same message. Sometimes RH will just shut itself down after repeated OK's; sometimes it appears that it has completed, but if you do a Save or Save All, a Windows error is thrown, and you are kicked out.

Just to experiment, I tried doing an import of the FM files (I know RJ all told us never to do this in his eLearning session, since it defeats the point of the workflow, but a broken workflow doesn't accomplish anything either!) I had better luck importing, but RH threw a message each time it tried to process a FM sub-book, saying something like "Unable to open xxxx.book. Not a valid FM book or FM not installed." This wasn't true at all because I had my copy of FM9 open in the background, and opening the offending book in FM worked fine. There was an OK button to continue and after clicking 60 times, it appeared to have finished.

Since this isn't the way we were intending to work, I'm still experimenting with initially chopping out some of the sub-books in FM and then linking it in a new RH project. So far it hasn't crashed, but now my masterTOC and masterIX files aren't being converted into RH TOC and Index files (even though I've told it to do this in the Properties > Content Settings tab of the master.book in the RH Project Manager). I'm going to go back into FM and add more sub-books to see if RH will choke on them when the project is Updated.

[______3]

After a whole lot of frustration, following these steps helped me to get my RH7 project going in RH8.

For those of you migrating from 7 to 8 and experiencing crashes, this may help.

Qualifications:

• I make a copy of my project for each new release and work from the copy, if you do this too, or if you have done so to 'test' an existing project in 8.0 then read on.
• I create HTML Help
• Be sure you have updated your Frame files to 9 and your book is clean.

Note: Your mileage may vary.

Procedure

RH has several places where it embeds the complete path to several key files. You need to change these paths in order to get your project working properly.

1. To find these instances, search your project directory, using windows 'in files' option, for some unique portion of your path.

You will get a list of a handful of files. Open each of these files in a 'real' text editor (e.g. not notepad) and note the 'encoding format' of each (e.g. UTF-8).

2. Search and replace to correct the path in each of these files and be sure to save the file in the encoding format it was originally in (typically UTF-8).

3. Next you have to hack the <ProjectName>.cpd file in access,

3a. In the file '<ProjectName>.cpd' search and replace, in the 'RSRHFMDocList' table, to correct any incorrect paths.

While in there, you might as well check to see if you need to fix your variables list as well. RH8 seems to have an aversion to underscores...

3b. In the file '<ProjectName>.cpd' search and replace with a blank any underscore character in the 'Variables' table.

3c. In the file 'rhvariable.apj' search and replace with a blank any underscore character.

Entries in these last two steps should match.

Open the project and give Force Update a shot.