"Parameter is incorrect" error

[Ioana_St]

I am trying to onboard a new joiner on RH HTML  2017 (as part of TCS). The entire department of ~20 people has been using this version successfully since release and previous versions since 2010, but the new joiner gets a "Parameter is incorrect" error when she tries to open the printed documentation dialog. After the error, the window does open, but all the fields (conditional build expression, TOC, glossary etc) are blank. The Generate Word DOC field either displays .doc or is blank as well. (All the other team members also have the docx option.)

Environment:

• TCS 2017 on Windows 7
• OS deployed by IT
• TCS installed manually by us
• Admin rights on our own machines.
• All the files are local, nothing networked.
• We use SVN, but the crash happens for projects outside source control too.
• The crash replicates for the RH samples as well.
• The crash replicates in RH 2015 as well.

I consider myself fairly experienced with RH but this has been stumping me for 3 days! I am fairly sure the problem is with her machine, because she can open the Printed Documentation properties just fine when she remotes into my machine, but I get the error if I remote into hers.

At this point I am not really expecting a solution, just some further brainstorming. So far we have tried:

• Uninstalling and reinstalling (several times).
• Deleting her profile, uninstalling and reinstalling.
• Getting a completely new computer, installing.
• Downloading the kit again and installing.
• Installing TCS 2015.
• Deleting the cpd and pss.
• Creating a new project.
• Duplicating the layout, creating a new layout.
• Changing the Word settings to allow all macros.
• Disabling the antivirus.

None of these has been successful.

I will check with IT again on Monday, just in case something changed in their standard deployment in recent months... but last time I checked with them they were as confused as me (actually, more confused, since I do the tech support part for TCS and they are not usually involved). If anyone has any other ideas I will be happy to try!

[Peter Grainge]

It's a long time since I have seen this and it used to be the case it was project specific and was cured by creating a new project and importing the topics from the one giving grief. Then, as you can see in Item 14 in the Print section of Snippets, it was found using tools to compare project contents that the issue there was the PSS file. However you have tried that. So everything known has been tried.

What stumps me is that you have tried a new computer as well and it still fails with her login and a new login for her. Could IT give you another clean machine or rebuild the same new machine? If they can, make sure you install Word first and run it before installing RoboHelp. Then install RoboHelp with your Adobe ID and you log in. Do you then get the error? If not that points, not conclusively, to her Adobe ID or profile.

Other things, have you applied Update 1 to this machine?

Have you tried a fresh download of TCS 2017 installer files?

You said you remote into her machine. Is that because of physical separation? Makes me wonder how the installation is being done. Are the installation files on her PC rather than running remotely?

Beyond that, you'll just have to let her go!

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring information

@petergrainge

[Ioana_St]

I was hoping I'd see your name here!

So, yeah, I pretty much tried everything. A few answers/notes:

• We haven't tried with a new login for her (we deleted her profile settings, but her user is the same). I don't think IT will want to create a new user, unfortunately (but I will check).
• Word was installed before TCS in each instance. The machines come with Windows and Office installed by IT, and then we install TCS on them ourselves.
• I also checked that we are using 32-bit Word because I know that previous versions of RH had trouble with 64-bit.
• I have applied update 1 and I still get the error.
• I have also tried to re-download the files and I still get the error.
• I remoted into her machine because I could easily do it from my PC without getting up (she sits a couple of desks away), no other reason . When she remotes into mine, everything works fine.
• I also thought that maybe our accounts don't have "enough" admin rights, so I had the IT guy log into her machine (both physically and remotely) and he gets the same error.
• All the files are on her machine. The first time she copied them from a shared folder and the second time she downloaded them from the Adobe site. It didn't make any difference.

My guess is that, in the 6 months between our previous hire and this new joiner, something changed in the IT procedure for deploying new machines. Problem is, they can't think of anything.

The last thing I can think of is tracking done someone who joined the company in the last month or so (in another department) and using him/her as a lab rat. If it happens for him too, I will go back to IT and ask them to think of anything that could be different...

And if not, I will tell her that she's cursed and we can't have that

[Peter Grainge]

OK, a new login might work but it's a new solution if it does.

You say Word was installed first. Yes but was it also opened? I've seen

that cause other issues.

[Ioana_St]

I did open it at some point, but definitely not before the first install. (On the other hand, this was never an issue before... new joiners generally install TCS on the morning of their first day, before doing anything else.)

If I make sure I open Word now and then reinstall, do you think that's enough? Or do I need a new machine again? (I don't think IT would be very happy about that. )

[Peter Grainge]

Probably.

Peter Grainge

www.grainge.org

@petergrainge

[Amebr]

Another couple of thoughts. Are the naming conventions for the new PC and the new person the same as yours? For example, one place I worked, they changed the naming conventions to include a dot separator in user names joe.smith instead of jsmith. And this caused problems in a couple of programs (not Robohelp in that case, but it's something to consider). Or maybe they changed the PC naming convention and RH is for some reason croaking because of that. Or maybe the Users directory (including My documents) has been moved to a network drive since the last hire, and that is causing issues?

[Ioana_St]

Amebr - The naming conventions are the same (for the users and for the machines). We don't use network drives for anything related to RH.

However! I have made a little bit of progress. I compared the software installed on other PCs to the software installed on the new person's PC and I noticed that she didn't have the C++ 2013 redistributables. I installed those and it looks a bit better - the existing layouts open and are populated with data.

Overall, the printed doc still doesn't work: even though the layouts open, the format is set to .doc and if you click Next, you get an error about docx not being supported. My guess is that the .ssl file is defined with .docx output and, because this option cannot be chosen in the GUI, it throws the error. If I try to create a new printed documentation layout, I am back to "Parameter is not defined" and blank fields.

Word itself seems to be fine - I can save and open docx. I can also import docx into RoboHelp.

Other things I've tried since last week:

• Comparing the list of Windows updates between a PC that works and the one that doesn't - the new PC does not have some of the updates, but if I try to install them I get a message about them being not applicable to my machine (I guess a newer update overrides them).
• Uninstalling .NET Framework 4.6.1 and installing 4.5 - no change. (I wasn't expecting one - we have PCs with both versions and all run RH without any issues.)

Any ideas of other prerequisites I should check?

[Peter Grainge]

Was this finally resolved and if so how?

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring information

@petergrainge

[Ioana_St]

No, it wasn't, and we are out of ideas. For now, our new hire is simply not generating any printed documentation. We are probably going to hire someone new in a few months and we'll just have to see if the problem happens for that person as well...

[Peter Grainge]

Is Word's Normal.dot in her local profile or on a network drive?

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring information

@petergrainge

[Ioana_St]

Her Normal.dotm is located in C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates... so I guess it shouldn't cause any problems.

The IS guy told me that he's out of ideas too and that, by the time any new hires are onboarded (a few months from now), we will migrate to Windows 10 and the problem will go away on its own

[vikassingla]

Ioana_St​ I have sent you a private message. Kindly email us back to assist you with the issue.

Regards,

Vikas Singla

RoboHelp Team

[Ioana_St]

Vikas, I have sent you my email address in a private message.

However! After I told my coworker that a fix is coming... she tried to open the dialog again and now it works fine. She says she hasn't installed anything in the meantime, but I will double-check with IS, maybe we had some Windows updates that she didn't notice. I am still interested in discussing with you Vikas, at least to try to understand why this might have happened!

I will keep investigating her PC, because I can't believe the problem just "solved itself" with no outside intervention.

[Ioana_St]

I checked her Windows Update history and the only new update is KB4022722. On June 29 the Printed Doc dialog was failing, the update was installed on July 1, and today the dialog worked correctly. (Of course, RH worked fine on other computers, with or without the update..)

[vikassingla]

I don't really think that Windows update fixed this issue. Because this issue has been intermittent, so it is difficult to see what went wrong actually. As per our investigation, while opening printed documntation settings dialog, we initialize the dialog before allowing the user to edit the fields. However as it might have happened it your case as well, to allow the editing part is started before the dialog was initialized. We have changed this behaviour and we are planning to ship this change as part of RH 2017 Update 2.

[Ioana_St]

We installed the fix and I don't have anything to report, as I expected - meaning that it worked before the fix and it still works after the fix. Still no clue what suddenly fixed the dialog! We will probably onboard some new hires in September and I'll report back if they have the same issues.

[vikassingla]

Thank you for the update. We will ship this change as part of the RH 2017 Update 2, which would be released before September. Please let us know in case you see this issue again after updating RoboHelp.

Regards,

Vikas Singla

RoboHelp Team

[Guest]

Hello,

I am experiencing this problem on a trial version of RoboHelp and my company will not purchase RH until I can assure them that the issue is corrected. I have applied both patches and the version of RH I have is Adobe RoboHelp 2017 (13.0.2.334). Can you please help me correct this problem?

I try to generate printed documentation and the following error is returned "Parameter is incorrect". I click OK to make output selections and the Generate Word Doc drop down list is blank.

I select the parameters and nothing happens when I generate.

I have Word 2013.

My trial version expires in 2 days. If this issue is not resolved, we will purchase another help authoring tool.

[Peter Grainge]

I wish you had come to the forum or contacted Support earlier as two days doesn't give us much time.It might be possible to get that extended but we'll come back to that if necessary.

Have you tried generating a printed output from one of the sample projects? Click Open on the RoboHelp Starter page and then click Samples in the ribbon on the left.

Try that and post back.

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring information

@petergrainge

[Guest]

I tried to print from the sample documents and I received "The parameter is incorrect" I am chatting with someone at Adobe now.

Thanks

[Peter Grainge]

OK. It would be helpful if you could post the solution here to help others. That said, this is an old problem that went away many versions back but seems to have resurfaced for you and another user. I got involved in the previous 2017 case in this thread and Update 2 should have fixed it.

Also please post back if Support are unable to resolve the issue.

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring information

@petergrainge

[Davide5E7E]

Hello Peter,

i'm having exactly the same problem with my actual Robohelp installation. Do you have any news about how you solved the problem?

Could be very helpful.

Thanks

Davide

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

@Davide5E7E - it was solved by Update 2 being applied. What version are you on? Maybe you need to be spiun out into your own thread.

[Davide5E7E]

I'm actually using RoboHelp 10 but the behavior is the same.