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Question

RoboHelp 8 Crashes When Saving

Forum|Forum|15 years ago
July 16, 2010
2 replies
2978 views

System: Windows Vista, SP2, 3.4ghz P4, 2.5gb ram

RoboHelp 8.02

Hey, any help for this issue I'm experiencing would be very helpful.

I have a project started from scratch in RH8. On one particular help topic, anytime I try to save a change--no matter what the change--RH8 crashes, with the following error message:

"Adobe RoboHelp 8 has stopped working

A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Please close the program."

There is a single button, labelled "Close the program."

The program is whited out, like it is typically unresponsive, and you can only click the button. RH8 of course closes and you lose all changes. I am using a master page and a modified default.css. Is there any kind of log that you can look at to see where the program crashes?

Appreciate any thoughts or ideas to fix this.

Rich

HTML

This topic has been closed for replies.

M

meKarla

Inspiring

I have a purse-sized desk calendar in which I note what I work on each day, what I need to do the next day, etc. I make tick marks in it each time RoboHelp crashes. Yesterday, there were 7 crashes. Today just the one so far. The CPD workaround that Peter G mentions sometimes works, but not always. It seems as though RoboHelp gets confused if I make too many changes before I click save. I had one project a few weeks ago that I had to rebuild from scratch because it just became unusable. "Scratch" meaning I started a new project, then imported everything, including creating the TOC by "importing" the old one. It took the better part of the day, but it no longer crashes. This project is, I think, just too darn big. (One "parent" and 10 "children" and numerous subfolders.) I am thinking of experimenting with changing the virtual memory size. I recall Authorware and Doc2Help were sensitive to RAM size (one needed it to be bigger, the other needed it be smaller; neither worked well with "system managed" size.)

OH, and I'm on RH 8.02, Windows 7, 64-bit, Intel dual core E7200, 2.53 GHz, 4Gb RAM (in case the Adobe developers are paying attention).

M

M_Jha

Participating Frequently

Hi meKarla,

I don't think RH8 is officially supported on Win 7 64 bit, but it should work. The latest release of RH9 supports Win 7 64 bit fully.

By big project, do you mean the folder structures only or with the no of topics and resources.

What is the size of the project in terms of topics, snippets and images?

Is it an upgraded project or created from scratch?

Thanks

M

meKarla

Inspiring

Are you all patched up in RH8? Yes, 8.02.208 is the latest. I’ve clicked the “Update” link many times, just to be sure.
Running in XP mode or in the Win7 virtual machine? Not XP mode, not on a virtual machine.
Have you thought about adding more RAM? LOL!! Adobe recommends 1Gb. I have 4Gb. I’ve looked at the Task Manager when it’s crashing and it looks fine. Might be a virtual memory issue, but I see nothing in RH docs that says to set it to any particular size. I have tried leaving it at System Managed, increasing it, decreasing it, but it has no effect that I've noticed.
What is the size of the project in terms of topics, snippets and images? See http://help.globalscape.com/help/index.html. EFT Server version 6.2 is one that currently likes to crash, and it’s the biggest one. The project folder for EFT Server (minus the SSL folder) has 9294 files, 149 folders, 377MB.
Is it an upgraded project or created from scratch? All of my projects so far have been upgraded from RH7. Some I’ve had even since RH6.
I don't think RH8 is officially supported on Win 7 64 bit, but it should work. When IT wanted to give me a new computer, I told them I didn’t want to upgrade, because I’d have to upgrade RH. Later they told me RH8 was supported on Win 7, 64-bit and even sent me a link that said that. Since they released RH9, the Adobe website no longer says that, nor does the readme file. So perhaps they’d planned on 64-bit support when they first released RH8, but it didn’t work out? (I work at a software development company, so I know how that works, but we don’t release a product for a particular OS unless QA has tested it and it actually works.) I found the email from IT that told me RH8 is supported on Windows 7. It doesn't specify 32- or 64-bit. Luckily he sent a screen shot, not just a link, because the link now displays RH9 sysreqs, of course. I saved the screen shot here if you want to see that I'm not crazy : http://help.globalscape.com/help/tutorials/image002.jpg
Where is the project, local drive or network? Always my local drive. Just me, no other writers. No RH server, either.
Is this with specific projects or any of them? Pretty much any of them, but only after I’ve been working in them for a while (which is most of them).
Do you get the same problem if you try with the sample projects? Haven't tried any sample projects, but I would guess not, because I *think* I would have to be writing/editing in them every day for months before I would see problems.
I had crashes with RH7, too, and was SO happy to upgrade to RH 8, partly because of the improved search capabilities, but mainly because I thought it would stop the insanity. The other day I was rebuilding an old project that has multiple sub folders and links. One of the subs is created by another company and I have to “rebrand” their help to fit in with ours. I also had to fix broken links, because some of the topics they reference are in a different location in our help. I would save frequently, because the stupid thing would crash every 20 minutes or so. Then when I open the project back up, all of the links I fixed were broken again! I’ve been trying to figure out where changes are saved in RH when I click Save, since it doesn’t appear to really save anything. Does it cache the saves and then save them all at once on close, or something else just as stupid? Do I need to save it differently than just clicking the Save icon? (I've clicked both of them with the same disappointing results.)
When we release a new version, I update the existing project. Is that wrong? Should I be creating a new project every time we do a release? Just in EFT Server, we have v6, 6.1, 6.2, and numerous patches in between. I’d hate to rebuild that thing every time!

Thanks for listening,

Karla

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Have you tried deleting the CPD file and restarting RoboHelp to see if you can then edit this topic?

If not, don't open it but first run Update DHTML from the tools menu. Then open it and try editing.

If that doesn't work, try copying the content to a text file, deleting the topic and recreating it from the content of the text file.

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.

J

JGaf10311788

Inspiring

Hi,

I'm running RH 8.0.2.208, Webhelp

Win XP Pro 2002, SP3

RH is run locally on my computer, no server. All files are saved to my hard drive.

I, too, have the same problem with saving and crashing, only my issue is specific to one project (and with any topic in that project).

It saves OK when I add a new topic! (just a few words in a file) but when I want to modify a topic already existing in the project, it crashes.

I deleted the cpd file and tried again, nothing works. Interesting though......that when it crashes and closes, I re-open the topic and notice the changes I made were SAVED. So, it seems to be saving, but can't quite recover...

I've tried to modify/save a previous project, no issues.

I've tried to modify/save a sample project, no issues.

The project I'm having difficult with is a brand new project (not related to other projects except in css, skin and some images, but all new content) and is much smaller than the previous project I tested.

It worked fine yesterday when I added one new topic + 3 images. Today, I open RH to begin work again and can't save, but only when I work on an existing topic.

Are there any other things I can test or look for to find a cause and solution?

Jeff_Coatsworth

Community Expert

What's the path to the project? "Best practices" is something short like c:\projects\projectname\

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