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Participating Frequently
September 17, 2009
Question

Unable to generate .chm file in Robohelp 5

  • September 17, 2009
  • 2 replies
  • 3554 views

I am working on Robohelp 5 and i am facing a very strange error.

I am unable to generate a Micsoft HTML help which is my primary layout. Whereas i am able to generate other forms of output. It throws this error while compilation

Fatal error: Unexpected error from Microsoft HTML help

When i try to open the .chm file , i get the following error:

Cannot open the file: mk:@MSITStore:F:\..........\.chm

However, i was able to generate the same .chm file from the same source file a month ago.

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

Participating Frequently
September 17, 2009

Hi,

How deep is the path to your Help project and the .chm file? The HTML Help compiler can't cope with paths that exceed 256 characters, and will consequently spit out corrupt .chm files.

Pete

Participating Frequently
September 18, 2009

Hi,

The path of my file is definitely not 256 characters long.

Last week i installed Adobe FM 8, i think this may be a reason where some registry files must have got corrupted which is causing this. I have even repaired my OS soon after that to replace the deregistered system files.

Even today morning i faced the same compiler error with my robohelp source file. Kindly help me out with this.

Thanks!!

Anupam

RoboColum_n_
Legend
September 17, 2009

Is this limited to one project or can you not create a CHM form any project. If the former, you'll need to identify what in your project is causing the compile to choke. Look at what has been added and go from there. If the later, try ensuring that you have all the relevant components. You can do this by running this diagnostics tool.


Read the RoboColum(n).

Participating Frequently
September 17, 2009

No, it is only limited to the generation of a single source file. I am able to generated flash, webpro and other output formats from the same source file. Only generation of html help is throwing this compiler error. And i have not added anything new to it. All i have done is installed Adobe FM last week. May be that may have deregistered a few dll s needed. But then again i have repaired my OS post FM installation. Still it is not compiling. Please help!

Captiv8r
Legend
September 18, 2009

Hi there

As I view this thread I see that you didn't really answer Colum's first question.

Colum asked you if you tried compiling a CHM from a different project.

You replied that the other layouts worked fine.

But other layouts come from the SAME project. So you really do need to open a different project. Or perhaps create a totally new one. Then compile a CHM from that and see if it's successful.

If it works, it means RoboHelp is quite capable to compile CHM files and your system is working fine. In that case, you have something going on with one specific project.

If it doesn't work, it means larger issues. A problem overall with your ability to create CHM files. Possibly you will need to reinstall something.

How you receive help from here forward is totally dependent upon the answer you provide after you test.

Cheers... Rick

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