Upgrading RoboHelp version and Windows version

[Mark_Pud]

Hello all,

I am attempting to move my RoboHelp environment into the slightly more recent past, by upgrading our projects from RH8 to 2017, which in turn facilitates us to upgrade the machines from Win 7 to Win 10. This is all within a managed corporate environment so "try 2019 version" isn't an option for me right now!

I have created a "test" project which myself and my colleague can both connect to in RH2017, I'm on Win 7 and she is on Win 10. Source control is on Sharepoint, where I was previously using RSC with RH8.

I am now attempting to upgrade a copy of one of our main projects into 2017. The upgrade of the files went pretty smoothly, and I've been able to connect, publish etc (Webhelp output). But when my colleague connects to the same project, on a Win 10 machine, after the initial connection and download of files, RH falls over with an "Application Stack Overflow" error message.

We attempted to go back into the local copy of her project on c:\ but RH complained that root.fpj was corrupted, so we cleared out the files and attempted to connect again. But the same stack overflow error occurred.

This project is fairly large (1000 pages) and while it works on my machine, it takes a long time to build (seems to be quite a bit longer than RH8 to generate the build). But on the W10 machine I'm not sure what's the best way to resolve the stack overflow errror? Any insight would be appreciated.

Thanks, Mark.

[Amebr]

First, make sure that the .cpd, .ldb, and .pss files aren't in Sharepoint. You shouldn't include these files in source control as they cause all sorts of weird issues. The .cpd is automatically built on the PC if it doesn't already exist. The .ldb is an access database cache that should be automatically deleted when you close a project. I forget what the .pss is for but it shouldn't be in source control. Some people also recommend excluding the HHP file from source control, so consider removing this if it was added.

Once you've removed any of those files, delete the local files  on Win10, re-get a fresh copy and try opening it again.

If that doesn't help, I'd recommend doing a little clean up using RH8. Take a backup in case things go wrong. (A zip file is good so you can't accidentally make changes to it.)

Open the project in RH8 and run the broken links report. Clean up any links listed. Do the same for Unused files and Missing files. Be careful about deleting Unused files though, as some might actually be used, despite appearing in the report.

Once you've done that, close the project and delete the .cpd.

Re-open the project in RH8 and check those reports again. Sometimes information in the .cpd masks problems with the project.

After housekeeping, upgrade the project on Win 7 and check the reports again. Once that's done try opening it on Win 10 (making sure the .cpd does not exist on the Win10 pc).

[Mark_Pud]

Thanks for your reply. I've not had chance to investigate further but I appreciate the pointers.

[Amebr]

I should add a disclaimer. I've only used TFS for source control, not Sharepoint, so my terminology might not exactly match Sharepoint functionality.  The concept should be the same, but check the options available before deleting, just in case it works differently.