Technical Support Frequently Asked Questions:

1. Error: "An error has occurred in your program" when viewing a lesson.
2. "ctMonth.OCX failed to self-register"
3. The speech sounds choppy
4. Sending a lesson to someone
5. Some graphics in my lesson show up as little yellow Exclamation marks
6. An error received when running a Crystal Report.
7. When I run my Crystal Report it always reports the same data.
8. When I press a link to a video, nothing happens.
9. How do I import a lesson manually?
10. Text To Speech is very choppy on my machine.
11. When exporting a lesson, I receive a message "Unable to open file ..."
12. When I try to import a lesson I receive an error "Cannot copy file..."
13. I am receiving an error "Index is out of Date"
14. The program is running extremely slow.
15. I am receiving an error "cannot access file...Permission Denied"
16. I am receiving the message "Unable to find Team ID xxxx" or "Unable to find Student ID xxxx" when I run DaVinci.
17. Windows NT Installation Reports Memory Dump after installation
18. After Installing DaVinci-MIMS, when I try to run the program, it freezes up.

If you do not find your issue here, try a search on our Knowledgebase.

1. When clicking an internet link, I get the following error message: "An error has occurred in your program. To keep working anyway, click Ignore and save your work in a new file. To quit this program, click Close. You will lose information you entered since your last save."

A: Some Video Drivers may cause this problem. To correct this error, press the Windows Start Button, go to Settings, then Control Panel. In Control Panel double-click on the System icon. Click on the Performance tab. Press the Graphics button. Slide the Hardware acceleration down to the second level. If you still have the problem, try level 1.

2. After installing DaVinci-M.I.M.S., I receive an error "ctMonth.OCX failed to self-register"

A: Press your Windows Start button, then select Run. At the run prompt, type:

regsvr32 c:\windows\system\ctmonth.ocx

then press the OK button

Do this for each file that failed to self-register.

3. The speech sounds choppy when I play the lesson through the Text-To-Speech Option.

A: This is a problem with the Microsoft Text-to-Speech (TTS) engine which is included free with DaVinci-MIMS. A faster CPU may make the speech sound better, but will not make the speech sound perfect. A higher quality speech engine is available. Contact sales at SalesBack2You@DaVinci-MIMS.com for more information.

4. I want to send a lesson that I have created to a friend, how do I do that?

A: First of all, go to the Lesson Repository and select the lesson you wish to send. Next, select the Export Lesson tab. In the Export To field, select the location or directory you wish to export the lesson to. If the lesson is small enough, you may export it directly to a floppy disk. Next, press the Export, and all the appropriate files will be copied to that location. If the lesson is not small enough to fit on a floppy, or you wish to E-mail it, you could use a compression utility like WinZip to compress all the files down into one small file and copy it to a floppy disk, or E-mail.

5. When viewing my lesson, some of the graphics show up as little exclamation marks.

A: There are several things that can cause this. First of all, if the file are not present, this can cause the problem. If the lesson was improperly copied, exported or imported, this could cause missing files. Another likely cause is that the path that refers to a file may not exist on your computer. For instance, if the lesson was created on another computer, and there is a graphic on a page that has a physical path of "c:\mygraphics\myheader.jpg", then the lesson is exported, then imported by you, the file "c:\mygraphics\myheader.jpg" will not be a valid file on your system. When creating lessons, you need to make sure that all graphic files do not make reference to another directory that does not exist.

6. When I try to execute a Crystal Report from the Reports menu, I receive an error message.

A: The cause of most errors when viewing a Crystal Report is that the report needs to be updated. Open up the report in Crystal Reports. Click on Database and Verify Database. Save the report and try it again.

7. When I view a Crystal Report, the data always appears the same, even though I know some records have been updated.

A: The most likely cause for this is that the "Save Data With Report" switch has been set in Crystal. To fix this, Run Crystal and open up the report. Click File and make sure that the "Save Data With Report" option is NOT checked. Save the file and try again.

8. When I press a link to a video in my lesson, nothing happens.

A: On some installations, you must press the play button to start the video play. This could be the case if you are using the Windows video player, which could be any video player that you have installed. You could also change to the DaVinci video player by going to Teacher Utilities, Setup and selecting the DaVinci Video Player. The DaVinci video player plays automatically when a link is pressed

9. How do I import a Lesson manually?

A: First of all, select a directory to store your lesson in if you haven't already got it on your hard drive and copy all of the lesson files to the hard drive in that directory. Next, go to the Lesson Repository and Add a new lesson. Fill in all of the important information like Lesson Name, Source Path, Starting Page, etc. At this point, the lesson is basically ready to go, unless you have tests. If you have test, you can import them by themselves. If you click on the Import Lesson tab, you can select the "Update Current Lesson" Radiobutton, then uncheck "Import Lesson" and make sure that "Import Tests" is checked. Select the directory where the exported tests are in the Import From location and press the Import button. The test will be imported and you will be ready to go.

10. Text To Speech is very choppy on my machine.

A: There are a couple of possibilities in this area. First of all, if you're running the Microsoft Text To Speech engine, it is not of the highest quality. To get the maximum performance out of this engine, you must have a fairly fast machine (400 or higher) and a lot of memory (64 MB). This will help, although it will not make the speech perfect. Remember, this is Synthesized speech, and will not be perfect. Another solution is to use a different speech engine. One good one can be purchased from Eloquent Technologies, Inc. at http://www.eloq.com This site includes excellent English speech engines and MANY other languages as well.

11. When trying to export a lesson I receive an error message "Unable to open file..."

A: Check to make sure that you haven't put your lesson in the same directory as the data. When exporting data, it opens and copes all of the files in the lesson directory. If you have put your Data and Lesson in the same directory, when DaVinci-MIMS tries to open a file for copying and that file is already open by another process, this will generate the above error.

12. When I try to import a lesson I receive an error "Unable to copy file..."

A: There are several possibilities here. First, make sure that you are NOT importing your lesson to a data directory. When you import lessons, it copies all of the files to the directory, and may try to overwrite some of your data files. If this happens and the file are open, then you receive this error. If you import to a data directory and the files are not open, the files will simply be overwritten, which could cause serious problems with your data, so be very careful when selecting a directory to store your lesson in. Make sure it is not in a data directory. Another possibility is that the drive is out of space, or there are other problems with your drive.

13. When running DaVinci-MIMS I receive a message "Index is out of date."

A: This error can be caused by several things. First of all, if the program was interrupted for any reason (Windows freeze up, power interruption, whatever causes the program to be abnormally interrupted) this could potentially cause index or data corruption. Another cause for this is installing DaVinci-MIMS on a network improperly. When more than one user shares the files and the BDE is not set up properly, this will definitely cause index corruption and possibly data corruption as well. When this occurs, go to Administrator Utilities and press the Reindex Files button.

On occasion, this will not work, and you must handle reindexing manually. This example will assume the default DaVinci-MIMS installation. If you installed DaVinci-MIMS in a location other than the default, then substitute the path's in the following instructions. To reindex files manually, follow these instructions:

Exit DaVinci-MIMS and press the Windows Start button, then Programs, then MS-DOS prompt.
Type CD\"Program Files\Da Vinci 32" and press Enter.
Your DOS prompt should read "C:\Program Files\DaVinci32>". If it does not, then you may have mis-typed the above command (check to make sure you have spaces and quotes in the right place), or you may have installed DaVinci-MIMS in another location.
Type DEL *.PX and press Enter
Type DEL *.?G? and press Enter
Nothing will appear to happen in either case.
Now, we must do the same for the Sample data set.
type CD SAMPLE and press Enter
Type DEL *.PX and press Enter
Type DEL *.?G? and press Enter
Now type Exit to get back into Windows
Run DaVinci-MIMS and you should see the progress indicating that it is checking files.
If index corruption persists, then you may have a corrupted data file. You may want to restore data from a backup.

14: My program is running extremely slow.

A: There are several things that can cause this, especially if you are operating on a Network. Here are some things to check.

If you are running a Windows NT Server, make sure that the screen saver is turned off. This uses excess CPU cycles and can cause a major slow down.
If you are running a 10 Mega Bits Per Second network, you might want to consider upgrading to a 100 MBPS system.
You may want to try to determine if the slow down is on the local workstation or the server. The best way to do this is to install the application on the local workstation and run it. If it runs fast, then the problem is with the network.
Sometimes the server might be performing a backup, or some other task that grabs excess CPU cycles. You might want to check for this kind of access when you experience slow downs.
If you have anti-virus software installed, you might want to check to make sure that it's not set to scan all files all the time. Most anti-virus software can be set to scan only program files such as .EXE files, macros, and scripts. It can also be set to only scan those files when they are accessed. One known issue is that some Gateway PC's are be shipped with the anti-virus software set to scan all files all the time. Adjust your software to scan only the necessary files, and to scan only when accessed, and this should help with speed issues.

15. I am receiving an error "cannot access file...Permission Denied"

A: Make sure that your network is setup to allow the person logging in to access the specified directory. The error message will indicate both a path and file name. For instance. The message may read "Cannot access directory. File or directory does not exist. File: F:\DaVinciData\PDOXUSRS.LCK. Permission Denied". In this case, check your network server to make sure that the logged in user has read/write access to the F:\DaVinciData Directory.

16. I am receiving the message "Unable to find Team ID xxxx" or "Unable to find Student ID xxxx" when I run DaVinci. This will happen before you have the opportunity to log in. (You may also be receiving the message "Invalid Password")

A: When you create a password disk for a team or student it is possible for you to create one that is stored on your C: drive. If you do this, DaVinci will automatically log in using that username/password every time you run the program. If that Team, student or teacher gets deleted, or if you change the password, or you change the password for the Administrator, then you will receive either this message, or a message stating that the password is incorrect. The way to fix this is the delete the file C:\USERS.INI.

17. After installing DaVinci on my Windows NT 4.0 Workstation and rebooting it reports a memory dump.

A: There are some known issues with Windows NT installations. If you are having any trouble, please contact us for special installation instructions for installing DaVinci manually, that will by-passing certain processes that copy some files to your machine that may cause this problem.

18. After Installing DaVinci-MIMS, when I try to run the program, it freezes up.

A: Check to make sure that you have your colors set to AT LEAST 256 colors. DaVinci-MIMS will not run with less than that. To do this, right-click on an empty place on your desktop and go to properties. Click on the Settings Tab and set the colors to at least 256, Preferably higher.