Problem Viewing Some of "Steve's Tips"

[fischettijw]

I have downloaded 23 “Steve’s Tips” “flipalbums”. There seems to be 2 different tools that Steve uses when creating these “flipalbums”. The first tool creates “flipalbums” with a Yellow-Green front cover … the second tools creates them with a Blue front cover. The Yellow-Green type “flipalbums” always seems to work OK. The Blue type “flipalbums” rarely works.

Most of the time when I start a Blue Cover “flipalbum” (e.g., “Advanced Keyframing”) a small dialog box opens (Launching Steve’s Tips”) with a moving Progress Bar. When the Progress Bar completes the dialog box closes and a Red-Book icon shows up in the System Tray. If I move a mouse over the Red-Book icon a pop-up says “rphfa6.exe”. If I double click on the Red-Book icon a document opens (Compiled AutoIt V2.64 Script) that contains the following:

Line 1:
Runwait, flipalbumcd\\flipalbumcd\\FlipBookCD.exe

Does anyone know what the problem is?

Joe

[Ron]

Hi Joe,

When you say that "it rarely works", does it ever work?

I changed the format because of some user requests that wanted a larger type/book that was easier to read on most monitors.

Can I ask what Operating System you're running and (a long shot) are you the Administrator on the account? Not that that matters much, but just for my troubleshooting. If it doesn't work at all, I have to think that your security settings are extremely high. All this program does is extract some files to your temporary folder to run. If it can't even do that, I'm sure that you may have other issues on this machine, but this is only an assumption on my part. The application that I use to create these (made personally by me) is sold internationally and I rarely receive complaints about the program.

What I may do is offer the E-Books in both formats eventually. But, let me know if it ever works at all or provide as much detail as possible, if you could.

Thanks!!

[fischettijw]

Ron

My OP is VISTA SP1 and I am the Admin.

I realize now that there was a couple a important points that I didn't mention.
First, when I double click the Red-Book icon in the system tray and a document opens, if I open the document page to full screen I almost certain that the command "Runwait, flipalbumcd\\flipalbumcd\\FlipBookCD.exe" is executing OVER and OVER and OVER. It seems to flash OVER and OVER and OVER as if is trying to excute OVER and OVER.
Second, if I ignore the Red-Book icon when it appears in the system tray the Blue Album will eventually open. It might take 10-20 minutes !!!!

I hope this helps.

Joe

[Bob]

Thought I would add my experience to the equation.

I'm also running Vista SP1 and I am the Admin. I have not had any problems with the newer "Blue-Book" document. Like Joe, I get the launching Steve's Tips progress bar, that goes a way and then another dialog box or bar appears and disappears too quickly to tell what it is, then the blue cover document page appears. Total time from launch to ready to read, 4 seconds tops. If I double click the red-book icon in the system tray, I get the same window that Joe gets. That window does refresh on a regular basis and it doesn't matter whether it's maximized or not. The document is fully functional.

The older format e-book, on the other hand, is a different story. That one opens fine, but as I'm reading it, one of the pages on the double spread layout will sometimes disappear. Once that happens, it consistantly is hidden as I continue to turn pages. The left page will disappear if I'm turning to the next page, the right page will disappear if I'm turning to the previous page. If I click and drag the page, the double page layout border will appear as a dotted line and when I release the mouse button, both pages appear. Sometimes I can get through the whole document without that happening. Other times, it seems to happen on the first page turn.

I have a quad q6600 processor with 4GB RAM.

[Ron]

Joe,

The icon in the system tray is not meant to interact with. It's there only to let you know that the book is "running". In retrospect, I should've left the icon out of the picture altogether. If you let the book open and do its thing, it should run fine. Although, most importantly, if it takes 10-20 minutes to execute/open, then you have other serious issues on that machine. Maybe a lack of virtual or hard disk memory. I run an XP Pentium 4 machine (2.4Ghz) with 1 Gig of ram and it opens in 5 seconds or so. The program does continually wait (..."over and over and over...") for the book to exit so it can delete the files that it creates (leaves a very small footprint on the machine in the temp folder). The "waiting" is not using any resources on your computer.
Without going into too much detail, the E-Book essentially is an Internet Explorer browser (ActiveX) rendered into the flipping environment that you see.

Bob, yours sounds like a video card issue (not saying that the video card is the fault, it's just that maybe the software isn't compatible with it). It just sounds as if something's not refreshing when it's supposed to. Just a guess. I have never heard of that problem before in the year that the E-books have been out there.

[fischettijw]

Ron

After you mentioned that your process save files to my TEMP area and then runs, I scanned my TEMP directory. I saw MANY remnants of your files left behind. A total of 51 temp directories (e.g. ckz.tmp2d0f738) … I been fooling around with this for the past few weeks. Some of your temp directories only had 3 files (delfldr.exe, FldrActn.dll, rphfa6.exe) while others also had the entire FlipAlbumCD folder. Those with the entire FlipAlbumCD folder , I was actually able to run FlipBookCD.exe from inside your temp folder and successfully view your tutorial in a flash.

My Computer is typical on 24/7 without rebooting but maybe twice a month. I decided to delete your files and most others from the TEMP directory (by the way, before I deleted files I had over 30 GB on the drive the held the TEMP files). After cleaning up the TEMP directory I rebooted. (This may have been my first reboot since I joined “muvipix” on 4/18/2008.). Now when I run your Blue Cover tutorials they run instantly.

Although I can’t be certain, I have to believe that the problem I was having in some way dealt with the buildup of TEMP files and infrequent re-boots.

Thanks for your assistance.

Joe

PS: By the way, I also occasionally have the same issue as Bob.

[Ron]

The reason that you had some folders full of files/structure (flipalbum.exe, etc..) is because you kept interrupting the script (the tray icon), which terminated the process of deleting most of the files. The reason that it doesn't delete ALL the files is because the file can't delete itself - long story. In a normal situation, you wouldn't be viewing these E-Books over and over again, hence no extra temp files.

Glad you got it working. 30GB in the temp folder is a lot of wasted space!

[Bob]

I still have Windows XP on dual boot and the book plays fine in Windows XP on the same card. Also, I upgraded the video card, but the same thing was happening with the old card. Joe sees this problem on his system occasionally as well. Vista changed the way the video buffers and access to the video hardware are handled. I think it's more an issue of how the application is writing to video and whether that's compatible with Vista.

[Ron]

OK, thanks, guys. We've discontinued the original format and I will see what I can do to eliminate the tray icon in the current version so that no one is tempted to "play with it" again

[Bob]

Just an FYI, I found a way to make it consistently happen. Open the e-book and advance, a page at a time, until the back cover is displayed. Now flip back one page and the problem appears. Once that happens, it will continue to happen whether you page left or right until you drag the book and that resets it back to normal. I'd say this is definitely an application bug.

[cfernan]

Hi Ron!

I read this thread and still do not understand. I too cannot access Steve's Tips with the blue cover.
I download and save to my desktop and they run and get this message in a new window:
Line: 1
runwait, flipalbumcd\\flipalbumcd\\FlipBookCD.exe
and the red icon in the system tray, but the book never opens.

System: InterCore2 Extreme, 2.66Ghz, Dual Core, 4GB SDRAM @ 800Mhz, Radeon 2600XT 256MB

Did I miss something?

[Ron]

HI,

Can you provide more details? Is it with every blue E-Book? How are you executing the file (don't click the red book icon)? Are you the Administrator on this computer. Is it Vista?

[cfernan]

Hi Ron,

Administrator on Windows XP Pro. Problem is only with the blue books. I click download and save the zip file to my desktop.
Then double click "Advanced_Keyframing_2.exe" to open and nothing happens, just the red book in system tray.
Also tried extracting file and still cannot open. Says "Lauhcing Steve's Tips" but it does not lauch.
For every attempt to open, an additional red book appears on system tray. I am not opening red books.

Cannot figure out what I am doing wrong.
Thanks a bunch!
Cary
PS: will I ever get past 10% in the user progress bar?

System: InterCore2 Extreme, 2.66Ghz, Dual Core, 4GB SDRAM @ 800Mhz, Radeon 2600XT 256MB, Windows XP Pro

[Chuck Engels]

PS: will I ever get past 10% in the user progress bar?

Soon Cary, very soon

[Ron]

Hm, the only thing I can think of is that you may not have permission to extract the files to the temp directory. Do you have an extra stringent security setup (that you're aware of) on your file system? Are you opening on the C:\ drive (is it called a C:\ drive)?

And your rank element will, at the very least, change to subscriber here soon. Still testing.