Erratic Behaviour

[Jason Evens]

Now term has started I have launched into full use of Active Studio 2 . It is great , however I am experiecing some erratic behaviour which leads to the program to unexpectedly shut down. This happens quite a lot when reordering the pages of a flipchart and when importing pages from my page library. Also sometimes when I bring in a page fro the page library, move on to another a page, then return to the original page, some of the graphic (in this case one of your weather background ) becomes scrambled. Sometimes I can recover the flipchart when restarting the program, but sometimes the program just automatically shuts / disappears again. This is proving a little frustrating. I am using a recent windows xp machine with 256 mb mem and 1.3 ghz processor so I do not think the computer is at fault. Also , when running a flipchart at school , when I tried to advance to a particular page, the program kept shutting down. However if I used the page selector to jump the problem page, there was no further problem. Is this some sort of memory problem do you think. Or is it a software problem. I would be interested if any other users experience similar.

[Margaret Allen]

Hi

Its always difficult to answer such specific queries in this forum. :confused:

It would be great if you could telephone technical support who will do their best to try and help you.

It would be helpful if you could be near to your pc when phoning.

Thanks.

[Jason Evens]

I think I have resolved the problem. I have created some flipchart templates, for use at start of lessons, at end, for homework etc. These originally contained embedded sound files. I removed these and the problem does not seem to occur.

I also now keep a blank page as the start of a lesson as if I did import a page to the beginning of the flipchart it effectively made it useless as when it was opened Active Studio shut down. WIth a blank page at the start, at least I can go into page organiser and delete offending file.

[John Fearn]

Originally posted by Margaret Allen:
Its always difficult to answer such specific queries in this forum. :confused:

It would be great if you could telephone technical support who will do their best to try and help you.

It would be helpful if you could be near to your pc when phoning.
Sorry Margaret, but I have to strongly disagree with you on this one.

Have you actually tried contacting Technical Support by telephone recently? Personally, I have better things to do in school time than spend many, many minutes in a call queue.

I don't want to go into details here, but Technical Support ain't what it used to be I'm afraid. I'll e-mail details to anyone at Promethean who is interested.

I would find it very, very useful to be able to post "specific queries" in this forum. Firstly, it can be done without the queue delays, and at a time that suits me (I know, I should have better things to do on a Saturday night!). Secondly, it may bring to the attention of other users a problem they are experiencing and perhaps just putting up with. Thirdly, we can all benefit from "work arounds" such as the one posted by Jason.

I'd rather see this forum be a really useful "warts and all" discussion area than an "appreciation society".

Just my humble opinion, as a long-time Promethean user and fan, who has "specific queries" about thirteen new proACTIV78's.

[Margaret Allen]

I thoroughly agree that this should not be an "appreciation society" and I am the first to promote people using the forum to raise issues. It is a really powerful of "reaching" numerous people at once.

As I often said to children if you are asking then there is bound to be somebody else needing the answer too.

However, I did just wonder whether Jason was using the most up to date version of AS2 and thought it would be easier to get him to phone Tech Support.

You are quite right we are experiencing a huge volume of calls at the moment. Something like 150 a day. The queries range from can I order a new lamp to queries that are very particular to the caller due to laptop/environment issues. Maybe it was naive of me to suggest a phone call to tech support - sorry :eek:

Once September is over hopefully the "long delays" will begin to get less.

In the meantime I agree with you, I think it would be brill if this forum were to begin a buzzing discussion which not only raises awareness of issues but also offers support to those who don't post for whatever reason.

Maybe unlike us they get out more? :D

[www.ScienceVT.co.uk]

I've had slightly similar problems with AS2.

If I go to the page organiser and move pages around, maybe copy and paste a couple of pages, when I return to the page view I frequently find that one or more pages have disappeared completely, or that some parts of some pages have disappeared.


The problem seems to occur if the page that I was on before opening up the page organiser was one of the pages that I copied or moved about. It is as if AS2 gets confused as to which page view it should be returning to, and deletes/corrupts the page to which it returns.

[Peter Lambert]

Hi scienceVT!
We have identified this problem with Page Organiser and are working on a fix. It doesn't always happen but we think is something to do with duplication of internal file names that identify images, snapshots and so on. Suggest you steer clear for now or save flp with modified filename prior to using page organiser.

[www.ScienceVT.co.uk]

Thank you :)

Indeed, I have been saving first, tentatively moving pages then crossing my fingers and returning to the page view.

EDIT: You can call me Paul :)

[m-rice]

Has the problem bee sorted yet? I have been experiencing just this problem as a brand new AS2 user today, during Promethean training! Using 2.0 build 307 (whatever that means!)

[sartley]

Aha - this is not the latest build - I've put in a weblink here from where you can download the latest one - 345.

http://www.prometheanworld.com/uk/html/customer_care/software.shtml

There is still this glitch which Pete mentioned, but it irons out a lot of others!

[m-rice]

Thanks for the prompt, helpful reply!

I've found build 349 (not 345) on some of the PCs here, and shuffling pages around does seem to work reliably on these machines.

[sartley]

You're right - it is build 349 - slip of the finger! :D