Problem description:
When you E-mail a PPV file to someone who has the Vox Proxy Player installed and they try to open the file, they get an error message saying "Can't find the file ...".

Cause:
If you have an apostrophe in the name of the file, Outlook can change the apostrophe to another character, a single-quote character. The software then sees a different file name and fails to open it.

Fix:
Avoid using apostrophes or quote marks in file names or folders.

Problem description:
Your scripts sometimes seem to disappear, as if you hadn't saved them, but then they may come back unexpectedly. Sometimes when you press the Test button or play the slide show, the scripts do not play.

Cause:
This problem is experienced in PowerPoint 2002 (in Office-XP) only. You will experience the problems when you select slides using PowerPoint's new "thumbnail" list in the left-hand frame. The problem is caused by a PowerPoint bug which does not properly select the visible slide.

Fix:
Do not select slides using the "Slides" thumbnails. You can select slides in any other normal way - by clicking on the title in the title list, by clicking on the Nav bar to the right of the slide, or by using the Page-down and Page-up keys. Watch for a Vox Proxy program update which may resolve this problem.

Problem description:
During a slide show, the characters freeze or almost freeze. Speech stops or becomes intermittent.

Cause:
This problem is experienced in PowerPoint 2002 (in Office-XP); very rarely in PowerPoint 2000. PowerPoint 2002 has a feature called "Script anchors". These are small amber-colored icons that appear in the middle of your slides. If you do NOT always see these script anchors, the script could freeze during a slide show. (You can simply drag these anchors off the slide so that they aren't visible in your slide show).

Fix:
You must turn ON a PowerPoint feature called "show all scripts". Unfortunately, the "show all scripts" menu item does not appear in the default installation of PowerPoint, so you must add it as a custom menu item as follows:

• Open PowerPoint help and enter "script anchor" into the Answer Wizard.
• Follow the instructions there to add "show all scripts" to your PowerPoint menu by dragging and dropping it onto the PowerPoint Tools/macros menu.
• Click on the resulting menu item to turn it ON. You will see a check-mark next to "show all scripts" when it is on.

Problem description:
When you press the TEST button on the Script Writer, the slide script plays properly. But when you try to play the slide show in PowerPoint, even though you have "Run Vox Proxy with Slide Shows" turned ON, the script will not play.

Cause:
If the path to the folder where the PPT file resides contains an apostrophe, a bug in Version 1 caused the slide show script to fail.

Fix:
Download the latest program update.

Workaround:
Move the presentation file into another folder.

Problem description:
This error most often occurs when you press the "Test" button on the Script Writer to test the script on the current slide. It is also evidenced by seeing "[Slide ID=0]" in the caption of the Script Writer form.

Cause:
The cause of the error is that the new "slides" thumbnail view in the left-hand frame of the "Normal" view of PowerPoint 2002 does not select the slide in the same way as other selection methods.

Fix:
Download the latest program update.

Workaround:
You can avoid this problem by selecting the slide using any method other than clicking on the thumbnail slide. For example, select from the title list or use the up-and-down slide selection buttons or use page-up and page-down. Or, after clicking on the thumbnail, you can then click anywhere on the slide itself. That will "refresh" the slide selection. Verify that the slide is properly selected by checking that the caption in the Script Writer says "[Slide ID=XXX]" (where XXX is any number other than zero).

Problem Description:
While working with the Vox Proxy Script Writer, you see an error from Windows that refers to an "Agent Server" error. This causes Vox Proxy to lock up. Once the problem occurs, you must close PowerPoint and restart it (be sure to save your presentation if needed).

Cause:
This problem is caused by interference with the "office assistant" in PowerPoint, which uses the same "Microsoft Agent technology" as Vox Proxy.

Fix:
Tturn off the office assistant by clicking on the "options" button next the the office assistant and un-checking the box "use the office assistant". Then close PowerPoint and restart it. You can always turn it back on when not using Vox Proxy.

Problem description:
This problem sometimes occurs in a new installation on Windows XP systems only.

Cause:
Windows XP comes with a new version of the Speech API (5.0) that is not backward-compatible.

Fix:
Install the following two files, in this order:
c:\program files\vox proxy\spchapi.exe
c:\program files\vox proxy\tv_enua.exe

Then restart PowerPoint. The characters should now speak correctly.

Problem description:
The disk appears to start normally. The "Continue" dialog box appears and PowerPoint starts after clicking OK, but the presentation never starts.

Cause:
This can be caused by one of two problems:

1. A software bug. Version 1.19 of Vox Proxy contained a bug playing on systems without PowerPoint 2000 or newer.

2. You neglected to export the script to a file before running CD Prep. Review the CD Prep documentation for a description of the issue of playing CDs on systems with PowerPoint 97. PowerPoint 97 cannot read your scripts out of the PPT file, so you need to export the scripts into a separate file, called a "VPS" file.

Fix:

1. Download the latest program update.

2. From the Script Writer, click on Tools/Export to a file. In the latest version of Vox Proxy, the CD Prep wizard will detect that you haven't created the export file and prompt you to do so.
   

Problem Description:
Audio or Video files that are used either in the Vox Proxy script or on the PowerPoint slide do not play when the CD is run on a machine other than the one on which it was created.

Cause and Fixes:

Playing media files in PowerPoint and in your Vox Proxy script are two separate issues. The problem arises from the fact that you do not know the drive letter in which the CD will be played.

1. Playing media in PowerPoint. PowerPoint has no mechanism to specify the location of media files when they will be played from a CD. Therefore, you must do two things: first, be sure that the media files are located in the same folder as the presentation (ppt) file. THEN create the media link on your slide, making sure not to specify any path, only the file name. Second, when you run CD Prep, be sure to copy those media files into the presentations folder (the folder where the presentation file will reside). When the slide show runs, PowerPoint will look only in the folder where the presentation file exists.
2. Playing media from a Vox Proxy script. Vox Proxy provides variables which can be used to specify the path where the media files are located. These variables are assigned when the CD plays, so they correctly identify the CD's drive letter. There are several choices, but the recommended method is to put media files into the media folder and use the &media variable in your script. Follow these steps:

• On your development computer, place the media files in Vox Proxy's media folder: c:\program files\vox proxy\media
• In your script, use the &media variable to specify the path to the file. For example:
  PlayMedia "&media\guitar.wma" at 50 50 wait size=1/4 controls=some volume=100 ontop
• In CD Prep's files page, select media files from the drop-down list and select or drag and drop the media files into the media folder. On the CD, they will be placed into the media folder.
  
  In Version 2 of Vox Proxy, there are two other variables available for locating media files:
• &DiskDrive. You can use this variable if you prefer to create your own folders in the cd image and locate the media files there. For example, if you manually create the folder "music" within the presentation folder and place the files there, then your PlayMedia command could be:
  PlayMedia "&DiskDrive\presentations\music\guitar.wma" at 50 50 wait size=1/4 controls=...etc...
• &temp. Temp is a special folder. Any files you place in the temp folder of the cd image will be copied to the windows temp folder on the end-user's hard drive and deleted when the slide show is done. This can result in faster access times when the slide show is running. The appropriate example would be:
  PlayMedia "&temp\guitar.wma" at 50 50 wait size=1/4 controls=...etc...
  

Problem description:
When you insert a disk created with CD Prep, it fails to autostart.

Cause:
The most likely cause is that the disk was not burned properly. You must burn the contents of the cdimage folder, not the folder itself. To check for this, open the CD Prep wizard, insert the disk, and click on Tools/Diagnose CD. Another way to check is to try it in another computer. If it does not play in any computer, it was most likely burned incorrectly.

It is also possible that autoplay is turned off on your CD drive. Check it by right-clicking on the drive letter in Windows Explorer and click the Autorun tab.

Fix:
If the problem is that you burned the cdimage folder rather than its contents, re-burn a CD with all of the contents (files and folders).

If the problem is the Windows autorun, change the setting in the Autorun tab of the CD drive properties.

Problem description:
This problem may be experienced in systems running on Windows 2000 or XP. The audio portion of the movie clip plays, but no video appears. The actual problem is that the video window is playing UNDERNEATH the PowerPoint slide.

Cause:
Windows 2000 and XP have different rules for the order of windows (which windows appear on top of others).

Fix:
Download the latest program update. Then add the word "ontop" at the end of the "PlayMedia" command in your script. For example:

PlayMedia "&media\sts100launch_56.asf" at 25 25 wait size=1/4 controls=some ontop

In the future, when you use the "PlayMedia" command from the Script Wizard, you will see an "ontop" check-box.

Note that this can cause another problem: if the video is set to "ontop", you will not be able to show characters on top of the video. You will have to move the characters outside of the video window.

Problem description:
The media file simply doesn't play, in spite of the fact that you've checked the proper location of the file and that it plays when you run it from Windows Explorer.

Cause:
You probably have installed the Media Player 9 update. Media Player 9 is not yet supported by Vox Proxy. Check your version by opening Media Player and check Help/About Windows Media Player.

Fix:
There is no good fix for this problem, because Microsoft does not allow you to uninstall Media Player 9 or to revert to a previous version. We intend to support MP-9 and will announce when we have an update.

Problem description:
Slowness in either the characters' animations or in their speech; can be intermittent; skipping speech when using AT&T Natural Voices

Causes and fixes:
There are several things that can cause performance problems with Vox Proxy. Here are a few things to check:

1. Windows XP performance setting. XP defaults to a setting that allows it to "throttle down" your CPU at its discretion, and sometimes it does not properly detect the performance required. The fix for this is in Control Panel/System/Advanced/Performance/Settings. Change the default to "Adjust for best performance". This setting is especially important when delivering a slide show on a laptop. When running AT&T Natural Voices, you should always make this change.

2 In PowerPoint, click Slide Show/Set up show and uncheck the box "Use hardware accelleration".

3. PowerPoint 2002 users should review the support bulletin:
www.voxproxy.com/Support/bulletin_2003-04-07.htm

4. Animated slide objects. Both the Microsoft Agent character animations and the speech engines used by Vox Proxy require significant system processing time. There are any number of animated slide objects that also require significant CPU time, creating a situation where they can interfere with each other. In our observation, animated JPG files require much more CPU than animated GIF files, so you may want to consider converting to GIFs if that is your situation. Otherwise, you will have to avoid using VP characters while you are using high-CPU consuming slide animations.

Problem description:
Characters' speech seems to repeat itself duing a slide show.

Cause:
You have two copies of Vox Proxy running at the same time.

Explanation:
If you have Vox Proxy open in PowerPoint and then run a player presentation file (a PPV file) by double-clicking on it, or play a CD made with the CDPrep program, you will actually open a second copy of Vox Proxy (the authoring portion and the player portion). Both copies will run the presentation, resulting a repeating of speech.

Fix:
Exit from PowerPoint before running a PPV file.

Note that even if you close the Script Writer window but remain in PowerPoint, Vox Proxy remains active. You must actually exit PowerPoint to close Vox Proxy.

Once you start two copies of Vox Proxy running, they may not close properly. If exiting PowerPoint does not solve the problem, bring up the Windows Task Manager (control-alt-delete) and look for the process called "vp.exe". If it is present on the list, close it by selecting it and then clicking "END PROCESS".

There are several possible errors that can occur while attempting to install Vox Proxy.

1. Error 1904: Module C:Program Files\Vox Proxy\vp.dll failed to register
   This is caused if you try to install Vox Proxy on a computer with PowerPoint 97. Vox Proxy requires PowerPoint 2000 or newer. The Vox Proxy Player, however, may be installed with PowerPoint 97. In that case, simply ignore the error and allow the installation to complete.
2. Error 1606: Could not access network location <common administrative tools>
   This error can be caused from upgrading Windows 98 or Me to XP. Read Microsoft's discussion of the symptoms and possible solutions here:
   http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B315352

CLICK HERE to download the latest point release of Vox Proxy. This download is also available by visiting the updates page of the Vox Proxy web site, where you will also find a description of bug fixes and enhancements.

Save the downloaded file (VP.W3) in the following folder and OVERLAY the old file of the same name:
c:\program files\vox proxy