HowTo Get VSM Help to work in Vista

[darbyic]

Hi,

I hope this tit-bit of info will be of assistance to other new VSM users like me.

As is mentioned by "Technical" in various replies and threads the VSM help system is not supported by default in Vista. Though, again as pointed out by "Technical" there is a Microsoft download to fix this (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=82148).

However, as I quickly descovered this is only the first part of the problem. Again by default Vista will not allow WinHlp32 to run macros (which VSM help needs to do). The symptom that you will see if you have this problem is the error message "There was a problem running the macro. (1037)" being displayed when you invoke most of the VSM help files.

After a little searching I found the resolution to this on the following microsoft Knowlegebase article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/917607. On first reading it appears that the fix can be achieved by scrolling down to the section titled "How to enable macros on a single computer after you install the WinHlp32.exe download" and following the instructions there to edit the registry. Unfortunately on my own system I found that the registry key that you have to search for does not exist.

The clue to the actual solution can be found by scrolling further down to the section titled "Registry entries and group policies for network administrators" and then reading the sub-section "How to enable macros". In fact the instructions there can be followed to the letter and worked fine on my machine. For convenience I have reproduced the relevant section below.

How to enable macros

Network administrators can use the Allow programmatic macros in WinHlp32.exe policy to turn on or to turn off macros in .hlp files. Administrators can use the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) to manage this Group Policy setting. For more information about Group Policy, see the "References" section.

If neither the Local computer Group Policy nor the Current user Group Policy for this feature has been set, users can modify the user registry setting for this feature to turn on or to turn off macros in .hlp files. To change this setting, users must first add the following new subkey to the registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WinHelp

Then, users must add a DWORD value that is named AllowProgrammaticMacros to this subkey. If the value for AllowProgrammaticMacros is set to 1, the macros will be turned on. If the value is set to 0, the macros will be turned off. If this registry value does not exist, the macros will be turned off.

 

[tiscando]

I got that problem too.
I would really like the vsm's help files to be in the new format as well as the old one. Is this possible?

 

[darbyic]

Agreed, though I think that VSM needs slightly more than just that for it to be considered Vista ready. It is nothing major, but things like you mentioned in another thread about the path defaults being the 'system32' folder.

All these things can be worked round (with a little research and a bit of assistance from other users), but in todays market that is no longer an acceptable situation.