OK, I know there could be many reasons for this, but still, I wonder if anyone can help. Dragon is freezing up a lot lately. Today, it seemed to be about every half an hour. When I dictate, nothing happens, and there is no indication that the program has "heard" me. I've checked to make sure the microphone is connected and turned on. I've readjusted the microphone. It seems to help if I exit Dragon and then turn it back on, but who wants to do that every half hour?

I know my word processor is pretty old – maybe that's the problem? Right now I am under deadline and absolutely can't deal with replacing it.

Windows XP, Dragon Premium 11.5, WordPerfect 10.

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DNS Premium 12.5, Intel i7 quad core 3.9 GHz, 16 GB, Windows 7, VXI TalkPro

Unfortunately a number of end-users are suffering from this problem, including us. On our system, it isn't necessarily every 30 minutes. It can happen as frequently as every 10 minutes to 2 hours and then return to normal. Interestingly enough, it can happen in the middle of dictation. You can even turn your microphone off but it won’t come back on. Typically 1 or 2 minutes later, your dictation will hit the page and you will have to delete it because you already typed everything out. Does this sound about right?

We originally wondered if the freeze problem might be tied to Microsoft Word or Outlook but we no longer think so because we can experience the problem in something as simple as our Live Chat. The reason why we originally suspected Microsoft Word is because Word tended to become unstable when NaturallySpeaking froze but would recover. The problem seems more likely to be a utility but it's also possible that our user profile or NaturallySpeaking is a bit corrupted. 1 utility that we think we have managed to rule out is Microsoft Security Essentials. With that in mind, we would like to invite anyone, who was experiencing this time out issue, to experiment and add their own findings to this thread. Maybe, as a group, we can find a solution.

Note that if you have to close and re-launch NaturallySpeaking it can be a pain in the butt because you additionally have to close and re-launch Outlook, Excel and Word if you have themopen. Grrrr……

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Click KB 2012 REV D to Download a 30 Day Evaluation of KnowBrainer 2012 

 

 

 

It would be most helpful if people experiencing this would make a copy of their Dragon log file immediately after the system resumes responding, along with a short discription which particular circumstances the freezes had started under, such as what program was actively in use, or what kind of commands, or kind of actions such as correcting, spelling, or editing the text or navigating within it for instance were taking place before the freeze occured. And yes, submit your information here, please.

Rüdiger

 

-------------------------

Well, it's past the point where we can make any changes in the code, but we can still make changes to the Easter Egg!

Would additionally add to check you Recognition History to make certain that the "freeze" is not actually background rogue commands that are being carried out during this time.

MDH

-------------------------

Lunis - I usually reboot which is a pain also but I don't know of a better efficient way?

-Roger

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Intel Pent D 930 Dual Core Proc 3.0 GHz, 4MB L2 Cache on a Intel Desktop Board D945PVS 800MHz FSB, 4GB 667MHz DDR2 Non-ECC CL5 DIMM (Kit of 2), 150 GB, 10K RPM, 16 MB Cache - WD Raptor SATA HD, Win XP Pro Ver 2002 SP3 32-bit, Andrea USB Soundpod, Sennheiser ME 3, DNS Pro 11.5 using BestMatch III.

Unless something is going seriously wrong, rebooting would be overkill. You can typically leave Internet Explorer running although it may not work quite as well without re-launching but you'll definitely have to kill Microsoft Word, Outlook and most other Microsoft Office applications. Unfortunately, you will probably also have to resort to opening the Task Manager to the Processes tab to verify that these processes have closed because some of them tend to stick, like Outlook and Excel.

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Click KB 2012 REV D to Download a 30 Day Evaluation of KnowBrainer 2012 

 

 

 

This is when I find Lindsay's 'SpeechStart' a Godsend.  I know you still have to close down Microsoft Word, Microsoft Outlook etc if they are open and then restart them.  But with the SpeechStart app, even when Dragon locks up, you never need to reboot again.

Roger and Latecomer, in those circumstances that you mention, you will find this app invaluable.  Ask anybody.

http://www.pcbyvoice.com/shop/pcbyvoice-speechstart/

Cheers

-------------------------

Tiger Feet

| DNS 12 Professional | KnowBrainer 2012 | Windows 7 Professional /64 Bit | Intel Core i7 Quad Core 3840QM (2.80GHz) 8MB | 16GB RAM. | 240GB Intel 520 Series SSD Boot Drive | 750GB 7200 rpm Secondary Drive  | Plantronics Wireless Handsfree Microphone CS60-USB. |

Thanks for the tip!

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Intel Pent D 930 Dual Core Proc 3.0 GHz, 4MB L2 Cache on a Intel Desktop Board D945PVS 800MHz FSB, 4GB 667MHz DDR2 Non-ECC CL5 DIMM (Kit of 2), 150 GB, 10K RPM, 16 MB Cache - WD Raptor SATA HD, Win XP Pro Ver 2002 SP3 32-bit, Andrea USB Soundpod, Sennheiser ME 3, DNS Pro 11.5 using BestMatch III.

I have a similar problem. In my case, Dragon shuts down rather nastily. I have only had this happened when I am using Microsoft Office (2010), mainly Microsoft Word.

I have attached my log file. 

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WORK: 12.5 Premium, KB2012, VoiceComputer, Windows7x64, i7 930, 12GB, Sennheiser DWPro1

HOME: 12.5 Premium, KB2012, VoiceComputer, Windows7x64, i5 760, 8GB DDR3, Airline 77/Andrea USB pod.

"Life's hard. It's even harder when you're stupid."

John Wayne

My Dragon 11.5 premium now freezes (task manager reports dragon as "not respoding") as soon as I begin to use it--right away, everytime.  Dragon has become unusable.  I can't even dictate into dragon pad. 

from the posts i've seen, it seems lots of folks are having similar pbs. 

I  run the audio check when ever i have any dragon pbs, and that always passes with no hint of problems.  

Is this still a pb for lots of people? 

What can be done?  Can anyone help?  I used to depend on dragon.  and i need the voice recognition support. 

-------------------------
greentyco-DNS v10/xp/2gb/Intel Core 2

According to your signature tag, you are only using 2 Gb of RAM in a Windows XP machine. Is this still the case? If so, too little RAM is the likely catalyst. We don't recommend runnng with less than 4 Gb of RAM in Windows XP but prefer 6 to 8 Gb of RAM in Windows 7 64-bit.

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Click KB 2012 REV D to Download a 30 Day Evaluation of KnowBrainer 2012 

 

 

 

this is a long shot, but the only freezing I'm seeing seems to involve the plug-in container of Firefox; killing it makes DNS responsive again.

Thanks.  But i am using only IE9, and no new plugins.  the ony change i have made to my environment recently is to install google drive and paper port for scanning. other that that, no changes--and dns worked basically ok until now.  I haven't used dns for several months and am going back to it now.  i just noticed that it is now essentially useless.  and I have used dns since dns 8.  the earlier versions seem to have been more stable. 

Thanks for your help. 

-------------------------
greentyco-DNS v10/xp/2gb/Intel Core 2

 

I now have Vista with 3 gig on this machine.  But my current dragon freezing in a new problem.  I have run dragon on my current dell laptop for almost four years with only moderate pbs.  I have dragon 11.5 sp1. 

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greentyco-DNS v10/xp/2gb/Intel Core 2

I now have Vista with 3 gig on this machine.  But my current dragon freezing in a new problem.  I have run dragon on my current dell laptop for almost four years with only moderate pbs.  I have dragon 11.5 sp1. 

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greentyco-DNS v10/xp/2gb/Intel Core 2

While you have met the manufacturer's minimum requirements, running NaturallySpeaking 11 on a 3 Gb Vista computer is almost as risky as running it on a Windows XP 2 Gb computer. Assuming everything runs perfectly, your computer would be adequate but this is 1 of the reasons why our backup computer has 12 Gb of RAM, our notebook as 16 Gb of RAM and our main office computer has 24 Gb of RAM. Granted, that is probably a little overkill but when things start to go wrong in Windows, having extra RAM can often bail you out of a bad situation. Hopefully, MDL is correct but your current system has very little margin for error. In our opinion, it's probably time for a new computer and if you are going to buy a new computer, go with 16 Gb of RAM. The price difference between 8 Gb of RAM and 16 Gb of RAM is typically about $79.

-------------------------

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When i  get a new machine i will get lots of gig.  don't worry.  but this is a pb that began today when i started using dns again after being off of dns for 2-3 months.  otherwise, dns has run basically ok on this same machine for more than three years.  dns 10 through 11.5 on this machine, if i remember correctly.  i ran earlier versions on a different machine.  and i am gettng no messages.  dns just goes non-responsive.  even when dns is the only ap running after a fresh boot. 

-------------------------
greentyco-DNS v10/xp/2gb/Intel Core 2

If this helps, I encountered a freeze today after a command to "create new folder" through my home office network on my 2nd laptop. The mic froze green and after a lengthy delay typed my repeated folder names, but otherwise neither the computer nor apps required shutting down.

Dragon.log shows a lengthy stack dump, dd10hook and HOOKERR_CANNOTINJECT after the "create new folder" command. Detailed log will be attached in next email - my attempt to attach thru firefox just failed.....

I note that the good doctor for what it's worth also seems to be using a 16GB RAM Thinkpad....

Best,

Elizabeth

DNS 12 Pro BM V, Win7 64 bit, Intel Core Quad Core i7-2760QM, 8MB L3 Cache, Thinkpad W520, 16GB DDR3 RAM, Office 2003, 160GB Intel SSD Boot Drive, 750GB 7200 rpm Secondary Drive, VXI Talkpro & USB Translator. No VoiceComputer, Vocola or Knowbrainer.

 

 

Latecomer et al.,

First, I concur with Rüdiger is far as ensuring that you post a copy of your Dragon log as soon after experiencing a problem with DNS not responding for any length of time, or freezing/hanging, etc. Also, please be as clear and detailed (step-by-step) as you possibly can in describing what went on before, during, and after experiencing this kind of problem. For example, does Dragon return to functionality (i.e., listening to you and responding) or is it completely freezing requiring you to close it down and restart it. Also, please don't use general terms like "crash" or "freeze" without describing exactly what these mean specifically relative to your case.

Second, you probably answered part of your own question. That is, DNS 11.5 no longer supports WordPerfect 10. Right from the Dragon Speech Recognition Feature Matrix, note the following in terms of what applications Dragon's supports:

• Word 2003, 2007 and 2010; WordPad XP, Vista,
Windows 7; and DragonPad (word processor
included in Dragon): Full Text Control, Menu
Tracking, and Natural Language Commands ***

• OpenOffice Writer 3.1, 3.2: Full Text Control

• WordPerfect X3, X4, X5 (English and French only):
Full Text Control, Menu Tracking, and English Natural
Language Commands

You're two versions of WordPerfect behind what DNS 11.5 currently supports. I'm just pointing this out for yours and everyone else's benefit.

You can review the feature matrix for yourself by clicking here

Chuck

"What you are aware of you are in control of; what you are not aware of is in control of you." - Anthony de Mello

-------------------------

Thanks, all. What Lunis describes is exactly what I'm experiencing. If anyone figures out where the bug is, let me know. Meanwhile, I'll check the recognition history and will see about the log file. Upgrading the word processor will have to wait a while. Further advice welcome!

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DNS Premium 12.5, Intel i7 quad core 3.9 GHz, 16 GB, Windows 7, VXI TalkPro

It happens to me on occasions. It is as if DNS stops listening for a while, which it does not because anything said, be it text or commands, is acted upon when DNS comes back to life again. the time outs are of different durations.

It happened to me yesterday and was for a relatively long period. Unfortunately, DNS has started a new Dragon log this morning but I had a slight freeze when I first started using DNS this morning.

 I'm enclosing my latest Dragon log for what it's worth.

 

-------------------------
Jomark

I don't have any tangible contributions to this thread at the moment, other than to wonder out loud whether anyone in present company is using Dragon Dictate for Mac. It's my understanding that, while Dictate for Mac and NaturallySpeaking for PC differ substantially in the commands they recognize, the commands that one can create, and the control that each version of Dragon offers over its respective operating system, the speech engine is identical.

By that, I mean that when a user dictates using either Dragon NaturallySpeaking or Dragon Dictate, the way the sound is processed, checked against the vocabulary, Language Model, Acoustic Model, and its associated confidence scores and HMMs and turned into transcribed text is exactly the same.

It'd be beneficial to note whether Dragon Dictate users are experiencing similar delays as their PC counterparts. Maybe, somehow (as our anecdotal evidence and Dragon logs might hopefully flush out), Nuance introduced latency in the speech engine that just wasn't there in previous versions. If NaturallySpeaking users are encountering delays that Dragon Dictate users are not, at least that's a start.

-------------------------

Eric Wright At work: DNS 12 Pro. At home: DNS 11.5 Pro,  KnowBrainer 2011, and Utter Command by RedStart Systems; Dragon Dictate 3 for Mac

 

Appetite for Dictation - My Blog

Not sure if this is the same problem, but now it is hearing me, but either not responding to commands at all, or responding with a delay. This is happening in WordPerfect and also in the dictation box. It's also happening in Firefox. (I know Dragon and Firefox are not fully compatible, but Dragon usually responds to commands like "delete line" in the address bar, and now it doesn't.) In WordPerfect and the dictation box, it responds to "press spacebar" but not "spacebar." Same for "backspace."  In WordPerfect, it will select text, but won't respond to "cut that," but will respond to "press control-x."  Ditto paste that versus press control-v. But then it suddenly DOES respond, and I get the same text pasted in twice. Meanwhile it will show the dictation box but won't "transfer." I am attaching the log.





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DNS Premium 12.5, Intel i7 quad core 3.9 GHz, 16 GB, Windows 7, VXI TalkPro

you need to change Dragon.log to Dragon.txt for it to read by others

-------------------------
Jomark

1. How do I change it to .txt? I tried "save as" but it is still showing as .log.

2. Further details. This morning, after I restarted the computer, almost first thing, Dragon would not respond to the command "paste that." When it didn't respond the first time, I said the command again. Everything froze up for maybe 15-30 seconds, and then it pasted in the text twice, i.e., responded to both commands. This was in WordPerfect.

Then, after I attached the log file to this message, I saw that it was showing .log instead of .txt, and I tried to delete it. After I highlighted it, Dragon would not respond to the command "delete that" or "cut that."

Any ideas?

-------------------------

DNS Premium 12.5, Intel i7 quad core 3.9 GHz, 16 GB, Windows 7, VXI TalkPro

Latecomer,

Say "open show Dragon log". When Windows Explorer opens with the Dragon.log file highlighted, drag-and-drop it to your desktop. Then click on the filename and delete "log" and replace it with "txt". Once it takes the rename and becomes Dragon.txt, then uploaded as an attachment. Don't try to edit the file in Windows Explorer because this is what you run into.

As regards to your second description of details and, these delays are caused by DNS pausing while it initializes something. This is why the Dragon log is important. Without it, we're grasping at straws.

Chuck

Getting technical support rule #1: When asking questions or describing problems, express yourself as if you were attempting to describe the Mona Lisa to a blind person.

-------------------------

We were unable to utilize Chuck's technique quite possibly because we're using Windows default setting to hide extensions which can make things a bit tricky because we use NotePad to view the Dragonlog. If you find yourself in this position, try substituting the following steps:

1. Say open show dragon log
2. Open the Dragon.log file in NotePad.
3. Click File followed by Save As.
4. Click the Desktop icon followed by the Save button to save a text copy of your Dragonlog to your desktop.

-------------------------

Click KB 2012 REV D to Download a 30 Day Evaluation of KnowBrainer 2012 

 

 

 

Problems occur almost daily and typically when using Word 2007. Most often when making a correction by hand and then trying to continue dictations or when dictating a lot.

The green Dragon light will be on in the system tray, but nothing is being typed in response to dictation. Click the light to turn it off.

A) at this point "Word has encountered an error and needs to shut down"

or

B) try to turn the light back on in the system tray and there is a very long delay

-------------------------
DNS Premium 11.5 SP1; Windows 7 Professional SP1; Office 2007 SP3; Intel Core 2 Quad 2.83 GHz; 8 GB RAM

For what it's worth, uninstalling Adobe Flash Player seems to have dramatically reduced how often Dragon hangs/freezes.

 

I have automatic updates of Flash Player turned off, and only updated a few days ago after an untold period of time since the last update. Shortly after the update, I noticed Dragon hanging and crashing far more often than usual. Uninstalling has not stopped Dragon from crashing, but things seem better.

 

At about the same time Dragon started hanging/freezing, I noticed that it would eventually crash when Excel was open. This problem has not gone away after uninstalling Flash Player.

 

Admittedly, I don't see why flash player would have anything to do with Dragon. This could easily be a red herring.  But, for anyone having this problem, it may at least be worth seeing if things getting better when you uninstall Flash Player (or revert to  an earlier version). I'd be interested to hear whether this helps anyone else, or if other solutions have been found.

 

(Can't remember what my profile says, but I'm on Win 7 64 bit, quad core, 8gb, Dragon 11.5 Prem).

i have also been experiencing this problem primarily with respect to Microsoft Word. I'm using the 2010 version. for me it comes and goes. I'm pretty sure it is linked to a Microsoft update. What I have been doing is using either Task Manager or Process Viewer open on one of my side screens when I start to experience this problem. as soon as it looks like I have a Microsoft Word hang I quickly scan the CPU usage of all the processes. There is usually a non-Microsoft Word and non-DNS process that shows CPU usage of approximately 1 core worth. If it is NOT an operating system process but rather a utility process, which is what has been all year,I shoot that process via right clicking and the non responding Dragon/word comes back. I take that as the likely incompatibility and then disable that process using Microsoft system administration tools or msconfig.

I check again after the next Microsoft update by re-enabling the utility/process.

while this approach is a monumental PITA it's worked for me and I've never seen the circumstance where the incompatibility is just between DNS 11.5 and Microsoft Word 2010 (64-bit). However I know this is not always been the case for other users experiencing the same problem. Even just within my office it is individual PC dependent

Phil Schaadt

-------------------------
DNS12 Pro BM V Large Vocabulary plus KB or Voice Computer running Win7 64 bit machines with i7-2640M to i7-3960x and i7-3770K processors plus a Sony VAIO Windows 8 machine. DBX Audio Gate with Allen&Heath mixer/USB Audio; Andrea PureAudio USB  usually with Airline 77 or Audio-Technica but also Sennheiser MD431 II, theBoom, et. al.

Two things stand out.

 

Firstly, what process(es) are getting stuck at 100% usage on one CPU? This may point to what is going wrong.

 

Secondly, why are you using 64-bit Office? If the reason is "because I can", I urge you to consider switching to 32-bit Office. Microsoft's recommendation is to stick with 32-bit Office on a 64-bit operating system (indeed, this is the default with Office 2010 - you have to go out of your way to install 64-bit Office). Unless you are manipulating huge files, typically in Excel, there usually very little performance gain with 64-bit Office, whilst a lot of add-ins are either unavailable or are less well developed than for 32-bit Office.

 

Eventually, the maturity of plug-ins will catch up and 64-bit desktop operating systems will become the default. From Windows Server 2008 R2 onwards, there is no 32-bit version of Windows Server. 64-bit Windows 7 is mature and the low price of memory now means there are significant losses in installing a 32-bit operating system on modern hardware. I expect 64-bit to be default for Windows 8.

 

I'm much less sure with Office 2013. Plug-in developers have been lamentably slow to release 64-bit versions, and the 64-bit versions there are may be less mature and more troublesome than their 32-bit cousins. Like many people, I have some expensive software that does not (fully) support 64-bit Office, so I'm stuck with 32-bit Office for now.

 

Adobe Acrobat X Pro introduced 64-bit plug-ins for the most widely used Office programs with version 10.1, but there is still no 64-bit Adobe PDF plug-in for Visio (which I do use) or Publisher (which I only load when some idiot sends me a .pub or .pubx, forgetting that many people don't have Microsoft Publisher). I would add that I think Publisher is no great loss, as I find it an awful program, but I'm biased as I'm used to Adobe InDesign.

 

Mindjet Mindmanager 2012 still has no 64-bit Office plug-ins. Mindjet are getting some stick for this, and rightly so, as Mindmanager is an expensive program for what it is.

 

Unfortunately 64-bit Office is an all or nothing thing. You can't have both 32 and 64-bit versions of Office applications installed, and all Office applications must be the same type (you can't even install 64-bit Visio or Project alongside a 32-bit Office suite).

 

Though I'm quietly making note of which of my software is yet to be updated for 64-bit Office, I'm not likely to switch in the near future.

-------------------------

David Wood

Hardware: Olympus DS-7000 (for dictation) - Olympus AS-7000 (for manual transcription) - Olympus DM-670 with ME-30W microphones (for seminars and events)

Software: DNS 12.5 Legal UK - Olympus ODMS 6.1.1 (Dictation and Transcription Modules) - Olympus Sonority Plus 1.4.2

David, I do not think I was sufficiently clear in my previous post. First I intentionally have not named any of the processes that I eliminated so I can dictate using Microsoft Office products. In multiple previous posts discussing this issue as well as in private messages with some of the other folks who have been experiencing these problems, there does not seem to be an obvious pattern. I intentionally did not want to name any of the processes that have caused problems for me as I was merely making a suggestion on what others might try to work around their problem.

Furthermore I have multiple machines across three different DNS users. At any given time there are probably 10 different machines with DNS installed with a total of at least 16 person hours of dictation across the machines in any given day. Even when the machines are nominally, identical, one may be experiencing a problem and another one doesn't. furthermore, the intermittent nature of the problems, that is it comes and goes, seems to be associated with Microsoft updates but I've not really been vigilant enough to nail down the root cause.

Additionally, we run a mix 32-bit and 64 bit Office suites. Furthermore it's a mix of Office 2007 and Office 2010. Mixes are due primarily the differences in purchasing prebuilt machines that come with Office 64-bit and building custom machines where we have purchased office 32-bit.

I've actually had the most problems with the 32-bit version of Office 2010 and the least problems my the machine that runs the 64-bit version.

At least for me while the problem has always manifested in Microsoft Word, so far, I have always been able to have an effective workaround by detecting and killing some utility process and then going back to dictating into Word, successfully, for many hours a day.

Based on everything I know so far, your mileage will definitely vary.

Phil Schaadt

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DNS12 Pro BM V Large Vocabulary plus KB or Voice Computer running Win7 64 bit machines with i7-2640M to i7-3960x and i7-3770K processors plus a Sony VAIO Windows 8 machine. DBX Audio Gate with Allen&Heath mixer/USB Audio; Andrea PureAudio USB  usually with Airline 77 or Audio-Technica but also Sennheiser MD431 II, theBoom, et. al.

Like Orcutt..I too am frustrated with this version 12 professional. It stops working... predictably every 10-15 seconds. there is a red icon next to the mike icon. It takes several minutes to restart and the dictated text comes up on screen slowly( it is accurate) . This is NOT related to RAM or processor power. It looks like a software flaw in its ability to instruct the processor to handle data streams. It overwhelms the processor. During these times of freeze, the CPU utilization is >60%. Other programs will work. It will allow you to save your work, if I am dictating to word. I tried turning off many of the options I don't use. Still same problem. It may also be the amount of data it is collecting. It was not a problem until I had used it for 20 days or so. there have been no new software upgrades.
Another glitch ..this problem consistently starts every time a macro is executed. It freezes after a voice command-macro is issued.
I tried to deselect boxes where it learns as you dictate as well. Still no improvement.
Dragon owes us a quick upgrade. otherwise, just issue a refund and allow us to use the 11.5 again!

I am thankful to the rest of you who have posted your woes with 12.  I was planning to waste money on a new i-7 computer with 32 GB RAM! I did not do it!

-------------------------
N. Murali,MD

          Welcome to the World's Most Popular Speech Recognition Forum

 

This might be a bit of a longshot but since this thread began, we have discovered a couple of applications which may be causing the problem for NaturallySpeaking. #1 in NaturallySpeaking has a difficult time with the Microsoft Excel plug-in and for those using Microsoft Excel, they might even be better off disabling the plug-in which is designed to enable Full Text Control. The other problem we ran into is that NaturallySpeaking freezes whenever re-launch Ace Explorer which is a minor little browser that we like to use a place of Internet Explorer when shipping overseas orders. If we let NaturallySpeaking wait about 5 minutes, it will come out of it on its own but who has 5 minutes to spare when you're working. We don't know if this is in any way connected to your problem. We only mentioning it in case you have one specific application that is getting in the way.

-------------------------

Click KB 2012 REV D to Download a 30 Day Evaluation of KnowBrainer 2012 

 

 

 

Lunis.. Thank you for taking time to educate us.
I went ahead( you know idle curiosity...) and purchased a really souped up new generation i-7 think-Center Lenovo. I installed Dragon 12. It is working OK so far. I have not done 20 page dictations in a scroll, as I normally do. I will keep you posted!
I like the performance of 11.5 on my XP dual core PC with 4 GB RAM compared with the new I-7 with 16 GB RAM!

-------------------------
N. Murali,MD

After 2 months, many experiments later ( did all Lunis recommended, also created a new profile from scratch in 64 bit, even uninstalled excel as I do not use it on this machine. ..I still encounter frequent freezes.( not a CPU utilization problem as I can run anything else with ease when Dragon is chilling out.....usually for 20 seconds and the verbiage types out correctly. Unfortunately those 20 second wait feels like 20 minutes when I am in a hurry. .Wrote to Nuance ..No reply. Has anyone heard from Nuance? I hope they at least give us a free bug fixed Version 13 for posting on this forum and confirming we are not crazy!
Accuracy of dragon 12 professional is outstanding. Small consolation at least.

-------------------------
N. Murali,MD

We hear you loud and clear about the 20 second wait time. The weird thing is that we experienced the same problem with Ver. 11.5 on every 3rd dictation. The 1st 2 dictated phrases would appear within a couple of seconds but approximately every 3rd phrase would take about 20 seconds. We eventually reached the point where we learned to wait a few seconds, think about what we wanted to say and dictate an entire paragraph at one time. While this turned out to be a good lesson we didn't like being forced into working that way. While we mercifully don't have that problem with Ver. 12, we don't believe it has anything to do with NaturallySpeaking so it probably won't likely get fixed in Ver. 13 which will actually be Ver. 14 (Nuance, like most manufacturers, avoids using the number 13 because some customers are superstitious and Nuance wouldn't want to offend anyone.

This might be a bit of a stretch but we suspect the culprit is some sort of housekeeping utility or possibly even a shopping virus that pings your computer network approximately every 30 seconds to upload your keystrokes or shopping habits to the Internet. It won't be easy but you might try temporarily disabling various utilities on your computer. You might even want to disconnect from the Internet when you disable your antivirus software. Certain applications are now known to cause problems with NaturallySpeaking such as Skype, Google Chrome and several antivirus utilities. You'll probably have to use the process of elimination but you can do this from within the Processes tab of the Task Manager.

-------------------------

Click KB 2012 REV D to Download a 30 Day Evaluation of KnowBrainer 2012 

 

 

 

Dr. Murali,

First, I concur with Lunis in that the next version of DNS will likely be 14 vs. 13, but not because customers are superstitious. It's just standard industry practice to avoid the number 13 just as you won't find a 13th floor in any hotel or office building. Virtually all companies are like to avoid superstitious numbers.

Second, there won't be any free upgrade to version 14 and you will be waiting for at least a year and a half if not more for the next version anyway. There are some issues with DNS 12 that need to be resolved, particularly with BestMatch V, which Nuance will likely provide a service pack release at some point in the, hopefully, not too distant future.

Third, what you have provided is a lot of crossover and confusing information. You need to be specific, detailed, and clear on the following:

1. Attach a copy of your Dragon log first. The Dragon log gives us all the information about particular hardware configuration that you're using as well as what Dragon is or is not doing and version of Windows that you're using.

2. Be clear on what version of Windows and the specific hardware configuration of the system on which you are having problems. Your KnowBrainer profile says Windows XP and it looks as though you're referring to a Coretm i7 with 16 GB of RAM running under Windows 7 64-bit relative to your post.

3. What speech model are you using? BestMatch V Medium vocabulary, BestMatch V General-Large vocabulary, BestMatch IV?

4. Are you working on a standalone computer, or a workstation connected to a network?

Please try to keep in mind that when you're talking about problems and issues that you're having with your computer and Dragon NaturallySpeaking, not giving us the complete details is like calling up your auto mechanic and telling him that your car doesn't start. Without detailed information along with your Dragon log, we end up speculating and you end up spinning your wheels. It doesn't do you any good to spit into the wind, and it makes it very difficult for us to help you.

Chuck

Getting technical support rule #1: When asking questions or describing problems, express yourself as if you were attempting to describe the Mona Lisa to a blind person.

-------------------------

Hi there

 

I am delighted to see this thread. I’ve been having exactly this problem. If there is any way I can help you to shed light on it, then I would be so pleased. I have looked on and off for some time for such a discussion.

 

I’ve been using DNS for around a decade. This problem started with version 11 about two years ago, and is the same with version 12. I have had the same problem on two different PCs at home (both standalone) as well as my PC at work (on a network domain). I have come to the conclusion that this problem must be widespread.

 

I’m using a powerful PC in each case. I currently have an Intel core i5-3750 with 8 GB RAM. I use a Logitech ClearChat PC Wireless 2.4Ghz Headset with USB Transmitter (so that the sound card is the USB dongle). At work I use the standard Dragon headset provided with a standard onboard realtek audio soundcard. In both cases I am running Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (the problems were exactly the same when running 32-bit Windows).

 

My current version is DNS Home Edition Version 12 (PC). My previous version was Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 Premium Edition (PC). I do not believe this is a problem of RAM, as this has coincided with falling prices and I have plenty. I did not have the problem in previous versions of Dragon with significantly less RAM. I am using Bestmatch vocabulary on this version. I don’t recall what I was doing before with version 11.

 

I have struggled to work out what is the cause. Dragon goes into sleep and then does not wake up – seemingly freezing. It is intermittent and episodic. It typically happens about five times every day, and usually lasts about one or two minutes (it seems like ages when it is happening – very frustrating!), but occasionally longer. The microphone toggle button on the keyboard does not work whilst Dragon is frozen. Usually I leave it and make a cup of coffee, and when I get back the text that I was saying at the time has been transcribed onto the screen and Dragon is fully responsive.

 

Sometimes I can then go for hours without the problem. In other cases at it can re-occur two or more times in succession – although that is less common.

 

I am very careful to keep clean software installations, and it can happen even on a PC with very little other software running. At various stages I have tried to close down various processes in the Windows Task Manager to try a process of elimination. Sometimes for a short while I think that I have thrown something that improves the situation, but I am not really convinced. At one stage there was some kind of other conflict with Adobe Acrobat, but that seems to have been solved – presumably with one patch or another. I also suspect that the intellitype mouse and keyboard software from Microsoft aggravates the problem.

 

Anyway, I am uploading a couple of logs from recent freezes. I have never looked at these logs before, and I would have trouble interpreting them myself.

 

Can I be of any more help? As this happens frequently, I’m happy to upload more logs.

 

Dragon is otherwise excellent. I must say the accuracy of version 12 really is impressive. For the first time in years I started a new profile (rather than importing one from a previous version). I was getting remarkable accuracy within days, and when it is not freezing – on a fast PC it is flying!

 

Regards – Simon

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Simon Festing
DNS Long Time User

          Welcome to the World's Most Popular Speech Recognition Forum

 

As far as NaturallySpeaking going to sleep and not waking up is concerned… Nuance tried to help us out by creating a default setting where the microphone automatically goes to sleep after 5 minutes of nonuse. If you do not like the default setting, you can go into your DNS Options/Miscellaneous tab and change Put the microphone to sleep after 5 minutes of silence to 120 minutes. While you're there, you might want to remove the checkmark from Alert when audio quality is low because the manufacturer OEM microphone and your Realtek soundcard are both crap (in our opinion) and are likely to trigger the low-quality alert a little too often. We're not big fans of the Logitech ClearChat USB microphone either but it should be an improvement. If you haven't already done so yet, you may additionally want to remove the checkmark from Use the Dictation Box for unsupported applications and move the Speed vs. Accuracy slider to Most Accurate. Just our $.02 on that score…

Unfortunately, most end-users suffer from NaturallySpeaking taking an occasional timeout (for lack of a better term) and no one seems to have come up with a solution yet. Our best guess is that part of the problem has to do with the Windows OS and the other may be connected to NaturallySpeaking working with dual cores but that is just an unqualified guess on our part.

By habit, we prefer to turn the microphone completely off, with the hotkey, when leaving our computer unattended for any period of time. This requires us to turn the microphone back on the same way but we have never have a problem waking the microphone up from the Asleep state. One thing we have noticed about lower end microphones is that they tend to do much better with dictation than waking NaturallySpeaking up from the Asleep state. However, we only use professional microphones which we believe increases our efficiency and accuracy.

We are surprised that when you upgraded from Premium 11 that you simultaneously downgraded to the Home Edition 12, which we don't recommend under any circumstances for a number of reasons including, we doubt you substantially saved any money, you will not be able to transcribe digital recordings, you will not be able to add boilerplate text commands, Nuance typically places full box copies of DNS Premium on sale for $100 about every other month but most importantly, you will not be be able to take anything with you like your vocabulary, training or anything else of value when you upgrade to the next version of DNS. You will have to start all over again when Ver. 14 is released. For that reason, we don't even offer the Home Edition on our website. Just food for thought…

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Hi There. I just wanted to report my experiences and say many thanks for your help. There were some ups and downs, but in short, things are very much improved.

in retrospect, I wish I had made the multiple different changes you recommended between yourselves in a systematic fashion as stepped changes over time. I made all the changes pretty much at the same time, but in a slightly jumbled manner. Things got better, then worse, then I made some further adjustments, then things got better again. Unfortunately now I can't pin down exactly what it was that made the difference.

I now get freezes about once a fortnight, in which case I just reboot my PC. This is much better than the previous at least once per day, and sometimes up to 3 times per day.

I think it was a combination of a new user profile, plus tidying up my desktop and start menu shortcuts, plus turning off some of the optional commands under the Dragon, Tools, Options. I also upgraded to the premium version, but I don't have any reason to believe that changed the frequency of freezing.

I haven't yet changed the microphone, and I'm not convinced that was contributing much to the freezes. My speech recognition quality has always been excellent, and I was getting good results with this microphone well before I was getting the problems with the freezes in the more recent versions of Dragon. But I am planning to upgrade the microphone on your advice anyway, as any small improvement in speech recognition quality could help.

Kind regards, and good luck to all of you. I will come to your website for any future relevant purchases. Simon

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Simon Festing
DNS Long Time User

Your microphone sounds like an unlikely culprit. Many of us suffer from latency issues where Dragon simply takes a little siesta. It was intolerable in Ver. 11 but even in our fast main office computer, Ver. 12.5 takes about a 15 second break every hour or so. Apparently it's some sort of a union thing

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I am encountering a website error when attempting to upload the log file (as .txt). Perhaps I'm missing something....
- Eliz

In the old KnowBrainer Forum, you needed to convert your Dragonlog as a text file before uploading, as an attachment but this is no longer necessary. You should be able to upload your log file in its original current format.

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Et voila - actually, the problem was I hadn't clicked on the particular file line once it was uploaded...erg...

- Eliz

Simon,

Unfortunately, it's not widespread. In fact, with DNS 12 it's very rare. However, and to be succinct, your problem is a badly corrupted user profile.

First, the first indication of such is the following from your Dragon log:

10:40:00 LOG (Perf): Loading of compatibility modules took more than 60000 msec

1000 msec equals one second. Therefore, 60000 msec = 60 seconds or one minute. You have this numerous times throughout both Dragon logs.

Second, you have several instances, the most severe being:

10:44:45 LOG (Perf): Time to track start menu = 338383 msec

Which translates into 5.63 minutes

Lastly, there are many other engine sink errors and other related issues.

There is no way to specifically tell what caused your profile to become corrupted. There are many different reasons for such. Nevertheless, the reason for delay in turning on the microphone is profile corruption.

My recommendation would be to create a new user profile and test it. You can skip training if you wish, or you can run general training during the creation process.

If you're using this same profile on all computers. Then you should create a new user profile on all.

Let us know the results. Also, I see from your Dragon log that you're using Microsoft Office 2010 32-bit, which is fine. However, in addition to the above, you may need to or want to run a repair of DNS and Microsoft Office 2010.

Lastly, keep in mind that Logitech designs microphones primarily for gaming. Logitech knows about as much about speech recognition as I do about how to fly a 747. Any microphone of reasonable quality can be made to work with DNS. However, the assumption that simply because it appears to work well that it is therefore optimal for such is a myth that has been propagated for many many years, probably as long as you have been using Dragon. In addition, unless you're using an iPhone or an Android smartphone, there is no reason to allow Dragon to load the dnsspserver. You can disable that and permanently prevent it from loading. Why load a driver (server) if you don't need it. If you need instructions and explanations on how to do this, just let me know.

There are also other options in the DNS Options dialog that you can disable if you don't need them or use them, such as the post to Twitter and Facebook options, disabling anything in the Natural Language Commands that you're not using, such as PowerPoint, Excel, and/or Corel WordPerfect. The more you disable features you don't use, the better performance you will get anyway. You can also disable your pagefile. With 8 GB of RAM you don't need it and, as such, it's a waste of both disk space and can be a performance killer Re: Windows. In short, there are many things you can do to improve the performance of DNS, but if your profile is corrupted none of them are going to help improve the microphone delay.

Chuck

"Many of the things you can count, don't count. Many of the things you can't count, really count." Albert Einstein

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To add some pracitcal hints:

When you create a new user profile, try making it a BestMatch IV user profile. After entering your information, there is a screen that prompts you to verify your selection. Click on "extras" (or whatever it says - I've got the German version) and select BestMatch IV as language model.

I have experienced similar issues with BestMatch V and they went away after that.

Also try disabling all commands that you don't need in Dragon's options.

Finally, clear up ypur desktop and start menu. The "Time to track start menu" that Chuck discoverd is frequently due to outdated links that Dragon cannot process. Having said that, it may also help to disable the commands to open applications by voice unless you absolutely need that function.

Best, Stephan

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www.egs-vertrieb.de - Speech Recognition Blog - Forum: www.immer-eine-Nuance-besser.de

Thanks for these pieces of advice. I am most grateful. Sorry not to respond sooner - got bogged down at work. I've ordered the 12 Premium Version of DNS and I plan to install it this weekend and create a new user profile. I will also read the manual on how to disable these various commands. Dragon has got more complicated I think over the long period of time I have been using it, and I have never bothered to investigate those various features and turn them off. In fact I don't use any commands at all. It is just speech recognition I use. Even navigation and correction I do manually.
I will let you know how I get on. Cheers - Simon

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Simon Festing
DNS Long Time User

I am having the same issues with DNS 10.1. We use EPIC for our EMR. The machines are Dell OptiPlex 790's with win 7 64 bit, i-5 processor and 8 gb of mem. The computers become unresponsive. You can move the mouse, click start, but nothing will open. Services show to have shut down in the windows log. Task manager doesn't show any spikes. Logging is not possible. We have worked with nuance. They even sent a guy on site. He couldn't figure it out. The Dragon logs don't show any issues. We have installed machines with nothing but the EMR and DNS. Still they freeze. They may work for a month but then they may freeze multiple times a day. Even weirder is we can restart the machines 3 times and they start functioning fine.

          Welcome to the World's Most Popular Speech Recognition Forum

 

The freezing issue has plagued many end-users and to some degree, is even troublesome to Ver. 12.5 users but your problems are considerably worse than the freezing issues we typical run into. Have you tried creating a new profile? Does a new profile work well temporarily? If so, how long?

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I support a hospital enviroment with hundreds of providers using dragon. Do you think we need to recreate the profiles for anyone that has a machine freeze?

We absentmindedly assumed that at most, you only have a handful of people experiencing this issue. If it's more than just a few than the problem may have something to do with the network becoming overloaded. We've seen this type of problem occur with Citrix but unfortunately we don't have a better suggestion.

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