EKW,

Be glad to help you. However, your KnowBrainer profile says that you are using DNS 9. Is that the case?

In order to give you specific instructions we need to know exactly what version of DNS you're using and what flavor. For example, if you're using DNS 9, are you using 9.0, 9.1, or 9.5. The version number doesn't make a whole lot of difference, but it's something that I would like to know because you should be using DNS 9.5, which is still a free download as long as you're using Preferred or below. On the other hand, are you using Essentials, Standard, Preferred, Professional, Legal, or Medical (DNS 9) or have you upgraded to DNS 10-10.1 or DNS 11-11.5? How you handle getting your custom words and/or custom commands transferred to your new user profile is dependent upon which version and flavor of DNS you're using.

Help us out so that we can help you out.

Chuck Runquist
Technical Project Manager
VoiceTeach LLC
Home of VoicePower®: We don't make Dragon NaturallySpeaking, We make it better!

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,

Thanks for replying so quickly. I didnt realize my profile information was so old and says 9.0! I will change it. I am running 11.0 on this computer and know there is an upgrade but havent had time to look into that. I believe its a free download? So what I did was I created a new user. I have several old users since I have had several corrupted Nat. Speaking users in the past. I tried to repair it today, but Lunis suggested starting a new user but not train it to determine what the issue was. Well I ended up training it (easy, brief training) b/c I really needed to use it b/c of hand problems. So I now have a New User and its functioning fine. I have the Old User file too that wasnt working properly and that one has all my carefully crafted vocabulary with alot of special acronyms and names that would be a hassle to retrain. Thanks for you help, Chucker, in advance.

EKW 

Chucker

I should add that NaturallySpeaking is not entirely acting normally all of the time even with the new user. Sometimes when I state something it takes a little time to catch up and appear on the screen, which is unusual in my experience. Also, sometimes it does not respond when I tell it to go to sleep or turn off the speaker manually. But other times it's perfectly fine...this last phrase I dictated did not appear on the screen until I manually turned of the speaker. So I have zero idea why this is occuring. Most often it has been fine, though, since I started the new user.
Thanks.

EKW

Hi

Since my last email, the program is now not working again. I cant dictate into Word or Dragon Pad. I dont know what to do but uninstall KnowBrainer and Nat. Speaking and start again. Is there anything else you can suggest. The computer is working in all other applications without problems. If this is a complex problem I might need phone support, and unfortunately I am in the midst of studying for a large exam! Please let me know what might be best. I am happy to pay you for tech support.

Thanks,

EKW

One last thing: when I close KnowBrainer I get the following Error Message:

-2147023174 (800706ba)

Com returned an unexpected error code: Details are The RPC Server is Unavailable (RPC_S_Server_Unavail, 1722)

There are 2 possible reasons for not being able to dictate into Microsoft Word.

1. Some Full Text Control applications need to be launched after NaturallySpeaking. That list includes Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, Outlook and Excel. In other words just get in the habit of launching NaturallySpeaking 1^st. Although you can change your NaturallySpeaking options to launch in QuickStart mode, our preference is to place a shortcut to KnowBrainer 2011 in your start up folder.

2. If #1 doesn't apply, Microsoft Word has likely ejected the NaturallySpeaking add-in. Unfortunately, when Microsoft Word crashes, end-users are typically prompted to allow Microsoft Word to disable the add-ins which effectively disables NaturallySpeaking from dropping your dictation into Microsoft Word. Once again, as with the previous issues, you will find your answer in the previously mentioned Quick Tips when you look up “Microsoft”. The 1st link will take you to “What to Do When You Lose Select-&-Say in Microsoft Word”. Do you see a pattern emerging?

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

Thanks, Lunis. I went through the first couple of steps and Select-and-Say isnt disabled but oddly when I start Word, I dont see the usual loading of Nat. Speaking occuring in the Microsoft window as it loads. So I dont know what to make of that. We also did a repair of Word from within Word, and it was working fine for about 10 min. and now isnt again. Also, Dragon Pad works oddly as well...sometimes it works fine and other times has the same slowness. When I turn off the mic, though, the words appear on the screen that I just dictated! I will try replacing the Normal.dot template now, I guess, unless any of what I state here means anything more to you about wht to do.

I did (and do continue to) buy all my software and some hardware from you so I have the KnowBrainer manual but I seem to have either misplaced it or its in my work office. Let me know if anything else strikes you about this. 

Thanks,
EKW

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

EKW,

What is your hardware configuration? It's unclear from your KnowBrainer profile as to whether or not you have a newer computer system or you're still using the original designated Pentium 4. If you haven't upgraded your hardware, using a Pentium 4 with DNS 11-11.5 is like trying to pull 6 miles of freight cars from California to New York using a bicycle. Previous versions of DNS from 10.1 backward were not as resource intensive and worked fine on older computer systems. Unfortunately, DNS 11-11.5 was designed specifically for multithreading so as to make use of the newer Core™ i processors (first-generation and second generation-Sandy Bridge) along with L3 cache. DNS 11-11.5 is also more RAM intensive such that if you're running less than 4 GB of RAM, Dragon will begin to shut down various options, which you must then go to the Dragon Options dialog and reenable them. However, processing power makes a big difference relative to the performance (speed) of DNS. If you have a minimum of two cores and 2 GB of RAM, DNS 11-11.5 will automatically default to BestMatch IV, which uses to cores and two Acoustic Models simultaneously to process your dictation. If your hardware isn't up to snuff, DNS 11-11.5 will not perform very well.

There are occasions where you might see Microsoft office applications loading the NatSpeak Word Addin, NatSpeak Excel Addin, or NatSpeak Outlook Addin, but this is not generally the case across all versions of Microsoft Office. It depends on which version of Microsoft Office you're using. Generally speaking, you don't always see the natspeak add-ins actually loading. In fact, the only version of Microsoft Office in which you might see that is Microsoft Office 2010. You won't see it in Microsoft Office 2003 or 2007. Regardless, it doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that the NatSpeak Word Addin is installed and active, which you can check by looking at the Word Options, Add-Ins. As long as the NatSpeak Word Addin is listed under the Active Application Add-ins and there is a checkmark in the checkbox, then it is enabled. However, if the Natural Language Commands option in the Dragon Options dialog | Commands tab are not enabled, then the NatSpeak Word Addin won't be enabled either. To save on resources, you should unselect Natural Language Commands support for those applications that you do not use (i.e., Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, and/or Corel WordPerfect). Doing this reduces the footprint for DNS in memory (RAM).

DNS 11-11.5 makes use of the L2/L3 cache. L2 cache is fixed cache. That is, it is specifically designated for each core in multiple core processors and can't be shared across cores. L3 cache is what is called SmartCache. That is, if DNS is using core 0 and the information that DNS is looking for is stored in the L3 cache for core 1, then the processor can make use of that information and/or data. This is not true for L2 cache, which means that the process of recognition is slower because DNS has to go out of RAM to get the information rather than using the faster cache RAM, which is several hundred times faster than system RAM and directly connected to the processor vs. having to go out through the memory bus or memory controller to extract such information.

In addition, if you're running under Windows XP and using Microsoft Word, then you need to ensure that Windows advanced text services is disabled (ctfmon.exe). You can check this by closing your user profile, opening Administrative Settings... | Miscellaneous tab and making sure that there is a checkmark in the checkbox for "Turn off Windows advanced text services". If you don't, then you will have numerous problems when running Microsoft Word.

This is why it is so important for us to know exactly what your system configuration and version/flavor of Dragon that you're using are. However, we can get all this from you the your Dragon log. However, attaching a copy of your Dragon log requires that you not use the original filename Dragon.log. You need to change it to Dragon.txt. That is, you can't have anything in the extension (i.e., after the period) that uses the word "log". The easiest way to do this is to drag-and-drop a copy of your Dragon.log file onto your desktop and then rename it from Dragon.log to Dragon.txt and then attach it to your response to this or any other post. If you don't, we won't be able to open it and view it. I would strongly suggest that you do so so that we can look at your entire configuration (hardware and DNS).

Chuck Runquist
Technical Project Manager
VoiceTeach LLC
Home of VoicePower®: We don't make Dragon NaturallySpeaking, We make it better!

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

I think I have repaired most of the problem, but now with the new normal template Nat. Speaking is a bit less accurate. Maybe telling me how to reset my recognition parameters would help. I would appreciate it. It seems at times a little slow so dont know if I have things set correctly.

Re. your question on my system configuration: I do have a new system and will make the changes to my KnowBrainer Forum profile--sorry, but I dont ask questions often so have forgottten to update. I will provide all the numbers I have b/c I dont know what is fully relevant. I have an HP Envy 14 Notebook PC with an Intel(R) Core(TM)i7-840QM1.86GHz, 8MBL3Cch. I added 8 GB of DDR3 System Memory (2Dimm). I followed the recommendations someone (perhaps you, Chucker) provided to the forum on what to buy when I upgraded about a yr. ago. It has been like night and day and the accuracy is quite excellent (but still think I could get it to be more so if I knew what to do to reset certain parameters within the program.) But I'm finding now is that when I dictate into NaturallySpeaking there or sometimes a bit longer pauses before words appear on the screen. Also I decided to go back to my old User profile, since it didn't appear to be the problem with all of the difficulties I was having. I did, however, repair it, thinking that it needed to be repaired since I thought it was corrupted. I don't know if I should use the repaired user template or the one that fixed.

One problem seems to lead to another. Any input you have would be appreciated about all of the above!

EKW

Chucker or Lunis

I sent an email yesterday saying all is well. I sent my system configuration as you asked. Nat. Speak is working but there is a big lag time before the words appear on the screen and this has not happened before. I am using the New User I established (which I still am holding off on migrating my vocabulary too until I can figure out this gummy, lag time issue. The old user isnt working well (less well). Dragon Pad is working but still can be a bit slow. Is there anything you'd now suggest. I have a new Normal template. Do I need to reinstall Word or do something else? This is all new to me.

Thanks,
EKW

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

Thanks...I will go thru all of this and if I get stuck will call for technical help. I did do the sound test and it was fine. Let me look at the Andrea pod part. When I open the Check Microphone option under Audio I have selected

"microphone (USB Audio Device)" which I believe has been my selection all along? It is also set for Normal vs. Dictation mode. I dont recall if its always been that way.

I will likely need to get back next wk b/c I wont be able to ck all of this given an upcoming trip. Thanks again for your help.

 EKW