Has anyone else seen this behavior?  Running XP, all patches and service packs, DNS 9.5, Knowbrainer Rev E.  At random the application will disappear, sometimes when I am in midsentence.  Knowbrainer stays up.  When I restart DNS it often mistakes punctuation and cannot identify the start of sentences.

 Any help appreciated.

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While this is not common, it is usually caused by corruption to your user files. This type of corruption usually occurs as a result of improper shutdown of Windows, access file fragmentation (hard drive fragmentation), and a number of other similar issues related to something on your system failing to read or write information correctly.

The error message that you are probably getting if you were to look at your Dragon log is that the RPC server is failing (unavailable). The Remote Procedure Call (RPC) server is necessary in order for Dragon NaturallySpeaking to communicate with applications via SAPI. If this server times out during an ActiveX control (COM) execution, DNS will shut down with no notification except a record of the error in the Dragon log.

The only solution that might work is to restore your backup copy of your user profile.

You can also try the following, but there is no absolute guarantee that this will work:

1. Open your current user and, but only if you have one of the professional versions, open "Manage Users" and export your vocabulary. If you are running DNS Preferred, you don't have this option, so you can forget this approach.

2. If you are running DNS Preferred, export your custom vocabulary and export any custom commands (Text and Graphics). Create a new user, and import your custom vocabulary and custom commands. Note that importing custom words really require you to reset any Alternate written form settings.

3. If you are running one of the professional versions and you export your vocabulary using "Manage Users," you do not need to export your custom words because all your custom words and any of the "Alternate" form settings (properties) are preserved. However, you will need to export your custom commands. Create a new user and import your exported vocabulary. Then import your custom commands. However, when you import custom commands you will be prompted as to whether or not you wish to overwrite custom commands that currently exist. This is because when you create a new user it creates a new MyCmds.dat that contains all of the initial custom commands provided by DNS by default. You do not want to overwrite these. Therefore, when asked if you want to overwrite them, choose "No." Otherwise, if the corruption is coming from within the MyCmds.dat of your original user, which can happen because your MyCmds.dat can become corrupted and produce the same results that you're getting. By saying no, if the corruption is coming from a custom command that you have created, the problem will still persist and you will need to find that custom command and delete it and re-created. This is tough to find. However, I have included the explanation here so that if the problem persists, at least you know where to begin looking. In addition, if your exported vocabulary contains the corruption, then importing it will produce the same problem. Again, the reason that I provide the explanation is that sometimes the corruption is not coming from either your custom commands or your vocabulary (exported using "Manage Users). If this is the case, then this approach will correct the problem. If this is not the case; that is, if the corruption is coming from within any of these sets of files, then your only option is to create a completely new user and export your custom commands and custom vocabulary in the same manner as described above for DNS Preferred and import them accordingly.

Lastly, I may be able to help you understand what's going on and why DNS is suddenly unable to make use of the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) if you attach a copy of your Dragon log. However, when you do, don't attach it as Dragon.log. Open the Dragon log in notepad and save it as Dragon.txt. Otherwise, nobody will be able to access or read the file. The Dragon.log file is a standard ASCII text file but it must be saved and attached as a TXT file. So, be sure to save it as Dragon.txt before you attach it to a post to this form.

Chuck Runquist
Former Dragon NaturallySpeaking SDK & Senior Technical Solutions PM for DNS

"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." -- Mark Twain

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The only thing we can add is a recommendation to upgrade to KB 2007 which is freely available to existing KB 2006 customers. Just use your existing password.

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

 

 

 

Thanks for the quick reply.  Corrupted files by improper shutdown makes perfect sense.  We use file redirection and "my documents" is located on a server.  Sometimes the connection times out.  Is there a way, once I clean up the user file, to put them in a different location?

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Look up the word “thumb” in our Quick Tips for a step-by-step on relocating your user files to a thumb drive.

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