Hello,

I continue here a discussion started here, since I have kindly been invited to by Lunis and Rüdiger.

The problem :

3/4 weeks after creating a new user profile, Dragon starts to crash several times a day, more an more often. In Dragon.log, the last message recorded always appears to be : Error: Unable to make room in voc (2) 0x00000004

This error seems to occur especially while surfing with Firefox, when I intensively use Dragon commands like "touche" ( = press) and "épeler" ( = spell) with Mouseless Browsing extension (which does not work correctly using number spelling on my computer, so I use alphabetical characters).

A computer reboot doesn't help. The only solution I found is to create a new user profile, which takes some time and loses all the added vocabulary.

I use about 30 personal commands/macros and I found recently that adding three or four more ones makes DNS crash quicker, only a few days after creating a new profile.

Advice received :

- remove CTFMON : done

- user profile corruption : yes, but why...

So I post a Dragon.log in attachment, as adviced. The "story" :

9:11 : computer boots and DNS starts with a clear (newly created) french user profile (Nicolas8)

9:48 : I switch to my english language profile to answer in a forum

10:03 : I switch to a "bad" and abandoned french profile (Nicolas), knowing it will crash soon

11h13 : DNS crash !

If I restart DNS with the same (bad) profile, It will crash quicker (10-15 min), and then quicker again...

Thank you for your help.

 

rameur,

Unfortunately, nobody explained to you that posting your Dragon log must be done in a specific way otherwise no one can read it.

When you want to post your Dragon log, open it in notepad and then save it to your desktop as Dragon.txt.  Any other extension on that file other than *.txt will make it inaccessible.  You don't have to worry about changing the extension to *.txt because the Dragon log is a standard ASCII/ANSI text file.  The only reason that it has the extension *.log is because that is what the Nuance developers use with their debug analysis program.  That is, their debug programs are designed to specifically access the Dragon log and parse it in a specific manner.  Otherwise, for the rest of us who don't possess that debug application, we need to be able to view it as a text file.

So, do the following:

1.  Click on or say Start> All Programs> Dragon NaturallySpeaking <version #> | Show Dragon log.

2.  Your Dragon log will be highlighted in the resulting dialog box.  Double-click on it to open it in notepad.

3.  Click or say File> Save As.

4.  In the Save in: Drop-down list, select Desktop.

5.  In the File name text box change the filename from Dragon.log to Dragon.txt.

6.  Click Save.

7.  Attached a file from your desktop (Dragon.txt) to your post response.

Once you do this, we will be able to analyze your Dragon log.

Chuck Runquist
Technical Project Manager
VoiceTeach LLC

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man. - Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

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Chuck,

thank you for your explaination. I have edited my first message (without been able to remove the first attachment, but...).

 

rameur,

I'm not really sure what's happening here, but there are some things that I find worthwhile noting from looking at your Dragon log.

First, the computer doesn't seem to be identified correctly or at least not consistently. Every time you load the profile, the Dragon log first says

which is correct according to your members profile, but at a second glance, it reads

Perhaps Chuck will shed some light on this, but I think this can be caused by setting the power management too low, thus in order to save energy, but remember that Dragon is very resource intensive so you would want to give it all you have rather.

Second, the problem with the "bad" profile doesn't just start at 11:13, it already starts immediately after you load the profile at 10:03, and this is when you got the following message:

For the sake of English-speaking people, this basically tells you that the user files are in a bad condition and although you may be able to proceed with dictation, it's more than likely that you won't be able to save them.

Therefore, I would strongly recommend not using this profile anymore, but start a new one instead, following the advice that you have already received in terms of exporting your custom words and custom commands. I'm just pointing this out since you've mentioned that starting a new profile also means losing all the words, which isn't necessary.

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!

The issue of user profile corruption is a thorny one. Many people never experience it; and it happens regularly to many others. Personally, I find that I need to create a new user every 4 to 8 weeks. My approach to the problem has been to become proficient at creating an accurate user from scratch in under 10 minutes. I keep up-to-date backups of my list of unique words and phrases; a 50 page writing sample; and my custom commands. So when the inevitable happens, I no longer spend time trying to fix the problem. After creating a new user, I have to train a few commands, e.g., "choose 2" and "go to end of line," but in general, I am up to speed in 30 minutes or less. I can summarize my approach this way:

Treat NaturallySpeaking user files as disposable rather than as sacrosanct.

As for the causes of corruption, here are just a few the possible explanations that I have read about on this forum. My list is not exhaustive.

1. Allowing the computer to go to sleep, hibernate, restart, or shutdown without completely unloading NaturallySpeaking. (Although I am vigilant about this, I sometimes forget, and I believe that this is the reason that I experience corruption as often as I do.)

2. Hardware issues, e.g., poor quality electronic components, and built in obsolescence. My understanding is that the computer industry designs systems to last about two years. (My PC just "celebrated" its second birthday, so I plan to replace it within the next six months.)

3. NaturallySpeaking itself becomes corrupted. At one point, I was having so many problems with NaturallySpeaking that it became unusable, even after creating a new user. So I completely uninstalled NaturallySpeaking, reinstalled it, and many problems disappeared.

Alan,

I have the same strategy, otherwise I can't continue to work. But is it so normal for a professional and costy piece of software to behave like this ?

For point 1., I always close the computer by voice, using DNS (with the automatic saving of user file option on). Do you think it is a problem ?

For point 2.,  DNS perfoms quite well usually, crash at a certain point, and I have no particuliar problem with other software.

 

Rüdiger,

I don't know why my cpu is sometimes not correctly identified by DNS. But my computer is a desktop one and has no agressive energy saving management : stop the display after 10 min, and hdd after 30. Moreover, DNS always crash while I dictate, so when the computer is "awake".

About the bad profile : yes, my newly created english profile refuses to save when I close it (I rarely write in English, so I hadn't a english profile before). It is a new thing. It never happened before with my french user profiles, clean or corrupted.

I will follow the advice of exporting my words, I already did that for my commands, thank you.

 

rameur,

Don't blame it on the software. It's not coming from there. If it were, everyone would be having this problem and not everyone is. I'm using the same user profile that I created back in August of 2008 with DNS 10.0 Medical. I also have five other machines all running the same profile created at that point in time using DNS 10.1 Medical, Professional, Legal, and Preferred. None of these machines or profiles has ever experienced any of this type of problem. Nor have I had to create new user profiles because one of these became corrupted. If this type of problem where that pervasive based on issues related specifically and solely to DNS would have resulted in at least one of these systems or one of these profiles becoming corrupted. On my systems, this has never happened with DNS 10.1 or any of the profiles that I created way back in August of 2008 and which are still current without corruption and functioning at 99.7 to 99.9% accuracy to this day.

I'm not saying that what you are describing is not possible and/or is not happening to you, or others. What I am saying is that it is not specifically and solely the software. Something else is at the root of this problem, even though DNS may be part of the equation. It is not the cause.

No. Saving your user profiles is always recommended because if you don't, your user profiles and never get updated. On the other hand, saving your user profile does not cause corruption nor is it part of the corruption equation. The only thing that can cause a user profile to become corrupted is if saving user profiles is interrupted (i.e., delayed write caching doesn't function properly). Remember, DNS does is saved your user profiles, Windows does. DNS simply requests Windows to do so. All disk I/O operations are executed and maintained by Windows. No application reads from or writes to the hard drives, or your storage media whatever that may be. I/O is strictly a Windows operation.

You can't compare the performance of DNS to the performance of other software simply because DNS does not function the same way that you are standard software applications, such as Microsoft Office, function. DNS is much more application and operating system intensive and is constantly modifying itself. Standard applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, database applications, antivirus software, etc. ad infinitum, ad nauseam do not do what DNS does constantly and continuously. Comparing other software to DNS is comparing Peanuts to Kiwis (pardon my takeoff on apples to oranges. I'm simply attempting to exaggerate the emphasis on this point)

DNS is resource intensive, memory intensive, and makes constant use of the RPC server for both recognition and interacting with SAPI (maintaining access to the visible portion of the text in a document i.e., Select-and-Say & executing its basic recognition and secondary utility functions). No other application on the market comes even close to doing what speech recognition does or even employs half of the methods and intensive operating system interaction that speech recognition does. The same applies to WSR as to DNS. As a result, the potential for things going wrong when the hardware or the operating system and DNS don't interact with each other properly is several orders of magnitude greater than with any standard application. It's like the difference between driving your car on a dry road in summer in broad daylight, and driving your car in the dead of winter at midnight in the middle of a blinding snowstorm. The potential is much greater for something going wrong with DNS than it is for something going wrong with a standard application is what my point is here. Nevertheless, the fact that DNS functions as well as it does given the degree to which it has to work and the handicaps with which it has to work is nothing short of programming genius on the part of the original developers (Jim and Janet Baker and Joel Gould).

 

In some cases, this is caused by power settings that caused the CPU to run at half speed. It doesn't matter whether you have a laptop or a desktop, if you go to the Windows Control Panel | System and look at the initial screen under the General tab, you should see your CPU speed at the bottom right corner showing the full 2.67 MHz. If it's divided into two settings, one at 2.67 MHz and the other at approximately half or less than that, then you've got a power setting configuration issue and this is what will cause DNS to misrecognize your CPU when it initializes its user profile. This is what is showing up in your Dragon log and to which Rüdiger is making reference.

However, this is not the only thing that will cause this to occur. If your BIOS settings are not properly set up for your hardware, the same thing can arise. This is something that you will have to analyze relative to your motherboard and BIOS setup configuration.

Nevertheless, when DNS its self initializes, it properly recognizes your Core™ i7 920, but it does not recognize your cash. All the cache settings in your Dragon log for the Core™ i7 identification section show ' ? '. This is the first indicator that your Core™ i7 is not being correctly identified. The end result is that when your user profile is loaded, the processor recognition treats it as if it were a Pentium 4 running at 2.40 MHz and only having 512 bytes of L2 cache. Since the Core™ i7 runs at 1 MB of L2 cache and 8 MB of L3 cache, the fact that DNS is not able to correctly identify your CPU is probably at the root of your problem. How you fix this is something that you have to discuss with your motherboard manufacturer in terms of setup (BIOS) and hardware configurations via such. Regardless, this is more likely than not the cause of your problems with profile corruption.

Rüdiger identifies the initial error. But the problem begins before that error. You have a major system crash that involves all of the DNS files. It's basically an exception error, which I suspect is a page fault/memory error when running the DNS program files. This is what results in the (EngSink) error to which Rüdiger refers. After all of this, it's no wonder that your user profile doesn't work properly because DNS is not working properly. Underlying all of this is the fact that what is occurring relative to your hardware and DNS interaction may have permanently damaged your user profile. And, until you result these issues, it may continue to do so no matter what you do or Hall often you create a new user.

Unfortunately, Alan’s approach is a Band-Aid approach. That is, his solution merely masks the problem, it doesn't solve it. If you want to continue using that approach, that's your prerogative. However, if it were me I'd want to get to the bottom of why it is occurring.

Let me put that in a little bit of perspective. I have to Core™ i7 systems. One is a Core™ i7 920 with 12 GB of 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM, 2.66 GHz using a WD VelociRaptor 10,000 RPM 300 GB C drive (boot drive). The other is a Core™ i7 Extreme (Intel 985) with 12 GB of 2000 MHz DDR3 RAM running a 160 GB Intel SSD. Both of these two systems are running DNS 10.1 Medical and both of these systems have the exact same profile that was created in August of 2008 using the no training option and simply making appropriate corrections and running the Acoustic and Language Model Optimizer twice a week. Neither of these user profiles on either of these systems has ever become corrupted. In addition, note the excerpt from my Dragon log relative to DNS identifying my Core™ i7 920.

00:37:56 MREC Machine Speed: CyclesPerMicrosec 2670; DynSRSF: 12973; StatSRSF: 2598

00:37:56 MREC Machine Memory: 12279M RAM, 4095M Address, 12277M CommitLimit

00:37:56 MREC Machine Info: #CPUs: 8; PageSize: 4096; AllocGran: 65536

00:37:56 MREC Machine Name: COREI7MAIN

00:37:56 MREC CPU Label: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz

00:37:56 MREC CPU Details: GenuineIntel, Fam 6, Mod 10, Step 4, Type 0

00:37:56 MREC CPU Processors: Single proc, Multi-core(4, max 8 c/p), HT(8, max 2 h/c)

00:37:56 MREC CPU Instruction Sets: Std, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE41, SSE42, CMOV, FXSR, EIST, EM64T

00:37:56 MREC CPU Cache Sizes: 32K (/2h) L1 instruction, 32K (/2h) L1 data, 256K (/2h) L2, 8M (/16h) L3

This is how DNS should correctly recognize a Core™ i7 920 on profile initialization. You're not getting even close to this even pre-DNS profile initialization.

This is where your problem starts.

Chuck Runquist
Technical Project Manager
VoiceTeach LLC

"If anything can possibly go wrong, it generally will and at the worst possible moment." (Murphy's law - Edward A. Murphy, Jr.)

Another variant of this is, "If there is a 1 in 10 million chance that something that you do will fail or go wrong, just remember that you are the 1."

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rameur,

confused by now? - Just adding to all the advice and comments that you have already received, let me point out another thing that might be problematic. According to your member's profile, you are using the Andrea NC-91 headset, the one that came with Dragon, which is connected to your built-in Realtek sound card. While, as you already know, none of us is crazy about the headset, it should work basically. But as far as the sound card, there are know issues with them, so you might also want to take a look at what you can do in that area, such as either getting a USB sound adapter, or get a better USB headset instead.

In case you don't know, speech recognition can only be as strong as its weakest link, and you shouldn't settle with less than optimal tools if speech recognition plays a major part in your work. Besides, input coming from a substandard sound system doesn't only have negative impact on your overall accuracy, and productivity therefore, it may also result in user file degradation/corruption.

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!

Chuck,

Thank you for your detailed and very interesting explanations. In summary, you're telling me that the problems that I experience with DNS probably come from a hardware failure or misconfiguration. You see, as a symptom, that my CPU features are not correctly detected by DNS.

I tried to reload my BIOS with "optimized defaults" parameters (except AHCI mode for the hdd) and the result in Dragon.log is the same. From this point, where can I look and what can I try to modify ?

Some remarks about that :

- software like GPU-Z or Sandra correctly identifie my CPU features

- as mentioned before, my computer passed quite stressing tests with Prime95, Hyperpi or OCCT. If there is really a hardware failure, how to detect it, and with what ?

- you show a piece of Dragon.log generated by DNS 10.1, but I use DNS 9.5 : is the latter not to old to recognize such chipset/CPU generation correctly ? or at least in exactly the same manner ? (we can see other differences between the two log files). Are you sure DNS 9.5 would normally detect cache sizes on such computers ?

For my knowledge :

- you mention your bullet-proof user profile in DNS 10.1 : is this version of DNS known to have better profile management/less profile corruption problems than DNS 9.5 ?

- I have noticed that voice recognition experts (like you and Lunis) use the Medical (and not Professional) version of DNS. Is this version better in anyway (for a non medical use of course) ?

 

Rüdiger,

I also tried to work 2 or 3 months with an "old" SB Audigy 2 sound card on PCI port. I did not noticed any difference with the onboard audio chip, in DNS accuracy and responsiveness. And I experienced the same crashs also.

But you are right : I now know that my microphone is not so good and I plan to change soon. I will probably choose an USB sound card as well.

Thank you.

Rameur,

yes, and yes. You are quite right in assuming that Ver. 9.5 isn't able to identifiy the newer processor types. I just went back to an install of Ver. 9.5 on Windows 7 Ultimate (32-bit), and here are some excerpts from my Dragon log, that will show just about the same scenario that you have. 

19:56:57 MREC CPU Label: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     T9400  @ 2.53GHz
19:56:57 MREC CPU Details: GenuineIntel, Fam 6, Mod 7, Step 6, Type 0
19:56:57 MREC CPU Processors: Single proc, Single core per proc, No HT
19:56:57 MREC CPU Instruction Sets: Std, MMX, CMOV, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, EM64T
19:56:57 MREC CPU Cache Sizes: ?K L1 instruction, ?K L1 data, ?K L2, ?K L3
...

19:58:17 MREC CPU Label: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz
19:58:17 MREC CPU Details: GenuineIntel, Fam 15, Mod 2, Step 9, Type 0
19:58:17 MREC CPU Processors: Single proc, Single core per proc, No HT
19:58:17 MREC CPU Instruction Sets: Std, MMX, CMOV, SSE, SSE2
19:58:17 MREC CPU Cache Sizes: 12K L1 instruction, 8K L1 data, 512K L2, ?K L3

It's also true that the user profiles in Ver. 10-10.1 are considerably more stable, that's at least what I have experienced.

Rüdiger

PS: Dans quelle partie de la France est-ce que tu habites, d'ailleurs?

 

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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!

rameur & Rüdiger,

I didn't think about it until Rüdiger noted the entries from his Dragon log.  Here is my guess.  If you're using DNS 9.5 under Windows 7, which would have to be 32-bit anyway, it looks as though DNS 9.5 does not fully support Windows 7.  I spoke with one of the tech reps that I talk to frequently, and the indication was that Nuance does not support DNS 9.5 under Windows 7.  Nuance only supports DNS 9.5 under Windows Vista.

It looks as though some of the changes in Windows 7 do not allow DNS 9.5 to correctly identify the processor.  Given that, this is probably why 9.5 crashes frequently under Windows 7.  All I know at this point is that DNS 9.5 does not crash under Windows Vista 32-bit, at least not on the system that I have it installed using DNS 9.5 Professional (Core2™ Duo E8400 with 4 GB of DDR2 RAM 1066 MHz).

However, I would have to concur with Rüdiger that DNS 9.5 is less stable than DNS 10-10.1 regardless of OS platform.  There were several times during my use of DNS 9.5 where the user profile got corrupted because the system crashed in the middle of some DNS operation, requiring setting up a new user.  However, I never experienced corruption of a DNS 9.5 user except under that specific condition.  As long as the system was functioning, the profile never got corrupted.  One of the other things that I noticed right off the bat with DNS 9.5 was that you couldn't set the priority above High: 13.  If you tried to set the priority for Realtime: 24, your user profile would immediately become corrupted within four or five minutes and would eventually become unrecoverable (i.e., profile would crash consistently and more often until it was unreadable and unusable).  Even in DNS 10-10.1, setting the priority for Realtime: 24 is asking for trouble.  Although, profiles are more stable even at that setting, but they will eventually become corrupted if you set it to anything higher than High: 13.  In DNS 10-10.1, it is generally recommended to leave the priority at Normal: 8 simply because increasing the priority doesn't make DNS run any faster or perform any better (better handling of latency is built into DNS 10-10.1).

One additional point.  I notice that in reviewing the Dragon logs in this case, the speed vs. accuracy slider is only set to 50%.  Given the hardware, you should be able to set the speed vs. accuracy slider all the way to 100% (accuracy).  Even with DNS 9.5 on a Core™ i7 920 or otherwise, you shouldn't experience any significant latency with the Speed vs. Accuracy slider set at 100%.  Also, with more than 2 GB of RAM, you should be able to eliminate your pagefile (i.e., No paging file).  That will also help improve performance of Windows, which will in turn improve the performance of DNS as a result of better Windows performance.  Any enhancement and performance under this condition will not be knocking your socks off, but it will be reasonably noticeable.

Chuck Runquist
Technical Project Manager
VoiceTeach LLC

"At times we shall simply have to admit that, one way or another, what we can neither explain nor understand certainly doesn't cease to exist because we cannot see how it does or why it should." - Dr. Mark Hyman

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Chuck,

well, the thing is that rameur has Windows XP, according to his member's profile, so it just seems as if DNS 9.5 simply does have an issue with identifying those newer types of processors properly. If that really would have impact on the keeping the user files in shape, I don't know. Anyway, although rameur may not like hearing this, but 9.5 is dated by now, and there aren't so many people using it anymore, because there are zillions of reasons for using 10.1, aside from 9.5 and an Intel i7 not really fitting together.

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!

Rüdiger,

I never had a problem on Windows XP with my Core2™ Quad Q6600 and DNS 9.5 misidentifying my processor.  Unfortunately, I gave that system to my sister, so I can't verify it for your benefit.  But I don't ever recall that processor being misidentified under Windows XP and DNS 9.5.  I had DNS 9.5 Medical and Legal, which you could install together in DNS 9.5, on that system.  I recall that the Dragon log always showed that processor identified correctly including the L1 and L2 cache.

Nevertheless, there has to be something going on here.  I don't think it's just DNS 9.5 by itself because Dragon is always getting this information directly from the operating system.  DNS does not contain an algorithm that goes out and says "Hey, what processor are you?  It does it entirely through Windows just the same as the General tab in the "System" display (Windows Control Panel | System).  Nothing special here.  Wouldn't make sense anyway to waste time writing a special algorithm to inquire about the CPU when the information is already available through the operating system.  In other words, most developers are not in the habit of reinventing the wheel. 

Chuck Runquist
Technical Project Manager
VoiceTeach LLC

If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee - that will do them in. - Bradley's Bromide

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Rüdiger,

thank you very much for having reused your DNS 9.5 and looked at the log file. As you obtain the same outputs about cache sizes, I think it is more of a matter of DNS "obsolescence" than other.

Can you tell me more about the main advantages of DNS 10.1 over 9.5 ? What would be theorically the best software combination with my hardware :  Windows 7 64bit + DNS 10.1 Pro ?

I live in the North-East of France, not too far from Dijon. We are under 20 cm of snow today...

 

Chuck,

I confirm that I run Windows XP SP3. You mention that DNS 9.5 correctly detected your cpu features under Windows XP. Perhaps this behaviour difference may be explained by service packs ?

DNS may obtain cpu name and frequency from Windows, but I am not sure about cache sizes (I did  not find them clicking on the cpu details in System > Device manager). Software like CPU-Z are updated very often to be able to detect correctly all of the processors on the market. Sometimes for a simple stepping change...

I run DNS 9.5 with process priority High since 3 or 4 months,  but experienced crashs before at the same  frequency, when the priority was Normal.

Thank you for your advice about the speed vs. accuracy slider. I'm trying the 100% value at the moment.
I will try to suppress the page file later in the control panel, but with caution, since I had a bad experience with that years ago on another computer (Windows permanently rebooting).

 

Rameur,

you're welcome. I think Lunis has a 30 or so items list relative to the pros of Ver. 10 over 9.5, and perhaps he will provide it. In a nutshell, it's much faster and more stable. It takes some getting used to after you've been working with 9.5, which is hard to explain, but within a few days you won't go back to 9.5, even if you were paid for it. And yes, Windows 7 64-bit and DNS 10.1 Pro is the state-of-the-art speech recognition setup today, and a must for anyone who's seriously involved in it.

Well, it looks like some of the snow is coming over here (Cologne area), too. I think I still have a glass of moutarde de Dijon on the shelf from my last trip to Veules-les-Roses, near St. Valerie en Caux. Marvellous place, and some of the best oysters you can get, and sold absolutely fresh at the port every Saturday and Sunday morning. I wish I could be there!

Vive la France!

Rüdiger

 

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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!

Rüdiger,

you seem to be a true francophile ! Moreover, you're talking about a region that I hold dear, since I was born in it : Normandy. If you like oysters : the most appreciated oysters in Normandy are produced at Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue, in the eastern coast of Cotentin, this funny geographical appendix above Brittany on the map of France. Less cliffs here but more beaches and always much beauty...

 

Chuck,

Thank you very much for your DNS 9.5 reinstallation and test. The incorrect recognition of my cpu features remains a mystery for me.
Something broken or missing in Windows perhaps ?
Some other software that badly interacts with DNS ?
About that, are there other applications that are known to make trouble to DNS ? Particularly resident ones like antivirus, firewalls, display drivers and display centers, etc. ?
I now use an ATI low-end graphic card (I don't have the need for 3D) but I can switch to a NVidia one. Is there a choice better than an other concerning DNS (hardware and drivers stability, display center use of cpu...) or is it absolutely neutral ?

 

Lunis, 

Thank you for your interesting review.  I think I now understand why you and Chuck use DNS Medical edition and not Professional edition : Nuance has (quite shamefully) disabled some features in DNS Professional v10 that existed in v9. I don't know exactly what is an "EMR application" but I think it doesn't concern non medical users...

 

Quote:

I don't know exactly what is an "EMR application" but I think it doesn't concern non medical users...

Think of an EMR application as a medical database for storing patient data. Because of the way that Nuance limits this functionality, the only way we can dictate directly into medical forums, such as ECW, is with DNS Medical because NaturallySpeaking checks on the name of the Window. Additionally, DNS Medical includes a few other functions that we have to test for our customers; like support for the PowerMic II.

PS: Your video card is irrelevant DNS.

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

 

 

 

rameur,

yes, I am. I usually go to Haute Normandie twice a year for about a week, where I rent a fantastic gîte at Sotteville-sur-Mer on the Côte d'Albâtre somewhere between Dieppe and Etretat, which I particularly like, because we can enjoy the shore as well as take trips to such beautiful towns as Rouen or Honfleur.

It just takes us a few hours car ride, and when we get there, the first thing we do is go to l'Eclerque and straight to where they sell du poisson et des fruits de mer.

A la prochaine.

Rüdiger

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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!

Thanks for that reminder Rüdiger. On August 8, 2008 we wrote our NaturallySpeaking 10 Review which basically compares Ver. 10.0 to Ver. 9.5. Note that this review is now a bit dated but here's the short version:

Our 2 favorite Ver. 10 features are:

1. No more having to wait 3 to 5 seconds while our dictation hangs in the Results Box before hitting the page. You have probably grown so accustomed to this that it doesn't bother you but after using Ver. 10 for about 1 minute, we realized that we could never go back. For us, it was the difference between color and black-and-white television.

2. Whenever you correct a word or phrase in front of a punctuation mark, there will be an extra space left after your correction which means you have to waste time deleting the extra space. You can always select the punctuation with the text, during the correction process, but you have to remember to do it. Ver. 9 sometimes has difficulty capitalizing the 1st word after a period and NEVER capitalizes the 1st word after a question-mark unless you dictate without moving your cursor.

Although a number of people have reported higher accuracy, we don't recommend upgrading if you're just looking to improve your accuracy. If you are currently experiencing 99% accuracy in Ver. 9, you would only experience about 99.2% in Ver. 10; a negligible increase. We recommend upgrading because for us, it was about being 20% more efficient which means that we can get the job done 20% faster which translates directly into Ca$h if you're using NaturallySpeaking in the workplace.

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

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

 

 

 

rameur,

No, I reinstalled DNS 9.5 on my Core2™ Extreme Quad Core QX9650 running Windows XP SP3. It correctly identified the CPU including the cache. So, it has nothing to do with service packs.

Quote:

DNS may obtain cpu name and frequency from Windows, but I am not sure about cache sizes (I did not find them clicking on the cpu details in System > Device manager). Software like CPU-Z are updated very often to be able to detect correctly all of the processors on the market. Sometimes for a simple stepping change...

CPU-Z gets its information from the same source that DNS does. It doesn't make any difference, or shouldn't. No, you won't find it in Device Manager, nor will you find it in the system information. Nevertheless, all of that information is available to Windows and to DNS through Windows. I went back through several earlier versions of CPU-Z and got the same results. I don't know what's happening on your system, but DNS 9.5 correctly recognizes my CPU including the cache. I will have to go back to the other machine, but after I post this thread I will put up that block from my Dragon log.

14:37:42 MREC Machine OS: Windows XP build 2600 (Service Pack 3)
14:37:42 MREC Machine Speed: CyclesPerMicrosec 3006; DynSRSF: 9498; StatSRSF: 6894
14:37:42 MREC Machine Memory: 3327M RAM, 2047M Address, 3163M CommitLimit
14:37:42 MREC Machine Info: #CPUs: 4; PageSize: 4096; AllocGran: 65536
14:37:42 MREC Machine Name: QUADCOREX
14:37:42 MREC CPU Label: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Extreme CPU X9650  @ 3.00GHz
14:37:42 MREC CPU Details: GenuineIntel, Fam 6, Mod 7, Step 6, Type 0
14:37:42 MREC CPU Processors: Single proc, Multi-core(4, max 4 c/p), No HT
14:37:42 MREC CPU Instruction Sets: Std, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE41, CMOV, FXSR, EIST, EM64T
14:37:42 MREC CPU Cache Sizes: 32K L1 instruction, 32K L1 data, 6M (/2c) L2, 0K L3 <--------- shows L2 as 6 x 2

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I run DNS 9.5 with process priority High since 3 or 4 months, but experienced crashs before at the same frequency, when the priority was Normal.

Thank you for your advice about the speed vs. accuracy slider. I'm trying the 100% value at the moment.

I will try to suppress the page file later in the control panel, but with caution, since I had a bad experience with that years ago on another computer (Windows permanently rebooting).

Setting the process priority to High: 13 shouldn't have any impact one way or the other. I have a utility that analyzes applications and recommends priority settings. That utility says not to run DNS higher than High: 13. DNS 9.5 will definitely crash if you set the priority to Realtime: 24. Nevertheless, setting the priority the high doesn't do anything to improve the performance of DNS. The only thing that does is give DNS higher priority access to the RPC server. It has absolutely no effect on speed or performance.

Chuck Runquist
Technical Project Manager
VoiceTeach LLC

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

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Regarding one of the questions in your initial post about mouseless browsing, I have had problems with that extension for Firefox. I don't know if it ever caused any corruption or problems with Dragon, but I found it would leave blank posts on this forum (and only this forum as far as I know) whenever I posted here. I would dictate long and lovely posts, which would end up blank. Disabling the extension solved the problem. I know this is nothing related to your original issue, but I thought somewhat relevant.


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

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onebigfish,

I still think DNS crashs may be linked to mouseless browsing extension, but I will detail the reasons a bit later. Now, I'll be on holiday for some days...

Thanks to all for your answers !

Have a merry Christmas !

I realize most of these posts are more than two years old, but for the last two weeks, I've been getting "user file is damaged…" And I have to monkey around (this means use my feet because i can't touch a keyboard) to get a new profile. This is happening now once and twice a day. I did a search (on KB), because I know I had this problem about a year ago, but just found this thread.

I guess I could attach the file of my Dragon log – that starts last night, Monday night (or perhaps that means late Sunday night?), But I see it's 245 pages – warning!(I have it in Word so I could get word wrap, but reading on here it sounds like notepad is easier For others to open–?

I also wanted to ask: someone in the middle of this thread had asked: 1. Allowing the computer to go to sleep, hibernate, restart, or shutdown without completely unloading NaturallySpeaking. (Although I am vigilant about this, I sometimes forget, and I believe that this is the reason that I experience corruption as often as I do.)  – I don't know what that means, "completely unloading NaturallySpeaking"?

It is no longer necessary to convert your Dragonlog into a text file on this new forum. You can simply attach it as is. Upon examining your file, we noted multiple instances of the acoustic optimizer not being able to run (which in our opinion has no importance) and noted 1 corrupt user profile at the beginning of the log but no other viewable issues.

Although we typically crash NaturallySpeaking every other day or so, we do not shut down our computer more than once a week. We simply turn off the microphone in the DragonBar and Hibernate.

In theory, the only way you can corrupt a user profile, when your computer crashes, is if you happen to be saving user file at that time. You shouldn't need to close NaturallySpeaking or your user profile 1 hibernating.

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first thanks.

But it sounds like I should accept it as normal (you crash Dragon every day?) that every time I logon (these past few days), that have a correct user file.–?  (but unfortunately for me, I am completely dependent on voice recognition, and have to use my feet to restore an old profile.)

I don't know if it's a clue, but I found this in the Dragon log:  11:55:56 Opening command-line user '2'

I think [wherever the command line is] it's set to open that version of Dragon, and maybe there is a discrepancy?

Rsikam, someone already mentioned reinstalling Naturally Speaking. If that didn't do it, I would reinstall the operating system and start fresh. If that doesn't solve it, I would sell the machine on craigslist and buy a new one. Some machines are just cursed. The time and energy wasted on a dead beat machine is not worth it especially if you are dependent on voice recognition. A few hundred dollars (cost - trade in) is worth having peace of mind. Goodl luck. Don't fear going nuclear on your current PC. I have done it before and it is quite liberating! 

 

Max Roth

DynamicKeyboardOne for Naturally Speaking

 

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ErgoArchitect Assistive Technologies - 

ShowNumbers Plus! Addon to Naturally Speaking - 

www.ergoarchitect.com 

 

First, both your original user profile and your backup are completely hosed. The vocabulary is corrupted. You can't even export your vocabulary so that you can import it into a new user because you'll end up in the same boat. That is, you can completely forget about those user profiles. They're useless (completely).

 

Second, you're running DNS 11.5 Premium on a Pentium 4 3 GHz CPU with only 1 MB of L2 cache and a maximum of 4 GB of RAM (2.95 GB available). DNS 11.5 is resource intensive. The result is that what you're doing is the equivalent to trying to pull a 50,000 pound load up a 90° incline with a Volkswagen beetle circa 1969 running on two cylinders. The long and the short of it is that DNS 11.5 will run on your system, if you want to call it running, but it will perform poorly. However, there are some things you can do to make it run better. I'll explain below.

 

Third, you're using Windows XP SP3, which is fine, but you have not disabled Windows advanced text services (ctfmon.exe). As long as ctfmon is running on your system, you're going to continually have problems with Microsoft Word because ctfmon.exe conflicts with DNS.

 

Fourth, you're KnowBrainer profile shows that you're using an ANC microphone. If I'm correct, that means you're using one of the Andrea ANC microphones. If that's the case, that's OK up to a point. The point being that you should get yourself a USB SoundPod rather than using the built-in soundcard on your system. The combination of Andrea ANC with the built-in soundcard in your system tends to give you a low SNR (signal-to-noise ratio). This doesn't bode well for accuracy. I'm not going to tell you to get a new microphone, but you should get a new microphone if you're serious about using Dragon. You should also get a USB SoundPod to go with it instead of using your internal soundcard. Otherwise, you're just beating yourself up.

 

Here's what you can do:

 

1. Open Dragon NaturallySpeaking but don't load your user profile(s). Click on the Tools menu and select Administrative Settings... in the Administrative Settings dialog under The Miscellaneous tab, go to the bottom of the list of checkboxes and put a checkmark in the checkbox for turn off or disable Windows advanced text services. Then click OK to close the Administrative Settings dialog. This will get rid of the ctfmon.exe problem.

 

2. Create a new user profile using the following settings:

 

After correctly proceeding through the New User Wizard and up to the point where you see the Advanced button (i.e., the screen or dialog where you are shown all of your initial settings). Click on the Advanced button. You have two options: one for Speech model, and one for vocabulary. On your system you can't use anything other than BestMatch III as your Speech model because your hardware won't support it. However, drop the list associated with vocabulary and select Medium. The Medium vocabulary uses a smaller memory footprint, allows Dragon to process your dictation a little faster, but does not sacrifice anything in terms of the available vocabulary. That is, the Medium vocabulary has basically the same words and/or phrases as the General-Large vocabulary. The bottom line is select the Medium vocabulary.

 

When you get to the section that asks you whether or not you want to train with prompts, train without prompts, or skip training, select skip training. You can always train your user profile later, but what you want to do is to get through the user creation process and have the chance to just do some basic testing with your new user profile. However, if you want to train your user profile during the creation process, please feel free to do so. I'm just trying to save you some time and aggravation upfront.

 

When you get your new user profile up and running, open the Dragon Options dialog (DragonBar Tools | Options) and set your options the way you want them. However, under the Miscellaneous tab, set the Speed vs. Accuracy slider all the way to the left (Fastest Response). Do the same for the Auto-Formatting as far as your preferred settings are concerned.

 

Once you have your new user profile up and running with the proper settings, test it out for a while and see if it resolves some of your issues. You should see a faster response time (performance – speech to text). Also, by disabling Windows advanced text services, you should not experience any crashes or command problems in Microsoft Word. If everything is working properly, let us know and attach a copy of your Dragon log (Dragon.log) along with your results. There are a few other things that you can do to tweak your system for a little better performance, but let's leave it at this for the time being and see what happens.

 

 

This says nothing whatsoever to do with your problem.

 

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

"A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history - with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila." -- Mitch Ratliffe

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