I'm learning the hard way that when you import your Dragon profile, custom word list and commands  you have to start from scratch.

 

I use Acronis True Image to backup my system. I recently had to restore an old backup or I had installed Dragon. Before doing so, I backed up my custom vocabulary, my commands and my user profile. After recovering the system from the Acronis backup, I installed DPI 15.61, imported my user profile, my commands, as well as the custom word list backup files. Now I'm stuck in retraining hell. I have to retrain all of my custom words, and my commands. Dragon does not recognize them. Also, Dragon appears to be making tons of errors when I dictate. It's as if I'm starting with a completely new user profile.

 

Going back to old backups of my system is something I do regularly. Are there any other users out there who also do this, and does anybody have a solution for escaping from retraining hell?

 

 

My assumption is that there is no workaround for this. However I'm hoping that somebody might have some advice. Any advice you can give would be much appreciated. :-)

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My suggestion would be to create a new user profile and import your custom words and commands into it. It sounds like the old profile is corrupted.

I haven't had to do this in a while, but my memory is that you have to retrain the custom words after importing them into the new profile. (I can't speak to commands, as I do not have custom commands.)

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In addition to Scribe's sage advice, let me start by congratulating you on using a powerful system imaging tool like Acronis (I've used it for years but eventually switched to the more reliable Macrium Reflect). 

It's the most crucial step any physically challenged Dragon user can take to avoid the disaster of having to reinstall Windows all over again (and possibly losing a Dragon program activation).

 

The second best step is to not import a user profile belonging to a previous Dragon version. This usually causes Dragon hangups and/or quick deterioration of the user profile.

If you install/upgrade Dragon you should always create a fresh user profile and then import the MyCmds.dat and your custom word list (as Scribe is suggesting).

 

After that it is time to create a new system image!

 

Hope that helps.

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I take a system image (just my C:\ drive) every Saturday night/Sunday morning - starting it when I go to bed. I use the Windows® built in disk imaging software (used to be easy to find in Windows 7 but in Windows 10 you must use the Run box: sdclt.exe /BLBBACKUPWIZARD). After I built my computer, immediately after installing Windows 10 (and ABSOLUTELY nothing else) I took my first image; then I installed Dragon and KnowBrainer, got them both working just like I wanted them, and took my second image; I then installed a handful of critical applications/utilities and took a third image; thereafter, I started my once-a-week imaging schedule. I use a dedicated external (USB) 2 TB Seagate hard drive ($50), it has a LOT of images of my system drive (~200 MB used) and is about half full. I have restored from it many times (I frequently restore after installing, testing then removing an application - just to be sure I have removed all artifacts).

I also bought Acronis True Image and used it for a while to back up my entire 8 hardrive system (each drive has 2 partitions, 4 of the drives are primary and four of the drives are backup, all are about half full). I also found True Image unreliable so I wrote my own backup solution for this job. My solution is incremental, a file is only backed up if it has changed in some way.

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-Edgar
DPI 15.3, 64-bit Windows 10 Pro, OpenOffice & Office 365, Norton Security, Shure X2U XLR to USB mic adapter with Audio Technica DB135 vocal mic, Asus X299-Deluxe Prime, Intel Core i9-7940X (14 core, 4.3 GHz overclocked to 4.9 GHz), G.SKILL TridentZ Series 64GB (4 x 16GB) DDR4 3333 (PC4 26600) F4-3333C16Q-64GTZ, NVIDIA GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1060 GV-N1060G1 GAMING-6GD REV 2.0 6GB graphics card with 3 1920x1080 monitors

New profiles don't need training, and Dragon shouldn't be making errors that it wasn't making before.

This sounds like a problem with your audio system. Test it and ensure the signal is clear and strong, and that the microphone isn't picking up environmental noises and/or adding distortions and interference.

Following the advice of @AlanCantor and many others on this forum I have almost completely given up training Dragon.


@AlanCantor recommends curating a training set, so you don't have to do things manually, but I don't even do that. In part because I haven't taken the time to create such a training set, in part because most of my work is not dictation of text, but is technical programming, etc., and basically in part because I haven't needed it.


For the most part when a term is not recognized I will add a custom written/spoken form entry. I then Run the command "Export Custom Words", save the output file ( which I call vocabulary-out.txt), and then the next time that I need to create a new profile, or, more often, go back to a known good profile, which happens remarkably often, three times this week, I import the custom works.[*]


Even if the term is already in the vocabulary, I find that I can often create an alternate spoken form that more accurately represents what I say.


For example "elided" was already in my vocabulary, but adding "elided\\E lie did" and "elided\\ellided" made things work much more reliably. I frequently use these terms, but I also late in pronunciation between long I and short I. "ellided" was how I managed to get short I.


However, for the most part I am not overriding standard Dragon vocabulary, so much as adding custom acronyms and technical terms. E.g. "bzero\\B zero", and "XYZW\\XYZ W".


(It took me a while to realize that the best way to create a multiword acronym was not simply just the acronym "VMCS\\VMCS", nor "VMCS\\V M C S", And especially not "VMCS\\vee em cee ess". when acronyms conflict, e.g. when there are shorter acronyms inside a longer acronym, one may often get "XYZ W" rather than "XYZW". I have found that putting the misrecognized form also in my vocabulary, where the misrecognized form is simply adding a space inside an acronym that I do not want, and sometimes just a phrase that is nonsensical, often helps.)


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Since I learned these tricks, following the advice of many helpful people on this forum ( although not always following the advice exactly), I am much happier using Dragon.


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Note *: it also took me a while to evolve BKMs (Best Known Methods - another of the acronyms needed to add) for maintaining the exported custom words text file, so that I can conveniently reimport it.


First, Export custom words as a text file. Version control it, e.g. using git.


Importing the custom words text file in a new profile does exactly what you would hope - it restores the custom words that you have added.


Unfortunately, sometimes I need to delete standard words. e.g. my initials are "AG", I disliked getting dragons standard "A/G", and I am too lazy to say "letter A letter G". so I deleted dragons standard entry "A/G". unfortunately, restoring the custom words text file only restores the things that you have added, it does not restore the things that you have deleted. eventually I learned to create a custom words entry like "A/G\\DELETED conflicts AG", which of course gets saved in the custom words text file. This does not automatically restore the deleted words, but you can then find all of the deleted standard words, and then manually going and delete them yourself.


however, I currently have 138 deleted entries. For a new profile I am usually too lazy to go and manually delete all of them. For this reason, I frequently don't go all the way back to a fresh profile, but instead go back only to a recent, known good, profile. Then I can, on the new profile, export the restored custom words text file, diff that with the version controlled most recent custom words text file, and I usually only have zero or a few deleted custom words.


For your example @Todachen, you probably need to go back to a completely new profile, My last trick of diffing  to reduce work won't help you.  But manually deleting 138 custom words is a lot less work than doing a lot of training. if you do this a lot, it might be possible to automate deleting a list of custom words.  I suspect that when I have such a script I will go back to a completely fresh profile much more often, although even then I will probably has save the completely fresh profile that I have made the necessary Dragon options changes to.

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DPG15.6 (also DPI 15.3) + KB, Sennheiser MB Pro 1 UC ML, BTD 800 dongle, Windows 10 Pro, MS Surface Book 3, Intel Core i7-1065G7 CPU @ 1.3/1.5GHz (4 cores, 8 logical, GPU=NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000 with Max-Q Design.

You can train Dragon 15 EXACTLY the way you trained previous versions. Say the KnowBrainer Train Dragon command, click the Next button and you should see the following:

 

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Will that work with DMPE 4.3 as well?

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Dragon Medical Practice Edition 4.3; Dragon Capture, Speechproductivity & Knowbrainer 2017

Yes, it will work in DMPE 4.3

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That is great to hear!  I'll give it a try, I still can get DMPE 4.3 to work from home.

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Dragon Medical Practice Edition 4.3; Dragon Capture, Speechproductivity & Knowbrainer 2017

I had to smile when I read Edgar's procedure for building up a new machine. Install Windows and take an image immediately so you do not have to spend hours if something goes wrong. Then your critical apps - put in another piton! And so on. Regular system images are a good practice. I was surprised to hear that Windows has its own imaging software. I have never heard of that before. I learned that system restores are not good enough because if you mess with device drivers and such, the restores do not always work. You need a full disk image. Like the one I took just now, before upgrading to Dragon 15.6.1. We all have such confidence in new software installations, don't we? :-)


Anyhow, 15.6 seems to be working fine so far. I installed it for the new Basic engine. At least for the moment, I cannot really feel a difference in speed. I am just grateful that the installation worked without problems. Hopefully, I should be good for another couple of years until the next version comes out.

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Win10/x64, AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, 64GB RAM, Dragon 15.61, SP 6 PRO, SpeechStart, Office 365, KB 2017, Dragon Capture, Samson Meteor USB Desk Mic, Klim and JUKSTG earbuds with microphones, 3 BenQ 2560x1440 monitors, Microsoft Sculpt Keyboard and fat mouse

 

1. When you export a whole profile, you export all your custom words and commands with it. Hence, no need to import them a second time into the profile.

2. Your custom words and commands come handy when you create a new profile from scratch. Import them and dictate away. Training should not be necessary except for a few cases when two words are so similar to each other that they get easily confused.

 

To get working, I recommend creating a new profile and importing your custom words and commands, then see what happens. If your audio device is indeed broken, you'll get bad recognition from the start. If the audio device is fine, your dictation should be fine, too. 

 

As to backups, everything has been said.

 

Hope that helps, Stephan

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