;	Technical Issues Information about those rare technical issues that may cause problems.

Here we share possible technical issues and how to overcome them. We suggest that you read this page when you first use our simulations.

Installation Issues

There may be issues with downloading the files, fire walls and finding files.

Download Issues
There are three or four files that need to be downloaded - setup.exe, setup.lst and one or two files with the suffix .cab. These should be saved to a folder on your hard disc, to the disk top or to a memory stick. With the exception of setup.lst you can download these by left clicking on the links and saving. Once the simulation has been installed these files can be deleted.

Setup.exe is the program that installs the simulation. As discussed later, your company's firewall may prevent you running this program. Where there are not firewall issues, once you have downloaded all these files you should run this program. (For problems with this file being truncated see F-Secure below).

Setup.lst is the file that provides the information used by Setup.exe to configure the simulation. Unfortunately, recent versions of Windows have the feature that if you Left Click the file is opened. To save this file you must Right Click and choose to Save As.

.Cab Files are unlikely to cause any problems.

Firewalls
Commonly, if you are installing on one of your companies computers, the firewall will prevent you running a .exe program. If this is the situation, you will need to get your technical support staff to install the simulation for you.

F-Secure 2012 A problem I have encountered with F-Secure 2012 is that the setup.exe program  is truncated when downloading. If this happens it will lead to the message "setup.exe is not a valid Win32 application" (image to the left). This is because, in the example,  the setup.exe file was truncated from its 137 kbytes to 106 kbytes. I have had this problem with both Internet Explorer and Firefox. If this happens you can  download on another computer (running a different virus program) or ask us to send the program on CDROM.

Error Code 9
Very rarely, after installation, when you run the simulation you will get an error code. This is caused by the software not being able to find the simulation's data files. I do not know why or how looses track of where the files are - again your technical support people should be able to help you.

Printer Issues

A common source of problems is the printer.

Printer Driver
Each printer that you use will have driver software that communicates with the printer. If you are using a printer supplied from a third party you need to ensure that the correct printer driver is installed on your computer. So, besides asking the third party to provide the printer you should ask them to provide a printer driver on CD.

Not Printing
When running the simulation you may find that it is not printing.,this may be because the current default printer is the wrong one or that you have not clicked the Page Feed button.

Default Printer: It is likely that you computer is configured to use several printers and the wrong printer is set as the default one. You can check and change the default printer either by using the Control Panel and the Printers and Faxes option or using the Reconfigure Simulator and Change Printer Parameters (accessed from the Tutor's Options (Direct Use Simulations) or Special Options (Tutor Mediated Simulations). This problem is likely to happen when you use a printer supplied by a third party (and, like me, you forgot to change the default printer).

Page Feed: When reports are being printed automatically, page feeds are automatically sent. But, when you display reports and click the Print button, reports are not printed immediately. They will only be printed when the page is full or the Page Feed button clicked. So, on occasion, you or the learners click print and then worry that the report is not printed - to force printing click Page Feed.

Odd Message on Printing
As described below (E-mailing or Saving Results to File) some software behaves like a printer driver. And where this is the default printer you will have problems - you need to check and change the default driver (described above - Default Printer).

Toner and Ink
Invariably, your toner or ink will run out at the worst possible time and therefore it is important to have a spare toner or ink cartridge. Also, if using compatible cartridges, check that they actually work before relying on them.

E-mailing or Saving Results to File
It is useful if you have software that allows you to produce Adobe Acrobat (.PDF) files. For a good number of years I have used FinePrint's PDFfactory software. This acts as a printer and to create PDF files all you need to do is to set PDFfactory as you default printer.

© 2010 Jeremy J. S. B. Hall

Most recent update: 04/12/11
Hall Marketing, Studio 11, Colman's Wharf, 45 Morris Road, London E14 6PA, ENGLAND
Phone +44 (0)20 7537 2982 E-mail jeremyhall@simulations.co.uk