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How can i sucessfully generate a Microsoft Help Viewer file?

Michael Mortensen

25 January 2013 18:02

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I am having difficulties generating a compiled help file compatible with the Microsoft Help Viewer.

I have chosen the Help File Type "Microsoft Help Viewer (for Visual Studio 2010/2012 Integration)" with a "Microsoft Help Library Manager Registration Script" ticked as well as "Register Locally" ticked.

However, I receive the attached error, which in sum up says i need to run "Manage Help Settings" from "Microsoft Visual Studio 2010" .. however, I do not have VS 2010 installed - only 2012 and here is no such tool.

Also, should i eventually be successful, what are the actions so that other developers can benefit from the nifty F1 help tight integrated with Visual Studio 2012?

Thanks in advance for your help.

2013-01-25_1856.png

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13 comments

• 0
  
  Richard Sloggett 29 January 2013 13:26

  Can you try opening "Help\Add and Remove Help Content" from Visual Studio 2012 - to check that the MSHV 2.0 content store is set up. From the message it sounds as if Document! X might think you have MSHV 1.0 installed though - have you ever had VS 2010 installed on this machine?

  Check out the Deployment topic in the online help for info on how you go about deploying and registering MSHV outputs.

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  Michael Mortensen 29 January 2013 14:34

  The store in MSHV 2.0 is setup and I updated the content just a few days ago.

  VS2010 was never installed, but there are some VS2010 content installed when you install the SQL Server Management Studio 2012 (as it is based on WPF introduced with VS2010) - maybe that what confuses Document! X?

  I will look into the Deployment topic when I can generate a Help file - thanks for the hint :-)

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  Michael Mortensen 30 January 2013 10:07

  I have investigated further and if I trace the file modification date, I can see that a partial VS2010  is installed parallel with VS2012.

  C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0
  C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0
  
  It seems though - in "Uninstall or change a program" - that it is the following grease Microsoft insist to install with VS2012:

  • Visual Studio 2010 Prerequisites
  • Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Shell (Isolated)
  • Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Office Runtime (x64)

  In total the VS2010 "grease" takes around 350MB space, but there are no menu items to click.

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  Richard Sloggett 05 February 2013 09:25

  The file we look for to figure out if the VS 2010 help viewer is installed is \Program Files\Microsoft Help Viewer\v1.0\helplibmanager.exe - could you have a look and see if that file is present? If so, you could just rename it and that should prevent Document! X attempting to register the content. You could also try just running it - that should initialize the local content store and avoid the error.

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  Michael Mortensen 05 February 2013 22:39

  Hi Richard,

  I tried you suggestion by renaming the Microsoft Help Viewer 1.0 as it turned out it needed parameters if executed.
  The exception returned is attached mshv1_cl.png.

  The renaming was okay and I was able to come a little longer in the file generation. However, a new error occurred as seen in attachment docx_1.png.

  100: Failure to elevate

  This made me lead to believe I needed to run Document! X as Administrator which again triggered a new problem as I gather my assemblies from a trusted network share.
  I added this to the DocumentX.exe.config and DocumentXx64.exe.config

  <runtime>
  <loadFromRemoteSources enabled="true"/>
  </runtime>

  And my assemblies loaded fine again .. however, the error (100: Failure to elevate) remains .. any help is appreciated.

  Thanks.

   

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  Richard Sloggett 13 February 2013 16:34

  The Microsoft Help Viewer administration tools require you to have local administrator rights so you will need to run as administrator if you have enabled the option to register the content locally for testing.

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  Michael Mortensen 13 February 2013 18:02

  Hi Richard,

  Well the strange part is, that I did "Run as administrator" in the second try, but still got that message (as i also tried to explain).
  Now I tried again and I receive this error: 500: Fail on install .. see attached file. 

• 0
  
  Richard Sloggett 13 February 2013 18:07

  Not a terribly helpful error code from Microsoft Help Viewer there :) Do you see anything more detailed in your windows event viewer?

• 0
  
  Michael Mortensen 13 February 2013 18:15

  Hehe .. no, i guess you are right.

  Here is a copy-paste of the operation matching the time (LIFO):

  1. Help Content Manager exited with error: FailOnInstall
  2. An error occurred indexing entry '404.html'. Exception Message: The 'head' start tag on line 1 position 228 does not match the end tag of 'html'. Line 8, position 444.

  3. An error occurred during cleanup after content was updated. Temporary files might not have been deleted from your computer. Error message: The process cannot access the file 'D:\ProgramData\Microsoft\HelpLibrary2\Catalogs\VisualStudio11\Incoming\a25c958a-0687-453d-9af8-f420adb716af\c425c5c4-eea1-4979-9300-b4e55ec88644.mshc' because it is being used by another process.

  4. Help Content Manager was installed from the command line with the following arguments: /silent /operation install /catalogName VisualStudio11 /locale en-US /sourceUri C:\Users\Michael\Desktop\Builded Websites\VS2012\ForLocalRegistration\helpcontentsetup.msha
  5. Help Content Manager exited with error: NoBooksToUninstall

  It would seem that my custom content (404.html) is causing problems .. hmm .. this should only be part of the online edition.
  Can i set my custom content to only be a part of online content? 

• 0
  
  Michael Mortensen 13 February 2013 20:40

  I tried using the option "Exclude from Booklet" but with same result.

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  Richard Sloggett 14 February 2013 12:23

  I would suggest defining a new build flag "Exclude from MSHV" - apply that to your additional .html files and add 2 rules to your build profile (create a build profile specifically for MSHV output if you haven't already) - create 2 rules - "Include content with no build flags defined" OR "Include content that does not have the 'Exclude from MSHV'" flag defined.

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  Michael Mortensen 14 February 2013 20:57

  Richard, this is very odd.

  I can see that your suggested ruleset is working (404.html is not copied to the output directory - nor are the other files i have marked) but for some reason i keep getting the 500: Fail on install referring to the 404.html. What is even more weird is, that I have fixed the error in the 404.html just in case. Do you have some sort of log file i can go through?

  I can feel i am close to a solution .. I just can find my way out of this tunnel .. :-/

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  Richard Sloggett 15 February 2013 09:56

  What does this event viewer say now? Can we continue this by email, we can then post the solution once you are up and running. Thanks.