Entomology

 

 

All computer programs contain bugs. You may have seen a "General Protection Fault" message when using big expensive drawing or word-processing packages.

 

If you see something like this,

 

entry_point_not_found

then you have an incompatibility between sections of WordSmith. You have probably downloaded a fresh version of some parts of WordSmith but not all, and the various sub-programs are in conflict... The solution is a fresh download. http://lexically.net/wordsmith/version6/faqs/updating_or_reinstalling.htm explains.

 

Otherwise you should get a report popping up, giving "General" information about your PC and "Details" about the fault. This information will help me to fix the problem and will be saved in a small text file called wordsmith.elf, concord.elf, wordlist.elf, etc. When you quit the program, you will be offered a chance to email this to me.

 

The first thing you'll see when one of these happens is something like this:

 

access_violation

 

You may have to quit when you have pressed OK, or WordSmith may be able to cope despite the problem.

Usually the offending program will be able to cope despite the bug or you can go straight back into it without even needing to quit the main WordSmith Tools Controller, retrieve your saved results from disk, and resume. If that doesn't work, try quitting WordSmith Tools overall, or quit Windows and then start it up again.

 

When you press OK, your email program should have a message with a couple of attachments to send to me.

 

The email message will only get sent when you press Send in your email program. It is only sent to me and I will not pass it on to anyone else. Read it first if you are worried about revealing your innermost secrets ... it will tell me the operating system, the amount of RAM and hard disk space, the version of WordSmith, and some technical details of routines which it was going through when the crash occurred.

 

error messages

These warn you about problems which occur as the program works, e.g. if there's no room left on your disk, or you type in an impossible file name or a number containing a comma.

 

See also: logging, troubleshooting.

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