© 2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Other product and company names herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
This Readme includes updated information for the documentation provided with the October 2001 release of the MSDN® Library. The information in this document is more up-to-date than the information in MSDN Library Help. Many of the issues outlined in this document will be corrected in upcoming releases.
Note The Resource Kits are now on Disc 1.
Contents — click any of the items below.
The MSDN Library – October 2001 release includes a utility that enables you to copy Favorites saved in a previous Library release to the current preferred Library release.
Overview
Installation
A shortcut is added to the Microsoft
Developer Network Start Menu item to provide easy and consistent access to the
utility.
The MSDN Library Favorites Utility checks the hh.dat file for previously saved
Favorites and offers you the option of copying them to the newly installed preferred help collection through a user interface.
Usage
To launch the MSDN Library Favorites Utility, select the shortcut located
in the Start menu under the Programs\Microsoft Developer Network group.
With the MSDN Library Favorites Utility, you can choose a help collection from the list of the collections in which Favorites were saved. If you have not previously saved Favorites, launching the utility will display the dialog "No previously created Library Favorites were found." Favorites from the selected collection in the list will be copied to the current preferred help collection. The preferred help collection is the MSDN Library release used for context sensitive help in Visual Studio Tools and Office Developer programming environments.
Note to network users: In a network install environment of the MSDN Library, each user can select a preferred help collection.
You are not required to uninstall previous versions of the MSDN Library that use InfoViewer 5.0 technology. For example, the July 1998 MSDN Library and all earlier libraries will coexist with the MSDN Library – October 2001. If you wish to uninstall any Library, always use the Add/Remove Programs option from Control Panel or the Setup program from the CD of the MSDN Library you want to uninstall.
During Setup, you will be asked to choose between Typical, Full, and Custom installation options. You are able to access all documentation and samples regardless of the option selected. The options provide the ability to move some or most files to your local drive in order to reduce dependency on CD access.
The Typical Setup option allows you to run the MSDN Library from the CD. Setup will copy the minimum set of files to your local hard drive. These files include the MSDN Viewer system files, contents index files, and Help files that are used by the Visual Studio development products. You will see the entire Library table of contents. If you select items in the table of contents that have not been installed locally, you will be prompted to insert the MSDN Library CD.
The Full Setup option allows you to run the MSDN Library almost exclusively from your local drive. Setup will copy all MSDN documentation and some sample files to your local hard drive. (Visual C++® and Visual Modeler samples are not copied to your local drive in a Full install.) Files copied also include the MSDN viewer system files, contents index files, and Help files that are used by the Visual Studio development products.
Important Choosing the Full installation will result in the error message, "There is not enough disk space to complete installation." You can ignore this error message if you have enough space on your target drive. This is a known problem caused by a size limitation with our Setup program.Custom installation allows you to specify local installation of a subset of the MSDN Library. The files you select will be copied to your local hard drive along with the files mentioned in the Typical Setup description. You will be able to access product documentation without having to access the MSDN Library CD for those files that you select to copy locally. In addition to any product or sample files you choose to copy locally, select the Full-Text Search Index to search your product's documentation without need to access the MSDN Library CD. You will see the entire Library table of contents. If you select items in the table of contents that have not been installed locally, you will be prompted to insert the MSDN Library CD.
The MSDN Library – October 2001 installation program includes improved Custom Setup options for Platform SDK documentation. Custom Setup now provides more flexibility, allowing you to choose portions of the Platform SDK and Microsoft Knowledge Base content that you want installed to your local hard drive. To use this installation feature, choose Custom Setup during the Library installation.
In order for the MSDN Library to function properly, you need to have version 4.01 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) or later of a released version of Microsoft Internet Explorer installed on your system. If you choose not to install the recommended version of Internet Explorer (Internet Explorer 4.01 with SP1), MSDN will work with reduced functionality. For more information, see Internet Explorer 3.02 limitations. Note that version 3.02 or later of Internet Explorer is required. If you have chosen to install a later version of Internet Explorer, you must then restart MSDN Setup and continue installation.
During Setup, the "Internet Explorer Version Check" message box may appear if you are using a version of Internet Explorer that is older than version 4.01 SP1. The message reads (in part), "Choose Yes to stop Setup and install a later version of Internet Explorer. Choose No to continue with MSDN Setup."
If you select Yes, MSDN Setup will halt and display a dialog box reading, "MSDN Setup was not completed successfully." You must click OK and manually install Internet Explorer. Connect to www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.htm to download the latest version. (Note: If you are using Windows NT® 4.0, you may need to install NT Service Pack 3. Check www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.htm for more details.) If you have chosen to install a later version of Internet Explorer, you must then restart MSDN Setup and continue installation.
Support Note: Selecting Yes on a system running Windows NT 4.0 for Alpha will not halt Setup. Setup will continue. However, you can click Cancel to exit when the next Setup dialog box appears.If you select No, MSDN Setup will continue with installation.
If you are using Internet Explorer 3.02 on Windows® 95, you must have DCOM 95 or a later version of DCOM installed on your machine for MSDN to work. Go to www.microsoft.com/com/dcom/dcom1_2/download.asp to download DCOM for Windows 95. Note: DCOM 98 is installed as part of the normal setup of Visual Studio 6.0.
Problem:
If you are attempting to install the Library on Windows 2000 or Windows NT, and you are not an Administrator, you will see setup error messages. The first error message reads, "Setup has encountered an error in the Registration Database." The second error message reads, "Installation of this product requires system administrator privileges. Setup will abort."
Resolution:
In order to run the Library Setup, you must be an Administrator on Windows NT or Windows 2000.Problem:
The system cannot find the file msdnxxx.col (where xxx represents a version).
Cause:
If you load MSDN directly from the Start menu, using Microsoft Windows NT Server, Terminal Server Edition, version 4.0, a Help dialog box appears with the following message:
Resolution:
For more information, see the Knowledge Base article Q195878 on the Web.
For more information, see the Knowledge Base article Q240301 on the Web.
Problem:
You get this error message when installing the Library under Windows NT Server, Terminal Server Edition, version 4.0 or Windows 2000 Server with the Terminal Services Option, outside of Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel, which places the operating system into install mode.
Resolution:
For more information, see the Knowledge Base article Q240302 on the Web.
Problem:
When installing or uninstalling the MSDN Library, one or more of the following MSDN Setup error messages appear:
RemoveCollection g_ccolCollection.Open(collectionname) dwError = 7
-or-
CloseCollection g_ccolCollection.Open(collectionname) dwError = 8
-or-
Note Sometimes dwError has other values, but the same resolution applies.CloseCollection g_ccolCollection.Open(collectionname) dwError = 5
Resolution:
For more information, see the Knowledge Base article Q198928 on the Web.
Problem:
When you try to access MSDN Library Help from within Visual Studio programs using F1 or the Help menu, the following error message appears:
unable to display help
Resolution:
For more information, see the Knowledge Base article Q250334 on the Web.
To remove the MSDN Library from your machine, run Add/Remove Programs from Control Panel, select MSDN Library – October 2001, and click Add/Remove. Select the Remove All button.
An efficient way for one or several users to access the MSDN Library is to create a shared network installation folder on a network computer's hard drive, and make the folder accessible to the users in your group. MSDN strongly recommends that you copy all the files in the Library to a shared hard disk drive rather than trying to share a CD-ROM drive. This yields better performance for multiple users accessing the Library over a network.
Note The MSDN Library is licensed to a single user. MSDN has recently changed the licensing requirements for the MSDN Library Subscription. Beginning on September 13, 1999 we have changed the MSDN Library Subscription licensing requirements to allow for sharing of the MSDN Library Subscription media within an organization. For more information on the changes to the MSDN Library licensing, please see the amendment to the MSDN Master End-User License Agreement.
The network folder that you choose for the location of the MSDN Library must have sufficient space available. A minimum of 1.8 GB of hard disk drive space is recommended. The MSDN Library contains over 20,000 files. The majority of them are sample files smaller than 4KB. If the cluster size of the file system on the target computer's hard drive is set to 32KB then this will dramatically increase the size of the MSDN Library footprint. Depending on your file system's cluster size, the MSDN Library footprint will range between 1.3MB and 2.3 GB of space. For more information, see the Knowledge Base article Q100108 titled "Overview of FAT, HPFS, and NTFS File Systems."
A utility called Network Copy makes it easier to create a shared network installation folder version. Network Copy is an automated way to transfer files from the multiple MSDN Library CD-ROMs to a single networked server location. Please understand that the end result is not an MSDN Library installation. Network Copy creates a full copy from which multiple users can install and run the MSDN Library from a shared network location.
To correctly create the network installation folder, all contents from the MSDN Library Disc 1, Disc 2, and Disc 3 must be combined into one folder with the identical directory structure as Disc 1. Setup will fail if a user attempts a full installation of the MSDN Library from a share that has the contents of Disc 1 and Disc 2 or Disc 3 in separate folders.
Important Do not share the network installation folder while you are copying. It will likely cause you problems if someone runs Setup while you are copying the Library.
Complete the following steps in order to place the Library on a network folder for better performance over a network.
Here are some additional guidelines for installing the Library to a network folder:
Removing the Library is fairly simple if these procedures are followed.
This approach requires three CD devices or a CD juke box to be installed on the server. Insert all the MSDN CDs into the CD ROM device(s) on the server. Create shares for all the CDs and give everyone access to the CDs. Please see your Windows NT or Win9x documentation for more information on creating shares.
When you have all the shares created, each user can connect to the share point for MSDN Disc 1 by using a UNC path and running SETUP.EXE. For example, click Start, and then click Run and type \\myserver\disc1, where "myserver" is the server name and "disc1" is the share point for MSDN Disc 1.
See Also: Support for multiple CD-ROM drives and network CD changers
The MSDN Library comes with what we call advanced media support by including HTML Help viewer version 1.21. HTML Help version 1.21 includes full support for advanced media, which, if you use MSDN Library CD-ROMs, prompts you a single time for the correct location of the CDs in the event that they are located in a CD changer or in multiple CD-ROM drives. You have the ability to enter a local, UNC, or mapped network drive path. You are also prompted if the CD is no longer available at the designated location. Now you can run the MSDN Library from a local or network location using multiple CD-ROM drives or a CD changer (also known as a CD Jukebox) without being prompted to specify the CD location each time you select a topic that is located on a different CD.
Important Only a Typical Setup is supported from MSDN Library CDs placed in multiple CD-ROM drives or a network CD changer because the MSDN Library program prompts you to insert different CDs but does allow you to browse to, or enter a new location. To run a Custom or Full Setup, you must be able to insert Disc 2 and Disc 3 into the same drive as Disc 1.
This new feature is supported only with the October 2001, April 2001, January 2001, October 2000, July 2000, April 2000, January 2000, October 1999, July 1999, April 1999, and January 1999 releases of the MSDN Library. The April 1999 and the January 1999 Library included support for advanced media in its Setup program; however, the updated HHCTRL.OCX was not available in time for the release.
Scenarios supported:
For more information, see the Knowledge Base article Q253982 on the Web.
The MSDN Library is the help and documentation set for all the Visual Studio products and Office 2000 Developer Tools. When installing the MSDN Library – October 2001 release, you may wish to designate it as the preferred collection for F1 help and general documentation help. The October 2001 release contains all Visual Studio 6.0 documentation, Visual Studio.NET beta documentation, Office XP Developer documentation, and recently updated content including Knowledge Base articles, technical articles, books, and periodicals. The preferred collection can be changed in the Visual J++®/Visual InterDev® Integrated Development Environment (IDE) or in Visual C++ through Tools, Options, Help System. You should always close the MSDN window before changing the preferred Visual Studio document collection. If you change the preferred collection while MSDN is open, your change is not saved.
The MSDN Library – October 2001 release includes a utility that enables you to change both your preferred language and your help collection settings.
Overview
Installation
The MSDN Library Collection Settings tool became available for the first time with the English and Japanese versions of the MSDN Library – July 1999 release. The tool will be included in future HTML Help 1.x-based Libraries. A shortcut is added to the Microsoft
Developer Network Start Menu item to provide easy and consistent access to the tool.
The MSDN Library Collection Settings tool checks the registry for installed collections and offers you the option of selecting a new preferred help collection through a user interface.
Usage
To launch the MSDN Library Collection Settings tool, select the shortcut located
in the Start menu under the Programs\Microsoft Developer Network group.
With the MSDN Library Collection Settings tool, you can choose your preferred help collection from a drop-down list of the documentation collections installed on your machine. For example, newer installations may include updated versions of topics, or you might customize a collection with preferences such as bookmarks, search subsets, and so forth.
Note to network users: In a network install environment of the MSDN Library, each user can set a preferred help collection.
When displaying any topic in the MSDN Library on Windows NT 4.0, the following error appears:
Contents are not displayed in the right pane of the MSDN Viewer
If you are using Internet Explorer 3.02 and Content Advisor is enabled, unrated content, such as the content included in MSDN, will not display. To view MSDN contents, click View, Options, click the Security tab, and then click Disable Ratings.
Note: Changing Internet Options for MSDN also changes Internet Options for Internet Explorer.
Selected text will not print
Printing selected text from an MSDN page is not supported by Internet Explorer 3.02.Text is not highlighted after a full-text search
Highlighting of results from a full-text search is not supported by Internet Explorer 3.02.
Compressed Samples will not open
MSDN Samples compressed into the Technical Articles, Backgrounders, Periodicals, Welcome section, and other Library nodes will not download properly using version 3.02 of Internet Explorer. Because Visual Studio documentation product samples are not compressed, they will download properly using IE 3.02.
Sample code sometimes does not cut and paste properly
Line breaks and formatting information may not copy correctly when you copy and paste sample code from the MSDN Library Visual Studio documentation to your code editor. To work around this issue, do one of the following:
Text links appear broken and links present security warnings
If security settings are set to disable ActiveX® controls and scripting, some MSDN links will not work. To change your security settings, click View, Internet Options, click the Security tab, and then select the proper zone (Intranet Zone would be appropriate for most users). Then set the security level at a less secure level to allow links to work.
Note: Changing Internet Options for MSDN also changes Internet Options for Internet Explorer.
Search hit highlighting broken in IE5 when Accessibility options are selected
In IE5, if you have set the Accessibility options to Ignore Colors specified on Web Pages then search hit highlighting does not work. If you go back into Internet Options at this point and uncheck the Ignore Colors option, then search highlighting will work.
Internet Explorer cannot download samples
HTML Help uses Internet Explorer to display content. There is a bug in IE version 5.5 (only) that prevents sample .exe and .zip downloads.
Workarounds: Make Internet Explorer 5.0 or 4.0 your default browser. Or, go to msdn.microsoft.com/default.asp and download the samples there.
Index subentries sorted under wrong main entries
If two keywords differ only by case and one or more of the keywords contains index subentries, then index subentries for both keywords will be listed under the keyword sorted last in the index.
For example, these keywords are authored as follows:
data binding
ActiveX controls
Data Binding
key concepts of
They will be displayed in the MSDN index as:
data binding
Data Binding
ActiveX controls
key concepts of
Because Data Binding was sorted in the index after data binding, Data Binding contains the index subentries for both keywords.
For some topics, especially those found in Visual Basic® documentation, the Locate button does not work, even though it appears active.
Some topics within the MSDN Library are purposely authored as "hidden" from the table of contents. These topics disable navigation arrows. You will need to navigate to a next or previous topic by clicking on a new topic in the table of contents.
If you have selected (highlighted) the MSDN top-level node (MSDN Library – October 2001) and then attempt to print using the "Print the selected heading and all subtopics" option, your machine will lock up. Printing the complete document collection set is not supported. If you do lock up, press the Ctrl+Alt+Del keys, click Task Manager, and then use the End Task button to close the MSDN Library. Then you can restart the Library.
If you attempt to print a node in the table of contents that contains other nodes that have HTML frame-based content, the following message will be displayed: "The selected topics must be printed individually." You will need to select a book or page at a lower level in order to print the desired topic.
The selected active subset may break links
When using subsets, if you attempt to follow a link from one topic that points to a target topic outside the currently active subset, you may see the default "Topic Not Found" page. Set the active subset to an appropriate subset or select the Entire Contents subset in order to access that topic.
Stop list is ignored
When you use subsets, full-text searches do not exclude words on the MSDN Library stop list.
Search previous results does not work
When you use subsets, the full-text search "Search previous results" feature currently does not work.
Defined subsets deleted
In some cases, closing and rapidly opening the MSDN Library could result in the loss of some user-defined information, including recently created user-defined subsets. To avoid this information loss, allow the MSDN Library close process to complete before restarting the MSDN Library.
After a Typical installation, if you conduct a document search without Disc 2 in the drive and then click the Cancel button, you will get a "No topics found" message. If you make a subsequent search during the same session, the "No topics found" message is immediately displayed instead of a prompt to insert Disc 2.
Workaround
Insert Disc 2 when requested, click OK, and the search will behave as expected. You can also clear the session by quitting and restarting the MSDN Library.
Because of the volatile nature of the Web, some Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) that connected to Web sites at the time of publication may no longer connect. MSDN is always working to keep URLs current. If you would like to report a problem link, please e-mail msdn@microsoft.com with a description of where the problem link is located.
Some phone numbers provided in MSDN Library documentation may not be correct. MSDN is always working to keep phone numbers up-to-date. If you would like to report an incorrect phone number, please e-mail msdn@microsoft.com with a description of where the incorrect phone number is located.
You will get an error message if you copy an executable (.exe) sample to the root of any drive on a machine running Windows NT. Remedy: In the sample download dialog box, specify a download destination that is not in the root of the drive.
When you try to start MSDN from the desktop, the following error message appears: OleMain ThreadWndName: HH.EXE - Application Error: The instruction at "0x5d48d2f0" referenced memory at "0x00000000". The memory could not be "written".
This error is produced by a corrupt hh.dat file. Close all instances of the MSDN Library. Search for all occurrences of the hh.dat file on the system. Delete the hh.dat file and launch the MSDN Library again. This will create a new hh.dat file.
For more information, see the Knowledge Base article Q192915 on the Web.
This problem will occur if you have more than one language version of the same MSDN Library installed on the Windows 2000 computer.
For more information, see the Knowledge Base article Q244791 on the Web.
Problem:
When displaying any topic in the MSDN Library on Windows NT 4.0, the following error appears:
This page provides potentially unsafe information to an ActiveX control. Your current security settings prohibit running controls in this manner. As a result, this page may not display correctly.
Resolution:
For more information, see the Knowledge Base article Q241385 on the Web.
The MSDN Library – October 2001 uses HTML Help viewer technology. An HTML Help viewer version of the Library also ships with Visual Studio 6.0 and with Office 2000 Developer. We have been asked, "Which version of the Library should I load from my subscription – the MSDN October 2001 Release, or the Library that comes with my development package?" The best collection for Visual Studio 6.0 and Office 2000 Developer users is the October 2001 release. The October 2001 Library contains all product documentation for Visual Studio 6.0 and Office 2000 Developer, plus new and updated MSDN Library content.
For viewer Help, click Help from the MSDN Library menu bar and then click MSDN Library
Help.
MSDN document files are compiled HTML files that have a .CHM file extension. The .CHI, .CHW, and .CHQ files are index files created to enhance index, keyword, and full-text search performance with the MSDN viewer.
The .COL file defines the table of contents of a defined document set, which consists of a number of .CHM files.
The Microsoft Developer Network team does not edit product documentation, specifications, or third-party content (such as periodicals and books) included in the MSDN Library. You may encounter documentation errors, references to page numbers, and formatting problems. We will communicate any errors you report to the appropriate product documentation groups.
Some of the books and partial books published in the MSDN Library refer to CD-ROMs that contain additional sample files. The MSDN Library does not include these CD-ROMs or sample files.
You can e-mail problems to us at msdn@microsoft.com.
The MSDN Library is included on three CDs. Documentation, samples, and Setup files have been placed on the CDs to maximize content space and to minimize CD swapping. Disc 1 contains Setup and sample files as well as the Resource Kits. In addition, three document files are located on Disc 1: Two files, dsmsdn.chm and dshelp.chm, are installed locally in any MSDN installation; the third file, vcsample.chm, is used to link samples on Disc 1. Discs 2 and 3 contain document files. The primary product documentation, which includes .NET Beta documentation, Visual Studio documentation, Embedded Developer documentation, and the Platform SDK, is contained on Disc 2. Disc 2 also contains technical articles. Disc 3 contains other SDK documentation, the Knowledge Base, Office documentation, periodicals, Office 97 documentation, and the contents under the Backgrounders, Books, and Partial Books nodes.
Visual Studio product samples are located on Disc 1 and are uncompressed. Samples are available for all Visual Studio products within their respective directories. Some samples are available through document links and others are referenced through Visual Studio product documentation on the MSDN Library.
Samples for Technical Articles, Backgrounders, and Periodicals are compressed and are available through document links.
Samples for the Platform SDK are available by downloading the files from the Microsoft Platform SDK Web site.
A word stop list has been used to reduce the size of the keyword index and increase search performance. The following words are included on the MSDN Library word stop list and will be ignored in a search: a, am, an, and, are, as, at, be, been, being, but, by, can, could, did, do, does, doing, done, for, from, had, has, have, he, here, how, I, in, is, it, its, may, not, of, on, or, saw, see, seen, she, so, that, the, them, then, there, these, they, this, those, to, too, very, was, we, when, where, which, with, you.
When you start the MSDN Library, the Internet Connection dialog box appear may appear. If you have enabled remote connections in Windows 95 or Windows 98, your system might try to initiate an Internet connection at the start of some applications. This behavior is often referred to as AutoDial or AutoConnect. For steps to resolve this problem, please refer to Knowledge Base article Q191901 on the Web.