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Hi,

Almost overnight, the help dialog prompted by the help buttons on the transformer settings dialogs stopped working.

I was using 2017.1 x64 (build 17650), but it fails in every version installed, both 32 and 64 bit.

The only change from earlier is that I've recently installed 2018.0 on the machine.

The help dialog opens, but it never gets any content. If I paste an url into the help dialog address bar, it works however. So it looks like it's the initiation command to the help dialog that's failing.

The "Documentation Help Locations" in the "FME Options" seem to be in order.

Any insights on how to remedy this is appreciated.

I can't reproduce your problem, but you could try to repair your 2017.1 install.

I can't reproduce your problem, but you could try to repair your 2017.1 install.

Like I wrote, the problem seems to affect all installed FME versions; 2016, 2017, and 2018, and both 32 and 64 bit.

 

Any ideas from the Safe crowd ?

 

 

Any ideas from the Safe crowd ?

 

 

Could you take a look in Tools -> FME Options -> Default Paths and see what's there for the Documentation Help Locations? It should list the online resource and then the local files, in both cases with the FME version number referred. Check this for FME 2017 and 2018

 

 

Like I wrote, the problem seems to affect all installed FME versions; 2016, 2017, and 2018, and both 32 and 64 bit.

 

You could try to repair a single install and see what happens with that version. If it works, you could try to repair the other installs.

 

Otherwise it might be a setting in the regedit, but I shouldn't know which one.

 

Most likely a setting in the FME Options.

The setting for finding the Help should look like this:

Most likely a setting in the FME Options.

The setting for finding the Help should look like this:

At least for FME2018.0 ;-)

 

Hi @lifalin2016, this is very mysterious! To confirm, does it only affect Transformers? Or does it also affect all Readers, Writers, etc. ? What if you open any of the "links" from the Help menu – do those also fail?

Most likely a setting in the FME Options.

The setting for finding the Help should look like this:

No such luck. The two default paths for help are in place. It affects all versions, so it would have required ALL paths in all (6) versions to be corrupt at the same time, which is unlikely.

 

 

Hi @lifalin2016, this is very mysterious! To confirm, does it only affect Transformers? Or does it also affect all Readers, Writers, etc. ? What if you open any of the "links" from the Help menu – do those also fail?

It does actually affect every help function in FME; readers, writers, help menu. It might have something to do with my specific login, but I need help to remedy the situation, to find the cause.

 

 

FME opens the "FME Help" window, runs the hourglass/spinner for 10-15 seconds, then aborts. Something (in Windows I suppose) seems to be blocking the transfer of the help target URL to the window.

 

 

Hope this helps.

 

Like I wrote originally, the help paths are in order.

 

 

Hi @lifalin2016, this is very mysterious! To confirm, does it only affect Transformers? Or does it also affect all Readers, Writers, etc. ? What if you open any of the "links" from the Help menu – do those also fail?

The "FME Help" dialog windows does work, as I'm able to paste in a help document URL just fine. Actually, any URL works, even google.com. So it's not a firewall or connection issue, just an issue with the initiation of the help window.

 

 

Hmm. After a smallish Windows update before Easter, the help function now seems to be working again.

It wasn't a logical error, so I did suspect some sort of Windows bug, espacially because the feature stopped working overnight in all versions simultaneously.

I cannot begin to guess as to the cause, except maybe some glitch in the inter-process framework. I'm just glad it works again :-)

Cheers.

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