Problem with Doc-to-Help 2009 Build 480 on Windows 7

[Ken Leake]

Hello all,
I have a question about a legacy version of Doc-to-Help, which is causing me some difficulty.

My organisation (the National Health Service – NHS – in Wales) has been using Doc-to-Help for over 20 years, going back to the Wextech days. Our usage has stabilised around one or two of our key products, which we have continued to maintain using Doc-to-Help 2009 (Build 480) on Windows XP.

We have run into problems recently when trying to upgrade to Windows 7, and not being able to get the 2009 480 Build to install properly. It gives errors about missing DLLs, which I believe relate to the Microsoft Visual C++ run time library not being present. I have found reference on one of the legacy Doc-to-Help forums to this problem, and the view seems to be that Build 480 won’t install on Windows 7, but Build 500 will. This is supported by our testing, where 500 will install, BUT will not accept any of our licence keys from the earlier version as being valid.

This seems strange to me for a minor build release, particularly one aimed at ensuring Windows 7 compatibility, and hence I’d be grateful if somebody could confirm that this is correct. Assuming so, is it still possible to obtain keys for Build 500? Is this an admin exercise, or was 500 a chargeable upgrade? I appreciate this may be an unusual request, but I’m trying to balance sticking with the legacy version for our legacy product, against doing a full upgrade to the latest version, but which we be unfamiliar with, and almost certainly wouldn’t get full benefit from, at least in the short term.

Many thanks

Ken Leake

[Nita Beck]

Hi Ken. Welcome to the forums!

Despite my cheery welcome (which is sincere), I think you're going to need to contact MadCap Tech Support. These are peer-to-peer forums, the majority of which tend to be Flare users, with a small community of Doc-To-Help users given that MadCap acquired Doc-To-Help relatively recently. Given that your questions are about installation issues and license keys, Tech Support is definitely in order. (And I'm pretty sure that MadCap doesn't charge for a support case that involves installation and licensing, but don't quote me on that.)

Perhaps Sabine K, our newest volunteer MVP who is our most knowledgeable member of Doc-To-Help, will jump in with some advice?

[SKamprowski]

Hi Ken, hi Nita,

D2H is supposed to work in Win 7 environments beginning with D2H 2009 V3. Release 480 belongs to D2H 2009 V2 while Release 500 belongs to D2H 2009 V3. Ken, you may remember that C1 used to roll out several major releases for D2H with keys that changed three times a year.
I don't think that it's a good idea to work with such an old version as D2H 2009 with out-dated system requirements (for Word, IE, too) when you move to Windows 7.
User interface of D2H has not changed much between D2H 2009 and MadCap D2H V3!
Still, Microsoft WinHelp is not longer supported nor old NetHelp which has been renamed to NetHelp Classic with D2H 2011.

Kind regards,
Sabine Kamprowski