HTML5 output generates "Build Failed: a generic error occurr

[HeraTech]

I ran into a problem generating my HTML5 target recently. I thought I'd share how I solved the problem.

Here's the background. I'm a longtime Flare user, and at my current job I convinced the PTB to convert from RoboHelp to Flare because we've started translating our doc and I wanted the ability to send only changed files to our translation vendor as a way to save time and money. I'd sent a project off for translation, and had no trouble generating translated (Japanese) output (both HTML5 and PDF targets) once the files came back. A week or two ago I got a second round of translations back, but when I tried to generate my batch target, it failed to generate the HTML5 target, with the following error: "Build Failed: a generic error occurred in GDI+." I was a bit baffled by this, because I hadn't had any trouble generating my translated output from the first batch of Flare files.

Google searching brought up a lot of topics about problems with images. I was hoping this wasn't the issue, as I have a lot of graphics in this project. Then I searched the Flare Forums, where I found a couple of other people had run into the same error message:
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=8249 (Problem generating PDF - No reply on solution.)
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=20474 (Problem generating PDF - hypothesis that linked to image, no reply on solution.)
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=10455 (this was the most helpful, as the RamonS pointed out this was a Windows7 permissions error, but no details about how to fix it.)

My first attempt to troubleshoot was checking the permissions on the files, since our vendor was probably on Linux, and I'm on Windows 7. I discovered that I did not have full control on all the files, so I changed that setting in the Windows properties. (Windows Explorer, right click the file or folder, select Properties > Security)

But that didn't solve the issue completely. What did solve the problem was replacing the HTML5 target with the previous version that I'd gotten back from the translation vendor. Thankfully there weren't a large number of translated strings in this file. *whew*

I also managed to accidentally reproduce the issue after I'd initially solved it. When our files came back I discovered that the translation vendors had changed the value for the Output Folder for each target (despite me having set it to a rather generic "C:\Output\ProductName" value instead of to my desktop or My Documents folder). So I changed all the Output Folder settings back to the original settings. But when I was generating my output, I realized that one of the targets was still pointed to the wrong folder. When I changed the output folder a second time, I copied and pasted the path. Flare gave me the "Build Failed: a generic error occurred in GDI+" error again, which I hadn't had with the previous path. I changed it back to the previous path and generated output with no problems. The second time I attempted to change the path, I used the Browse button instead of copying and pasting, and this time Flare generated with no problems. I'm not sure why that would cause Flare to seize up. It could still be tied into how Windows handles permissions?

At any rate, I thought I'd share, so that folks have a couple more things to try if you're having issues with a "Build Failed: a generic error occurred in GDI+" error, since this is a really tough error message to troubleshoot. And replacing a target is MUCH easier than going through and checking each image in a project.

[Richard]

Hi,

I had the same problem.
In the end, re-installing Ghostscript did the trick for me. It seemed to be a problem with converting an EPS file to PNG format (for online output).

Richard