Has anyone encountered "The XML page cannot be displayed"?

AndrewW · Post by **AndrewW** » Tue Dec 09, 2008 1:19 am

Hello!

My client's PCs are configured and managed centrally over the network. I believe that they always install the latest Microsoft updates for Windows XP, but still have IE6 and have not upgraded to IE7. When I copy a CHM generated with Flare to one of the client's PCs, and then open the CHM, the following error appears in the topic pane:

Code: Select all

The XML page cannot be displayed 
Cannot view XML input using XSL style sheet. Please correct the error and then click the Refresh button, or try again later. 


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The operation completed successfully. Error processing resource 'mk:@MSITStore:C:\Documents%20and%20Settings\andrew\Local...

<html xmlns:MadCap="http://www.madcapsoftware.com/Schemas/MadCap.xsd" MadCap:tocPath="" MadCap:PathToHelpSystem="../../.....

The error does not occur when I open the CHM on either of my own PCs, which both have IE7. In the MadCap KnowledgeBase article #:IAR1001F, I found the requirements for HTML Help targets generated by Flare are:

Microsoft HTML Help
Required: Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 or later.

So there should be no problem with IE6. My feeling is that there could be an additional requirement relating to XHTML handling, which is missing on my client's PCs. Has anyone else encountered this problem?

Pete Lees · Post by **Pete Lees** » Tue Dec 09, 2008 6:08 am

Hi, Andrew,

I agree that there shouldn't be any problem with IE6. I think that all versions of IE from IE5 onwards have had XML capability.

Does this article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base help?

"XML page cannot be displayed" error message when you use Money Help

I'd also recommend checking that all the HTML Help viewer components are properly installed on the client's PC. You can do this by running MJ's Help Diagnostics and choosing the option to "Refresh Registration of all HH 1.x DLLs".

http://helpware.net/downloads/index.htm#MJs

The report that MJ's Help Diagnostics generates shows the version numbers of all the HTML Help viewer components on the PC, which you can compare with the versions shown in this page:

http://helpware.net/htmlhelp/hh_info.ht ... elpHistory

Then, if necessary, you can upgrade the viewer components by installing the KB896358 security update.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en

Pete

KevinDAmery · Post by **KevinDAmery** » Tue Dec 09, 2008 7:20 am

Another tack to try: I noticed this in the error:

Code: Select all

The operation completed successfully. Error processing resource 'mk:@MSITStore:C:\Documents%20and%20Settings\andrew\Local...

That looks like a link to your personal system: is this an error that you received on your system, or was it from a client's system? If it came from someone else's system, I would double check that you don't have any absolute paths.

(And to cover the absolute basics, you did copy the chm file itself, not a short cut to it, right?)

AndrewW · Post by **AndrewW** » Tue Dec 09, 2008 8:42 am

Thanks for your responses! I've worked through the suggestions as far as possible, but unfortunately haven't found a fix. The error definitely occurs on the client's systems. In addition to my personal systems, the client provides me with one of their systems, which is why you see my name in the error message that I posted. The same problem occurs on systems belonging to others. They are all configured the same way, from a central location.

Here's what I've found, so far:

* Clearing the temporary Internet files has no effect.
* To reinstall IE 6 or install IE 7 is not possible, because the OS is being installed and updated centrally.
* All the latest critical Windows updates are applied, including those that affect HTML Help Viewer (e.g. KB896358, KB935448).
* According to the suggested diagnosic tool, all the HTML Help DLLs are registered correctly.
* The latest HTML Help control is installed (5.02.3790.2847).
* The same problem does not occur with WebHelp output.

In addition, it is maybe worth mentioning that earlier versions of the CHM, which were compiled directly with HTML Help Workshop, have been around for a long time, and have worked without problems on very many systems.

I presume that other people are deploying Flare-generated CHMs to XP systems with IE6...

KevinDAmery · Post by **KevinDAmery** » Tue Dec 09, 2008 8:52 am

Mine worked in XP and 2K3 with IE6, at least until we upgraded our systems to IE7. (Our product is hosted by us using terminal services, so I don't have to worry about installs at the customer site... so no data on that score.)

Post by **LTinker68** » Tue Dec 09, 2008 9:05 am

AndrewW wrote:I presume that other people are deploying Flare-generated CHMs to XP systems with IE6...

I recently upgraded to IE7. I just tested a CHM I had created in Flare v4 and it's working on the IE7. That was built when I still had IE6 installed, but I wouldn't think that would be a consideration, but it's Microsoft, so who knows.

One other thing, and I apologize if this was mentioned earlier -- I may have missed it when I skimmed this thread... Did you rename the CHM after you built it?

Pete Lees · Post by **Pete Lees** » Tue Dec 09, 2008 9:24 am

Hi, again,

Perhaps you need to upgrade the Microsoft XML Core Services (MSXML) on the client PC. The latest version is 6.0, I believe, which was delivered with Windows XP SP3. Use Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs to determine which version you have.

Do other help files on the client PC exhibit similar problems?

Presumably the main difference between the Flare-generated CHM and the HHW-generated CHM is that the topics in the Flare version contain XML elements and namespace attributes. Is there any way to stop Flare from doing this? These XML additions aren't normally needed in HTML Help files.

Pete

AndrewW · Post by **AndrewW** » Tue Dec 09, 2008 10:02 am

Thanks again for the responses!

The MSXML Core Services seems to already have been updated to version 6.0 Service Pack 2. The reference I see in the Control Panel is http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954459 . The update seems to be from around 11 November 2008. Is that the same version that you have?

Other CHMs generated with Flare exhibit the same problem on the client PC. As you'd expect, the non-Flare generated CHMs are okay, because there's no XML in use.

I've not renamed the CHMs after generating them. I only zipped them before emailing, and then unzipped them. We do that all the time, and doesn't normally cause any problem, but I'll test without zipping tomorrow, just in case.

KevinDAmery · Post by **KevinDAmery** » Tue Dec 09, 2008 10:28 am

Hmmmm.... I'm hazy on the details, but I seem to recall reading somewhere that emailing CHMs can result in Windows treating them as if they come from the internet rather than locally. (You'd think zipping them would get around that, though...) Just for grins, try using another method of transporting one over, like downloading them from an ftp or sneaker-netting them over with a usb key or the like.

Pete Lees · Post by **Pete Lees** » Tue Dec 09, 2008 10:56 am

The MSXML Core Services seems to already have been updated to version 6.0 Service Pack 2. The reference I see in the Control Panel is http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954459. The update seems to be from around 11 November 2008. Is that the same version that you have?

That's more recent than my version, probably because I've yet to upgrade my machine to XP SP3. However, if this or other SPs for MSXML were responsible for breaking HTML Help files, I'd have expected to find quite a number of reports of similar problems. I can't find any, though. Perhaps it's safe to discount this as a possible cause of your problem.

You may want to check that Windows isn't blocking the contents of the help file. See this article:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=902225

This seems a little unlikely, however, as the error message that you're seeing is quite different from the normal one.

Other than that, I'm afraid that I'm out of ideas. The next step may be to raise a Support call.

Pete

AndrewW · Post by **AndrewW** » Wed Dec 10, 2008 8:33 am

Was able to do a little more testing today. The problem does not seem to be related to emailing or zipping. The same problem occurs when the CHMs copied from a USB stick.

I found today that the problem does not occur with all Flare generated CHMs, which is intriguing.

The problematic CHMs have the following in common:

- They were generated after importing existing HHPs into Flare. (This itself is not the problem though, because today I've imported another pre-existing HHP into Flare - the simplest one I could find - and the problem did not occur with the CHM in that case.)

- The pre-existing TOCs contain INCLUDE statements.

- The pre-existing topics are HTML - not XHTML, and in some cases the existing HTML is not well-formed. The import process doesn't seem to convert the HTML to XHTML.

I'll continue to investigate...

KevinDAmery · Post by **KevinDAmery** » Wed Dec 10, 2008 9:26 am

AndrewW wrote:- The pre-existing topics are HTML - not XHTML, and in some cases the existing HTML is not well-formed. The import process doesn't seem to convert the HTML to XHTML.

As far as I know, it does, but only if you open the topic into the XML editor and save it. Just copying it into the project and adding it to a TOC doesn't run the conversion.

The not-well-formed part could also certainly cause problems, so I would go through and address those issues.

MarkoS · Post by **MarkoS** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 2:04 am

Any new results on this problem? We got a customer with the same problems with one of our Flare generated chm - files.

Madcap Guru · Post by **Madcap Guru** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 4:58 am

if you create a sample or test project does it occur? does it occur with all topics of just one topic?

MarkoS · Post by **MarkoS** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 7:44 am

Sorry. I just gota screenshot from the user nothing more, besides the information, that he is using Win XP with SP2. It works fine on our systems. And we are waiting on response of him now. So we can make more guesses. I just had hoped, that there the original poster solved the problem with just a "click"

KevinDAmery · Post by **KevinDAmery** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 8:34 am

From the sounds of it, the original poster's problem was some invalid code in an imported topic file. The only way to fix that would be to dig into the XML in a text editor and address the code problem.

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