White Space Ltd is Registered in England and Wales at 45 St Dunstans Rd London W6 8RE.      Registered number 908615

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SYMPTOM:  The program loads to the splash screen but then fades.

CAUSES &  SOLUTIONS: (In approximate order of frequency)

1. The program has not been installed by the system administrator  Solution: Sign on to the network with the appropriate administrator rights, uninstall the program and reinstall

2. The program is unable to detect a working sound card Solution: Install a sound card if not present.   Reinstall the sound card driver. Do not attempt to run the program from a server, unless it has a soundcard.

3.  Related to (2), In VISTA or Win 7, the speakers were not connected or recognised or plugged in and switched on before the program was launched: Solution: Plug the speakers in, switch them on, restart the computer and then our program.

4. Your anti-virus program incorrectly scans the whole program before loading OR detects one or more of  our files as a virus and deletes or quarantines it. The anti-virus program may be set to scan the whole program before loading. This can take up to 15 minutes, before which the program may “time out” and close.  Rarely, an anti-virus program has deleted or quarantined one or more files, causing the program to not load.  To test for both events, remove the computer from  the Internet, switch the anti-virus program  off, uninstall, reinstall and run. If this works, please adjust your anti-virus settings. If you have two anti-virus programs running, e.g. Windows Defender (built into the MS operating system) AND your own anti-virus program, the power needed to run both may leave the computer with insufficient power to run our program. Try running with just one or other enabled.

5. Permission has not been given to access the program Solution: The wordshark-programs and wordshark-public folder need read access only. The wordshark-shared folder needs read, write, modify and delete access. It may also be necessary to “share” the wordshark-shared folder.

6. Access to run executables has been prevented This typically is a school network group policy, but see also Viglen & RM pages. Solution: The executables which may need exemption are: javaw.exe, numbershark3.exe or numbershark4.exe, wordshark3.exe or wordshark4.exe

7. There is an earlier version of the program on the machine that has not been fully uninstalled: This is common where a school is moving from CD version to Network version.  Solution: Go to start / control panel / add or remove programs and uninstall all versions found.  Re-install the latest version. If this fails, we do have a utility which will check registry for any remaining files. Please contact support for details.

8. The user files have become corrupted Solution: Locate the wordshark-shared folder and remove all the user files (back up to memory stick if needed) and run the program again. If this now works suspect corrupt files. Contact support for assistance. Note: The presence of hs_err_pid log files, or .sht files, will often be an indication of corrupted user data.

9.   If intermittent (sometimes works, sometimes closes)  AND you have version 3.07 or earlier (go to file/version) check if the program opens consistently at certain times of the day (e.g. Morning, noon, afternoon, evening), but not at others. If this is the case, contact support for the “Guthrie Patch”.  

10. There is a corrupted font within Windows Solution: Removing the fonts from Windows/fonts then placing them back in a few at a time until the problem occurs will identify this or alternatively reinstall the fonts.

11. (for CD version only)

12.  Regional settings are set to a country with non-European fonts – e.g. Thailand, Turkey, Japan: Solution: Upgrade to version 4.04 or later, or reset regional settings to UK / USA / Australia or similar. This can affect just an odd machine.

13.  “Child Control” or similar parental control program, OR a school group policy prevents access to the program– Review group and other policies and restrictions.

14.  Rarely, a file  (possibly publicgames.sha) is missing (deleted or corrupted) from the [word][number]shark-public folder Re-copy the folder contents from the network CD into the hard disk folder.  

15. (for CD version only)

16. (for CD version only)

17. (for CD version only)

18. There is a 260 character limit to path lengths. This is rarely a problem unless our program is nested within several other folders, each with long file names themselves. We have encountered a handful of machines with exceptionally long paths / folder names. No error is created on install, but the “Fizzle at splash screen” occurs when attempting to run.

Known Issues: Network

Program closes after opening screen