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. For the CD version, a message may or may not be given about “Validating CD”.

CAUSES &  SOLUTIONS: (In approximate order of frequency, but start with no. 16 if you have version 4.06 CD)

1. The program has not been installed by the computer administrator, or system administrator if a networked machine Solution: Sign on to the machine 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.

3.  Related to (2), In VISTA or Win7, 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 from the CD Drive  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 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)

       A) If using XP, and it always works as an Admin user, but only sometimes as a restricted user, look at  XP patch  

      B) If 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”.  

      C) This can be also a sign of a dirty disk or disk damage or CD drive out of alignment. Clean the disk and/or use a repair kit. Use a CD drive cleaner. If these do not work, contact us.

      D) Try installing the disk on another computer: If it works well on that, contact us.

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. The software has detected a program that is attempting to copy it, and/or a virtual CD drive Solution: Use the program on a computer that does not have disk copying software or virtual CD drives, OR disable/fully install and remove such software and virtual drives.  Programs such as Alcohol, Clone-CD, Daemon Tools and Nero will prevent the CD version of our program from running.

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 are preventing access to the CD – very common in schools, and some primary schools use parental control programs that prevent children from using the CD drive, and/or from using a CD containing .exe files (as ours do).  For the program “Child Control”, open the program and click “Stop monitoring” whenever you wish to use our program.

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 CD into the hard disk folder.  

15. The secdrv is missing or incorrectly set Solution: The security drivers are provided with the operating system. You can download the latest files here: http://www.wordsharksupport.co.uk/xp_patch.html  

16. Wordshark Release 4.06 CD only: C++ and .net files normally included within PC  are missing:  Installing free Microsoft downloads of both resolves the issue.     Links:     C++         .net   

17. Wordshark or Numbershark, prior to 4.06 CD version only, Win 7 only: TSST Corps CD drives on Win7 machines are unable to read our disks. Usng this CD drive and trying Vista or XP compatibility mode returns the error “Please insert correct CD”. Please use a different (perhaps external) CD drive, or upgrade to 4.06+ CD or network version. We are not able to fix the problems with this particular CD drive firmware.

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: School single user CD Program closes after opening screen