Hi Jeremy,

Problem solved !!!

I had installed the release candidate, and on the same day, I received my MSDN subscription. I installed the MSDN from the subscription ( from October ). I then expected that this version of MSDN was designed to go connect interactively with the new VS2005 RC1. It wasn’t. I have since uninstalled that MSDN library, and then installed the one that came from the RC1 download, and the world is right again.

I appreciate your time and effort on this matter.

Joe Barry

Hi Jeremy,

Do you have any other suggestions?

Thanks,

Joe Barry

Yeah, I believe you would lose your settings if you tried to run repair on the RC.

This is an odd problem. Here’s another thing to try:

Launch the VS Help Viewer from this menu shortcut: All Programs->Visual Studio 2005->Visual Studio 2005 Documentation

Can you see content in Help->Contents and Help->Index from this instance of the viewer? If so, try restarting Visual Studio again and then testing the Help->Contents and Help->Index scenarios.

Thanks,

Hi Jeremy,

I did the repair, and rebooted, and it did not fixed the problem.

I should clarify what I initially did to install. I downloaded the release candidate software (32 hours!!), and then had to run a program called ISOBuster to access the downloaded info. I burned a DVD with the image, but the image would not run, so I installed the RC from the disk version of the installation kit. It installed the RC, and I am assuming it also installed some limited version of MSDN along with it. I then installed the MSDN library from the DVD for the Library that is now shipping with the MSDN subscription. I already had a version of MSDN installed for Visual Studio 6.0, which I later uninstalled to try and fix this problem. I ran the repair as you suggested, and now, don’t really want to reinstall the RC. When I try and run the repair for the RC, it is expecting me to put a DVD in my DVD/RW drive instead of realizing I installed from disk. If I uninstall and reinstall my RC, I lose all the settings I have entered I think. Do you know if this is true?

Thanks again,

Joe Barry

978-568-9340

Twinstar Enterprises, Inc.

Joe,

Can you try running a repair on MSDN 2005 to see if that helps?

Thanks,

HI Jeremy,

>> 1. What behavior do you get when you choose the "try local only, not online" in Tools Options for Help, do you get Local F1 hits then?

I get the following:

*********************************************************************************************************

The information you are trying to access could not be found. Various events could have caused this error.

You have chosen to use local Help only for Search and F1 results, and the topic could not be found in local Help.

This error can be caused when local Help has not been installed or only a subset of local Help was installed.

ETC …

*********************************************************************************************************

>> 2. Does the problem you're seeing only happen on keywords? Are you highlighting the whole keywords or are you just putting the cursor in the keyword (the latter is more consistent). What happens if >> you do F1 on a toolwindow such as the Toolbox or Output Window?

In all these cases, I still get the screen described above.

3. When you open Help->Index or Help->Contents do you see the full 2GB of MSDN content available? I wonder if there was a general problem with the installation of Local Help content.

Same thing. I get the screen saying information not found.

I had noticed I had a version of MSDN installed for Visual C++ 6.0 along with my new version for MSDN for Visual Studio 2005. I uninstalled the original version, rebooted, and still got this problem.

I have not yet tried uninstalling and reinstalling the new version of MSDN, but maybe I could. Before I do that, though, is there a registry entry I can check to make sure my environment is pointing to the right place? I have no problems launching the new MSDN from a desktop shortcut (ctrl+Alt+M), just from the VS 2005 environment.

Thanks for your help,

Joe Barry