Online help doesn't work

Online help doesn't work

• fantus

  I am having this problem too.  Is there a way to resolve it
  
  The start page developer news also says there is no connection to the internet, even though I can browse there fine in Internet Explorer. 
  
  This is a clean install of Beta 2, side by side with Visual Studio 6 and .Net 2003, no other betas or Express editions.  Windows 2000 SP4.
  
  
  

• rgsiii

  Jeremy,
  
  I don't believe its a proxy authentication issue for several reasons.
  
  1) I don't get the proxy error message stated in kbid=910804, 2) I can still use some of the links, but not all of them, in the DExplorer start page. However most of the time there are failures to retrieve the information I am seeking., 3) A colleague of mine in the same subnet of our LAN has not experienced any problem with the exact same version of XP SP2 (with the latest updates) and VS2005, and 4) My problem is intermittent. Sometimes DExplorer appears to work OK. IE always works to find the documents I am trying to find. The problem, of course, is that it is not context based help. I am forced to look online manually with IE.
  
  My speculation is that the problem has two issues. One is that an internal timer in the DExplorer code is tripping too soon and giving up the connection if there are delays deemed too long in the query response. Second is that the design uses a cache for these searches that fail and the cache continues to provide the failed page response, rather than the algorithm trying to make a another fresh try at finding the document to be found.
  
  Since these are speculations based on the behavior I am witnessing, and not on any true knowledge I have of the DExplorer code, I am using this forum to express my opinion that may give food for thought to those who truly know where to look for problems when they are not witnessing my particular issues.
  
  QFX
  
  
  

• fdgrau

  Yes, its set for search online first, then local.
  

• kokfai

  The beta help docs had a few problems. You won't see these issues in the RTM version.
  
  Michael Blome
  Visual C# Documentation Manager 
  

• Dev2808

  Thanks QuickFox. We'll try to repro this. Can you tell us what your settings are on the main VS menu under Tools > Options > Help > Online
  

• alext_2002

  There are numerous errors. Online help not working and most parts of the Internet Development Kit that have been a part of MSDN for almost a decade now are now missing.
  
  

• ShortBus

  Thanks for the info - I have a couple additional questions based on the behavior you're seeing:

  1) Did you install the full MSDN Library for VS2005 If you installed the January MSDN Quarterly, for example, it won't integrate with VS2005. I know your primarily question is about Online Help, but if you're getting a failure document instead of a local (offline) document, I'm curious whether you have local documentation installed.

  2) If you choose Help->Search and then execute a Search, do you get results from the online search providers (MSDN Online, Codezone, and Questions )

  3) What is your choice in in the first radio box Tools->Options | Help | Online (online-first, local-first, or local-only)

  Thanks,
  Jeremy

  
  
  

• sakile

  i'm having this problem too. when i press f1 while over a keyword in the code view, i get a 'this help page can not be displayed' type message.
  if i click the search tab, i can manually search the internet help for help - but i have no context sensitive help by pressing f1..
  
  is there a fix for this
  
  i've cheked options and im set to use online help.
  
  so annoying that you need help to use the help =/
  
  allthough vs looks very nice so far apart from this...
  
  

• ashade

  I too am having this same problem. I am using the August CTP. Very frustrating.
  

• Eric_D

  One more quick question - which Sku are you using   Professional, Express   You can find out by looking at the top of the Help->About dialog.

  Thanks!
  - Jeremy

  
  
  

• Leonardo Juszkiewicz

  If you're behind a corporate proxy requiring authentication, there is a KB Article that provides a workaround such that you can view online help:

  http://support.microsoft.com/ kbid=910804

  If your issue isn't related to proxy authentication, feel free to post back or start a new thread so we can try to track down your issue.

  Thanks and sorry for the frustration,
  Jeremy Jones

  
  
  

• John Lagonikas

  Unfortunately Michael the problem still persists. I loaded VS2005 with Document Explorer 8.0.50727.42 RTM on a brand new Latitude D810 and saw these same problems. Initially the product worked on the LAN connection at my work. However, I later tried this feature on a Dial-up connection and this problem occured. The DExplorer has never worked on that Dial-up connection, while all other Internet activities work fine; including IE browsing of content at MSDN Online.

  Finally, I have been trying to use DExplore again on the LAN and some of the links in the Start page work, while other links exhibit this problem. For example, the "Learning Visual C#..." link in the Getting Started section of the Startup page is broken on my system.

  One thing I noticed is that there is a long period of searching, presumeably at MSDN Online, before the error is shown when the DExplorer is first trying to resolve a troubled link. Subsequent to that there is almost no search time on the next attempts on these links. I assume the search attempt was cached and is now too lazy to look for updated information that was not previously obtained.

  
  

• TechWriter

  Can you give me a list of which links on the Getting Started section are broken and which ones work

  Also, can you provide a couple instances where F1 successfully returns an online document and a couple where it doesn't

  Thanks,
  Jeremy Jones

  
  
  

• libragirl

  Jeremy,

  The SKU I'm using is VS2005 Professional with .NET Framework 2.0.50727. It's loaded on a brand new Dell Latitude D810, which has a 1.86Ghz Pentium M750, 1 GB of RAM, and a 7200 RPM 80GB SATA drive. I use this as a development platform.

  I checked the links more closely and realized that none of the F1 context help works when I try to use it in the VS2005 code editor. The links in the Startup page that do work are all of the ones in its center section. These links bring up a tabbed window with the requested page for the link being properly loaded. The links in the Startup page that do not work are all the ones in its "Getting Started" section in the left pane. All these tests were done on a dial-up connection.

  What I noticed is that both the links and the F1 Help, which are broken, are the same instances that launch the DExplorer browser in a separate window (as opposed to a newly instantiated tabbed window) and subsequently try to load the requested help page into this new DExplorer window. Once this occurs, it produces the error that started this email thread. The links that work in the center of the Startup page of VS2005 do not launch the DExplorer as a separate window, but simply load the help page in the newly instantiated tabbed window when a link is clicked in the center section of the Startup page.

  QFX

  
  
• Online help doesn't work