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The Wisdom of African Proverbs Technical support for the CD-ROM.

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GMI Software Fixes

What is the nature of the issue?

On some computers the setup programs for the Wisdom of African Proverbs CD-ROM and the Operation World Plus CD-ROM give errors which cause some functions (notably those requiring Adobe Acrobat) not to work, such as printing the online User's Guide. These problems have only occurre on some systems running Windows 95, 98 and NT, 2000, and XP; Windows 3.1 is not affected. If you get errors while running the setup program, you may need to run an additional setup program which can be downloaded here.

Examples of errors that you may see:

  • If you answer yes to the question near the end of the installation about printing out the User's Guide, you may get this error: "Fatal error at script line 369. File does not exist." (You may get line number 426 instead of 369.)
  • The following error message may be left on your screen after the installation is completed: "FINDBROW: Run-time error '-2147220270 (800404d2)': ShortFileName: Error calling GetShortPathName: error number 161"
  • The following error may occur when you try to open an Acrobat document or click on a Web link: "Error: Command failed-'exestart.exe' or 'exestart.ini' may be corrupted or missing. Reinstalling software may fix problem."

Is there a fix available?

If you see any of the above errors, follow these steps:

  1. If you have this problem with Operation World Plus, click here to download owpfix.exe (about 280k). If you have this problem with Wisdom of African Proverbs, click here to download aptfix.exe (about 280k).
  2. After you finish downloading the appropriate file, copy it to a temporary directory and run it. Four files will be created in that directory, including these instructions (FIXCD.HTM, which can be viewed with your Web browser). From there, run SETUP.EXE.
  3. Follow the brief instructions that appear on your screen.
  4. When the process is completed, be sure the CD is in the CD-ROM drive and run the software. In order to confirm that the process was successful, try going to the online User's Guide from the Main Menu and click on the link, "To print the entire (approximately 30-page) User's Guide using Adobe Acrobat Reader, click here." If a print dialog appears on your screen, this is working properly. If the software has live Web links and you have Internet access, click on the Main Menu link to get back to the Main Menu. Click on the More Resources button, then click on the first yellow "sticky note". Click on the link (e.g. www.gmi.org) to see if your browser comes up correctly. If it does, the setup errors have now been corrected.

What if that did not work?

Please contact GMI technical support if this does not solve your problem, or if you need more detailed instructions.