Local help URLs look like http://127.0.0.1:47873/ Set Local Help ModeThe default help mode is "Online". To view local help run HelpLibManager.exe and set the help mode to "local". Run Help Library Manager Set Local help mode Now when your press F1 in Visual Studio you should see local help... Don't See F1 Help?Still no F1 help showing? Here's a check list you can go through. Restart Help Library AgentThe Agent tray application runs automatically when you press F1. Sometimes restarting Agent can clear the problem. To do this right-click the tray icon and select exit. Then press F1 in VS to restart it and display help. Did you install Local help?No local help installed will cause 404 Errors.VS 2010 ExpressUsually Express is a web download. This check list is by Jason A. Campbell (MSFT)... Thanks Jason! Here is a quick overview of the steps you can take:
After selecting update the books will be downloaded and installed on your machine. DVD InstallIf you have a DVD of VS 2010 setup then you can simply install local documentation from that and save yourself the 1.x GB of download. Local documentation is stored on the DVD in the \ProductDocumentation\ folder. To install local help:
Normal InstallationMS Help Viewer initialization and local help install is done on the last screen of VS 2010 Setup when you hit the blue "Install Documentation" button (not sure if you see this with a Web Install).One way to install help is run VS 2010 Setup again (you may have missed the blue button first time). After running Setup you will need to make a slight change (eg. Add or Remove F#) to get the screen with the blue button to show. Or you can run a full Repair (but this takes a long time). Press the blue "Install Documentation" button on the last screen. The first time you run a documentation install you will be asked to confirm the location of the local library store. Then you will be shown the available local help you can install from the VS Setup DVD. I assume if you did a VS 2010 web install you don't see this or you are taken to the "Install Content from Online" page instead. Reset the Help StoreIf you are really having problems you could try wiping the local help store and start again.This can also be used to change location of the local library store. To clear and reset your local library
Or instead of Step 4 you could run VS 2010 Setup again and hit that big blue button (see above). Tried rebooting, reinstalling, restarting Agent... We need to try something more radical. Flip between Online and Offline FixThis post from Dmitry suggests there may be a problem with making the Offline setting stick. I think I found a solution to this annoying problem. At least it worked out for me.
Agent keeps crashingThere was also a suggestion on the MS forum to add loadFromRemoteSources to HelpLibAgent.exe.config. It fixes the problem by giving Agent access to the assemblies. However the flip between Online and Offline mode (above) should do the job. Try adding the following lines to HelpLibAgent.exe.config
Unable to access localhost 127.0.0.1Andrew posted this in MSDN forums: I had the same problem, and I figured it out! I have my IIS restricted to a list of IP's because I have another web server running on my Win7, and unless IIS is restricted, it'll take over all the IP's on the machine (it's called socket pooling). So, in the registry, go to HKLM/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/services/HTTP/Parameters. If you do NOT have a value ListenOnlyList in there, then I do not know why your help agent is not working. If you DO have the ListenOnlyList value, add 127.0.0.1 to its data. You can also delete all the existing entries from the ListenOnlyList value, but then you will get your socket pooling re-enabled, and you most likely have it disabled for a reason... - restart your computer ...and the Help Library Agent should start ok now "Page Can Not Be Displayed"Vicky Song (MSDN) suggested the following solutions: In HV 1.0 (help in the browser) you will find that the browser will access http://127.0.0.1 which indicates the local machine to get the help. Instead of using the default value 127.0.0.1, could you please try changing to localhost manually? Rob: If using "localhost" instead of 127.0.0.1 works then please see the previous solution for a fix. In addition, you can also go to the Internet Options>>Connections>>LAN Settings >> Rob: This fixed one users who was getting the classic "The page cannot be displayed" being displayed. Content Renders as raw HTMLJason Campbell [MS] -- Re “my content renders as raw HTML” threads. The root cause of this is generally an IE trust issue. In VS 2010 we could work around the issue by registering our domain (127.0.0.1) with the trusted sites. -- Also from Jason There is an option in the security Settings of IE "Open files based on content, not file extension" (in old browsers it was called "enable MIME sniffing" in the Miscellaneous section). On my machine if this was set to Disable for the Internet zone I see the behavior you are describing. Localhost / 12.0.0.1 again - by Carl DavidsonAfter doing a complete repair of NET 4 and VS 2010 and reapplying SP1 MS Help Viewer 1.1 still did not work even though I carefully reviewed the notes from http://mshcmigrate.helpmvp.com/faq/init. I decided to try installing VS2010 on a laptop with Vista and help worked fine. I installed H3Viewer and used it for a while (I really like it!). I then noticed that unlike the MS Viewer 1.1, H3Viewer displays the full URL for the local help. I tried that URL in IE on the XP machine and it did not work at first. I remembered in the notes there was and issue with 127.0.0.1 and 'localhost' so I replaced 127.0.0.1 with 'localhost' and the help displayed in the browser just fine.I had earlier checked the "Internet Settings/Connections/LAN Settings" page to be sure that the "Automatically Detect Settings" box was not checked and it wasn't. I remembered that there was a check box below it that was checked to automatically run a script so I decided to clear that check box and when I did the help system started working as it should. This box was checked and the script that was being run was set by my ISP for the satellite Internet service I am using. Anyone using the WildBlue satellite Internet service may run into the same problem. I hope this will help someone. Thanks for the suggestions Rob. Alternative ViewerThe default browser view can be frustrating. Try our free H3Viewer which provides a full TOC and full index. Installing VS Help to Multiple PCsCopy from one machine to anotherIf you downloaded the full DVD layout, you should have the '\Product Documentation' folder in it, which will have the content packages and the MSHA file. If you installed VS directly from the cloud, I can recommend an unsupported way of doing this.On the other machine, which does not have help content installed locally, please follow the below steps. 1. Launch Help Library Manager and set your offline content installation path to the same path as the one on the machine where you installed local content. The default path is %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\HelpLibrary. 2. Now, copy %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\HelpLibrary\*.* (or which ever path you configured on the machine where you installed the content) from the machine which has the content installed to the same path in the machine which does not have the content installed. Please note that this is not a supported scenario and so, I recommend taking a backup before proceeding with the above steps. Charles Christian A Cool downloader by Alexander Kozlenko (SDE, Lime Systems)Utility for creating Visual Studio 2010 MSDN Library offline installation:For those who want MSDN in an older format. http://packagethis.codeplex.com/ Also only a fraction of MSDN ships as .mshc help. Using this MSDN downloader you could perhaps grab required content and convert to .mshc using .mshcMigrate. 13-Sept-2010: Recently Malcolm Dickson (member of the MS Help team) wrote an extension that allows saving to .mshc format. http://www.codeplex.com/site/users/view/mdickson For more info see Language Packs for Microsoft Help Viewer 1.0 More FixesBITS Download ServiceIf the Application Event Log mentions BITS then this fix has helped a few people... http://support.microsoft.com/kb/842309 To work around this problem by changing the method that the BITS 2.0 client uses to provide logon credentials to the server, create a UseLmCompat registry value in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\BITS subkey, and then add a DWORD value of 0. To do this, follow these steps on the BITS 2.0 client computer:
Format ProblemsNo CSS?Q. I have the Visual Studio 2010 installed and am using the Help Viewer 1.1. For some reason, last week I lost all formatting. It is like the css was removed or corrupted. If the files are not missing then the likely cause is that the hosted IE frame is refusing to load CSS for our pages. We originate as ahttp://127.0.0.1/ request so in general we appear in the internet zone. If your security settings for this zone recently changed to reduce permissions this is a likely cause. If the security settings are ones you would like to keep (most likely) then I you can work around the issue by adding 127.0.0.1 to your trusted sites. Hopefully this helps, Jason MiscellaneousProblem with PC Network SettingsWhenever I invoke help within VS2010, I get the error "connection refused" by our local gateway. I put 127.0.0.1 localhost in my hosts file and I can get to the help system with localhost, but not 127.0.0.1 and there is no way to change host name in the Help Library Agent. Suggested fix:
The explanation was that ::1 was 127.0.0.1 expressed in IPV6. Are you using Vista? Then restart local servers.. in this case Agent tray application. I Uninstalled Help. I can't reinstall Help.We install & uninstall help using VS Setup. MS Help Viewer 1.0 is not a standalone install. However if you uninstall help via "MS Help Viewer 1.0" Setup (not VS Setup), then you may find help wont reinstall using the VS Setup program. VS Setup > Repair may show you a blank screen if you try and repair help. You need to run VS Setup (eg "Microsoft Visual Studio 2010" from Add\Remove Programs from Control Panel), select "Add\Remove Features" (not "Repair") and make a small change in the install options (eg. Remove F#). This will make VS Setup run and at the end of install you will see help install. VS local help not installed. Now gets 404 error.A common problem is that some users get to the last page of VS 2010 setup, and do not press the Blue button for installing the VS local documentation. Or maybe s\he presses the blue button but decided not to install the local documentation. For various reasons -- To save disk space; Only plan to use Online help; Thought it was web install and was trying to avoid a large download. etc. So the help runtime (executables) are installed (VS always installs these), but no documentation is installed and local store may not be initialized. Apparently the VS local help Home page F1=MSDNSTART is only installed if you add some VS local documentation. So clicking the VS Help shortcut (start menu) or launching help from the VS help menu produces a 404 page (page not found). ms-xhelp:/// ?method=page&id=msdnstart&format=html&product=VS&productVersion= 100 To fix this tell your user to install some local help -- ie. Run HelpLibManager and add one or more local help book (from web or VS Setup disk). If you are a help integrator then you should provide a link to your help, not the MSDNSTART page. A top level link I like to use (which works with no content installed) is this one... ms-xhelp:/// ?method=page&id=-1&format=html&product=VS&productVersion= 100 Installing Help DocumentationOnce VS 2010 Setup completes installation of software and the MS Help Viewer 1.0 runtime, the final screen appears with a blue button inviting you to install the documentation. Click the blue "Install Documentation" button to install VS local help from the DVD.If you forgot to install documentation you can rerun VS Setup. The Repair option will display the final page (with the blue button) but takes quite a long time to complete. You can also run VS Setup Add\Remove, but you need to make some minor change (eg. Add F#) to make the final page with the Blue button to appear. |
FAQ >