I've been using Tourweaver with wonderful results... until... for some reason (which I suspect is related to image encryption), I can no longer access certain folders on my hard drive.  When I try to browse them with Windows Explorer, it crashes all open Windows Explorer windows.  If that was all, I might not be so worried, but it gets worse...

I turned off the image encryption feature, and never use it anymore, but somehow this phenomenon is spreading to other folders.  It's not a virus.  My system is impeccably well-maintained. 

I thought long and hard about this, and I THINK (but I'm not sure...) that it's only folders with JPG's that are behaving this way.

This is really ruining my productivity, and worrying me as well... If someone knows what's going on, or has ANY idea what I'm dealing with, PLEASE let me know!!!

Thanks.

I have not experienced this yet... though this does seem worrying... so are ur jpgs changeing to jpes???

I've been trying a lot of different things to get around this problem, and I think I'm making some headway.

I think that the main reason why I'm having these problems is probably because I don't use any of the default skins.  I create my own.  For some reason, I cannot access my skin folders, or tour folders, because they keep crashing all open Explorer windows.  Sometimes, Windows brings up some sort of exception error, other times, it closes all Explorer windows.  If I try to access those folders via Tourweaver, or Photoshop, it crashes those programs too.

As I said, I think that only folders with JPG's are doing this, so I'm guessing this is because I once turned on image encryption on one of my skins.  I've since turned off image encryption (I wish I never turned it on in the first place), and I've been reusing my skins (because that's what they're for), and the problem just spread to other tours.

I tried reinstalling Tourweaver several times, on various drives, changing the location of my folders on my drives, and all kinds of things to work around the problem.  If I didn't absolutely love this software I would have junked it a long time ago.  I really need help though... so PLEASE anyone out there with an answer... I beg you to help me!!!  This is putting a serious dent in my productivity.  I can't modify my skins or create new tours without crashing over and over.

I also tried letting Tourweaver install in its default directory and put skins in their default directory, and things are working a bit better, but I'm still having lots of problems.

If anyone can help troubleshoot this for me, I am definitely open to follow your advice. 

In the meantime, I'll just keep trying to solve this...

Hi Phoenixrising,

Thank you for the reply!!

No, my JPG's are staying JPG's.  I'm really not sure what's going on, except for one thing... I know this all started when I created my own skin, started reusing that skin, and I had image encryption activated.

Since then I recreated the skin from scratch, and I can browse the folders for it.  The thing is, if I try to import that skin to another tour, it causes the problems all over again.

I'm going to continue trying different combinations until I can work around this...

Thanks again for the reply!!

Hi WWest,

It sounds like Windows can't handle those folders. I don't think that your problems are related to TourWeaver.

Do you use a program for displaying imagefolders or did you turn on the thumbnail-view in the Windows Explorer?
Or did you install some other program which handles image-viewing?

I use imageencryption all the time and don't have any problems.

Good luck with your search for the answer of this problem.

disjo

Hi disjo,

Maybe... I don't know.  I really hope you're right.  If it comes down to it, I'll have to wipe out my system and reinstall everything.  I'm really not looking forward to that.

I did turn on thumbnail view sometimes, but I almost always have it turned off.  I'm not sure what you mean by using a program for displaying imagefolders.  Could you expound on that?

I have Photoshop and image editing programs on my system, but I wouldn't think that they'd clash with Tourweaver.

I really hope it's a matter of one of my programs conflicting with Tourweaver.  I don't know much about these kinds of things, so I'm not sure how to find out.  I can try to catch the error messages on screen capture.  The thing is, I'm getting them less frequently now.  The programs just shut down without any error messages.

Like I said, I really like Tourweaver.  I have not found anything like it out there.  The bit about image encryption was just a guess.  I'm not a programmer, so I don't know what's happening.  I want to use the image encryption, but I have stopped because I'm not sure if it's contributing to the problem.

I tried a new combination of going at it, and it seems that when I install Tourweaver in its default location, create the tour from scratch, without encryption, in a folder that was not corrupted, it works well.  However, if I try to reuse my skins, it creates the problem all over again.

There's got to be some sort of a pattern going on here.  I'm not much of a troubleshooter, so it's been difficult for me to create good "tests".  I'm going to try contacting Easypano support again.  For some reason, my emails bounced back.

If anyone, including Easypano support staff sees my messages, please help me.  I'm hobbling along with a semi-workable solution for the time-being, but it really isn't ideal.  If anyone has some suggestions about how I should solve this, like installing it on a clean system, with other suggestions about what to avoid, that would be wonderful.  I have another system that I may be able to test this on, but I need help.

Thank you again disjo.  I really appreciate your advice.

In tourweaver, the image encryption is just a digital encryption and hardware\platform indepentent. (Use a secret key to calculate the encryption with the original image binary data)

Does the corrupted folder has a strange character?
Or you can try to use tourweaver in another computer.
Make sure your harddisk has no damaged sector.

Nevermind... I feel like such an idiot.

Apparently, my hard drive is going bad.  This file/folder curruption has been going on for quite some time, and I couldn't figure out why my Tourweaver files were going bad.  These were the only ones failing.  Maybe because I use them so much.

Anyway, my hard drive has just started to make loud whining noises, so I'm almost 100% certain this is a hardware issue.  I'll keep tabs on it when I install and configure the new drive.  That will be the ultimate test, but for now I am VERY happy that this doesn't appear to be a Tourweaver issue!!!!

Whew!!... now i can breathe easier.  Time to sleep.  4am over here...

I thought u might be suffering cpu overload, cache issues. Working on PS seems to slow me down after a while. I'm not much of a techi... but think it has to do with PS cahche hitting limt with the extensive photowork I'm doing (btw, this is  a great time for somebody to tell me how to clear it whilst working on PS). Having done a lot of PS work I tend to close all apülications and do a quick restart. This kinda cleans the decks. However I can do extensive PS work and TW and Dreamweaveer at the same time as well with little issue. Have crashed with 3-4 other aplications running as well. I've made it a point to empty my bin a lot more often which seems to increase TW speed. hhhmmm...

I've had recent issues with TW causing system crashes. TW is quite CPU intensive. Recent issues and abnormal behaiviour I've been experienceing lately.

• TW crashes system when wanting to preview a tour. Very seldom, but it has occured especially when PS is open and I've been working on images. (Though I've upped my RAM now to 768 MB to help counteract PS cache issues.)
• Duplicate elemnets in a saved tour folder. Sometimes I'll publish a tour and find that all of the skin content has been duplicated in the saved folder. I thought... oh welll I'll just delete them.... must have been a one off weird behaiviour issues... I delte them and tour works fine... until I reopen the tour in TW and find that the vtp is useing all the duplicate and now deleted elements for the tour skin... buttons... map... This happens quite a lot lately.
• I won't risk useing save whilst working on a tour. I'll save as... because at least I can see where TW will save to... sometimes it'll save to another vtp if I don't specify where to save to.
• Also have a nother save issue when wanting to publish tour. The save file path is often incorrect. If I then click save as, the indicated save file path can change at free will resulting in a file save overwriting another preexisting file.
• I do find that my data seems to get saved irradically... I'm experiencing slow TW behaviour at times and fast at other.

Maybe there is more to this issue.

Anyone else had smilar expeiences?

Hi phoenixrising,

When you encounter such problems, maybe you can use this work around.

The vtp-files are plaintextfiles. You can open them in Notepad (or another editor) and change the paths manually.

I once deleted a map from my harddrive, because I thought TW was using another copy of this file. But it wasn't.
I opened the vtp and changed the path to that file, and my map was back!

Success,

disjo