Having Hal open a program

[hugsetc]

Hello.

I am having trouble with getting Hal to open a program.  When I tell him to e-mail someone, he opens Eudora, but the wrong copy of Eudora.  When I tell him to open "Bejeweled", he replies, "Can you spout buzzwords with the best of them?"  For open "Netscape", I receive "Error 53", then one of the Netscape help files opens.  Most programs receive the error.  I haven't found one yet that he opens.

(I am using Windows XP Home Edition and version 4.5 of Ultra Hal.)

[Medeksza]

Make sure that the email client you want Hal to use is registered as the default Windows email client. Hal uses a mailto: link to open your email client, so whatever program is setup to use mailto: will open. Error 53 means file not found, which is pretty strange. In Windows XP, are you logged on an account with administrator privleges?

Robert Medeksza

[hugsetc]

Hello, Robert.

I think I understand why Hal would be confused about my e-mail.  Eudora is the default mail program, but I have it installed in a few different directories to make my e-mail addresses more managable.  Since he uses a mailto: link, it will be easy to make it work the way I'd like it to.

Yes, this account has administrator privleges.  I have found one program so far that he can open.  That is Paint Shop Pro 7.  If I ask him to "open PSP" it works, which is very nice.  Do you have an idea of how I could teach him to open the others?

Heather

[hugsetc]

I was trying opening some programs again, to see if I could find any more that work.  I found a couple, and I noticed something about the ones that don't open. For the ones that he tries to open, and gets the error, the file it isn't finding is always: APIGID32.dll

[Medeksza]

Download this file http://ftp://ftp.desaware.com/SampleCode/Updates/apigid32.dll and copy it into Hal's folder (usually c:/program files/zabaware/ultra hal assistant 4)

This DLL is used by Hal to access the help files of programs, if Hal can find a standard Windows help file associated with a program. This would explain why some programs open for you and others don't.

Robert Medeksza

[hugsetc]

Well, it looks like that was a step in the right direction.  Now, when I ask him to open a program that used to give me the error message, the help file for the program opens.  The program still doesn't open, but I get something other than an error message.

(One other thing that I've noticed is that, when Hal does open a program for me, he says: I will now run "".  He doesn't put anything between the quotes.)

Edited by - hugsetc on 01/17/2003  05:55:16