Lin Evans

I have seen this same problem with Windows 2000, in fact one of my best friends has two computers with Windows 2000 each with different processors, different memory and different video cards and my executable slideshows will not run on either of them so I think something in the setup of Windows 2000 is possibly causing the problem. The symptoms are identical, the executables simply will not run. I gave up trying to figure it out but maybe if we figure out why it won't work on yours we can avoid this issue in the future on "some" other Windows 2000 systems.... It works fine on most... Best regards, Lin

Yes, I'm quite aware of that and also aware that it's "possible" to have version 5 slideshows run with limited video strength, but "everyone" won't "use basic rules" because they don't have to because the "majority" of those viewing the slideshows have environments which don't require this. Computers are commodity items which get replaced with newer and faster versions on a fairly regular basis. Why then doesn't Microsoft and Apple design their operating systems so that they will work with the older systems now running Windows 95? Because that's the way technology advances. The power is available to do things which can't be done with older technology and whether we "like" it or not and whether is makes "sense" to us or not it will happen. We can either accept it and get on board or suffer the consequences, but my friend we will not change the inevitable. Some day you too will have a newer and faster computer which will have no problems running "any" slideshow whether P2E or other program which uses the power of a modern graphical environment. It's "cheaper" to buy an upgraded graphics card than to buy a whole new system and there are some great prices now available on very good older equipment which has the power to greatly improve the performance of your present system and stall the inevitable purchase of a new one for some time. Best regards, Lin

Hi Patrick, Does your computer have an AGP slot? If so, there are several places on the web where you can order a 128 meg ATI Radeon 9800 Pro card for $87 U.S. Dollars. My old 9800 Pro Card finally died on me after a number of years of very hard use and I just replaced it (the original price on these were around $500 U.S.D.). These graphic cards will play the most difficult and high RAM slideshows a smooth as silk. I know that it's possible with attention to file size, etc., to get perfectly smooth transitions and animations with your present graphics card, but the future will bring only more difficulty when other companies also go to hardware rendering, so perhaps a new graphics card will be useful? Best regards, Lin

In the release version 4.48 you can set up a manual show and with the navigation bar you can go to first slide, next slide or previous slide. By going to first slide then previous slide you can go to the last slide, but there is no provision for jumping to a "particular" slide while running a presentation. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jason, Thanks, that works well! Best regards, Lin

Hi Sherrie, The problem with trying to upload and download executable code is that some ISP's either don't permit executable code to reside directly on their servers or they tend to treat it as a possible virus and it gets corrupted. By using a zip program to zip up the executable inside a zip compressed shell, the integrity is preserved and corruption is unlikely. There are a number of programs which can zip your executables. Some are free, one may actually have come with your computer, but that unlikely. Most Windows operating systems allow computers to "unzip" automatically. If you don't already have a zip program, I would suggest PKZip (the original) which is inexpensive and well worth the money. You definitely need a way to zip files not only for storing and transferring your executables but for a variety of other reasons. Best regards, Lin

Hopefully we will soon have a way other than the search engine to categorize previously covered issues, but right now we don't. This will become necessary as the number of posts continue to increase. No problem with asking any question - that's the best way to learn. Best regards, Lin

Hi Laura Anne, Since PicturesToExe isn't a sound editor, you can use any available sound editor to prepare any music the way you wish it to sound. You can play essentially any number of mp3's back to back in PicturesToExe by simply adding them to the music list. You can play them in random or sequential order and the majority of music has normally a short period of fade on the end by nature, but if you want something special you can use the freeware Audacity sound editor to easily modify, add periods of silence, etc. Best regards, Lin

Hi John, There's almost too much to even contemplate, but Tom Bearden's site is a good place to start: http://www.cheniere.org/ From the considerable continuing university research (under the radar, of course) on cold fusion to numerous working inventions using variants of zero point energy extraction, breaking water molecules into their hydrogen/oxygen atoms without electrolysis, etc., to fuel autos and trucks via water, the list is exhaustive but mostly doomed to ever reach production until fossil fuel reserves are depleted. I've had the pleasure of seeing a few of these with my own eyes and can tell you that there's a tremendous amount of R&D which has been happening for many years but suppressed for commercial purposes. Best regards, Lin

Too cool! That's unfortunately the nature of technology. We can't actually produce and market the inventions as fast as they are invented because the R&D curve is miles ahead of production capabilities. Many years ago in the very late 60's when I was working as a PBX/Microwave repairman for AT&T in the Grand Station in Los Angeles, CA, we had step-by-step dialing. Two new systems (crossbar and computer) had been invented but the process of change-over was so complex that even though our potential technology was essentially 20 years ahead of what we had as an installed base, we couldn't make the change-over because of costs. Fiber-optic technology was actually "known" in the very late 40's but has only today become the de jure for new installations. We frequently skip one or two generations of major improvements for practical reasons. It's like the energy situation where we are bound because of financial pressures by oil companies to use fossil fuel when there are inventions which have been suppressed which would make free energy in abundance available to the world, but doing so would wreck many national economies. This new laser television may indeed replace LCD and Plasma before they really even gain common use - LOL. But what's really the issue in large countries is providing backward compatibility with systems such as NTSC which was developed in the late 40's and still is the predominate technology in the U.S. This is why smaller countries have "leap-frogged" the U.S. in their broadcast using quality, high resolution television signals. We can't make all the existing receivers people paid dearly for in the past 10 years instantly obsolete so they must be phased out as the high definition systems are introduced. Sad - but a fact of life. It reminds me of the old GE advertising slogan" Progress is our most important product"..... Thanks for the link! Best regards, Lin

Hi Cindy, There are a wide variety of tech sales statistics which all put the MacIntosh world market at slightly less than 3 percent. Here are a couple - one from 2004 and one from I believe from the year before. Sales for 2005 have hovered around 3% according to latest stats which I don't have web links to but which come from trade journals: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_...412/ai_n8598904 http://daringfireball.net/2003/07/market_share The exact numbers are inconsequential, but you can safely quote 3% and not be off by any significant amount. It's not a Mac or PC is better situation, it's more likely cost and sale price issue. Many years ago when the MacIntosh was first released I was an Apple rep. I tried very hard to convince Apple management which I had any influence with to make dual-processor motherboards which would support "both" operating systems, but like many other "better ideas" the Mac faced a huge deficit with the business reputation and marketing clout of IBM and the emergence of Compaq with their "Lunchbox" business computers and the huge cost differences between Motorola based and Intel based processors and associated circuitry. Finally, Apple has come to their senses and are now adapting the Intel processors and making it much easier to have dual operating systems. Had they done this in the early 80's I believe they would be neck and neck with the IBM based PC in market share, but hindsight is always 20/20. The important thing is that even though absolute numbers of Mac sales are incrementally increasing, the head start and vast worldwide business adaptation of the Intel, etc., based PC have made it the undisputed winner in the market place. We make DVD's and Flash shows for our Mac based clients and otherwise deliver in executable format for the majority. Since we are in the Photography and Fine Art venue, high resolution is more important than to us than for the much larger majority and especially for the home or hobby slideshow market where DVD has been very well accepted. There's nothing wrong with delivering in both formats but I sure wouldn't want to ONLY have low resolution DVD or AVI as the media of choice. Best regards, Lin Hi Jason, No need to feel that way, I see where the confusion could easily originate. Best regards, Lin

Uhh Jason, The response wasn't to or about you - it was referring to the two posts referenced by Cindy - I have no idea who made the quotes she references. Lin

Hi Fish, Go to the bottom left corner of your Windows Desktop and find the "Start" button (green). Left click your mouse on this then look for the "Run" choice near the bottom right of the resulting menu. Left click the mouse on "Run" then type "dxdiag" into the "Open" dialog box and then left click the mouse on O.K. Click on the various tabs to read the content. Best regards, Lin

Hi Cindy, Neither of the posts demonstrate a great deal of knowledge on the part of their posters as evidenced by the thousands who download P2E slideshows without a single known incident of virus. The second post shows the bias as well as inexperience of the poster. All program code for the PC is furnished in executable or command format - that's what they use. The VAST majority of PC users have adequate virus protection software which would quickly detect and delete any virus associated with an executable file. If you want the high quality, high resolution slideshows for your clients then that's what they need. MacIntosh has more of less three percent of the world market for PC's. The rest are Windows. If you have large percentage (unusual) of MacIntosh clients then furnish the shows in wmv, flash or DVD format for these few. the other 98 percent will be very happy with the superior executable format. Frankly, the majority of P2E users create slideshows for specific purposes, not for general web distribution. There will always be those few who wrongly "think" that a virus can't be distributed via a DVD, CD, etc. Believe me when I tell you that they absolutely can. I have received virus code from major software distributors on their distribution CD's so there are no guarantees. Visiting a web site which infects one's computer is the primary way virus and trojan codes are transmitted today. It's simply false reasoning to think that eliminating executable code is in any significant way helping to avoid infection. The "best" way to avoid infection is the regular and dedicated use of a very good anti-threat software such as NOD32. Best regards, Lin

Hi Michel, The files are now again downloadable. I tried it on my weakest video system: Intel 82915G/GV/910GL Express Chipset - 64 meg The pan was smooth on the pano with a very slight hesitation during the fade transition to the second image. All else was quite smooth. Gateway 915GAG with 1 GIG RAM Sound: Realtek 100 type WDM sound card Best regards, Lin Hi Fish, You can go to Start, Run then type in dxdiag and click O.K. This will tell you everything you need about the video card, system, etc. Lin

Hi Michel, Yes, that cured the problem and it works very well on my ATI Radion Pro 9800. I did notice that on subsequent attempts to access the file I can't get in because a message pops up which says "bye bye" then asks for a user name and password? Best regards, Lin

Just a clarification so as to avoid misunderstanding. I belive Michel when he says "His place is not on this forum" is actually referring to a "comment" which in English would be to say "its place is not on this forum". Sometimes translating from a romance language (French, Spanish, Portugese, Italian, etc.) where objects have a "gender" to an Old English based language where non animate objects carry the "it" rather than "he or she" the end result can be confused as if Michel were referring to a person. I'm certain this was not the intent. Best regards, Lin

Hi Michel, Something strange - I can't open the executable to run it. The zip file contains the executable and a text file, but the executable doesn't work for me. My Windows XP system trys to run it, then after a delay presents a list of programs such as Photoshop to choose from to "run" the file. It's possible, I suppose that it became corrupted during the zipped download. Best regards, Lin

If you are using the beta rather than the release version 4.48, music synchronization is not yet enabled. If you want to use the beta then you need to precisely measure how early the slides get done and add a few seconds to each slide or if the time is indeed exactly 20 seconds early add a half second to 40 of them. It's really not all that difficult to do the timing manually but if you want to use the mucic sync feature then use the release version 4.48. The present beta is not the last beta so no one can say with certainty exactly when the music sync feature will be enabled, but it will happen by the final release of 5.0. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mark, Go to your second slide, then to the Objects and Animations tab and click on Customize Slide. Next click on the Effect Tab and see if the Use Own Transition Effect blcck is checked. If it is, then check on the Effect Duration to be sure that it's not abbreviated. If this doesn't make the second slide fade as expected, use the File, Create Backup in Zip feature and post a link to the zip file created and I'll see what's happening. It "should" work perfectly normally. If you find the Use Own Transition Effect block not checked along with the Fade in the Customize Slide, then check it and do likewise for the other slides not working. No one else is having difficulty so I'm pretty certain that it's a settings issue, but you can't find the answer then post the zipped file and we will sort it out. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mark, Even though it is a beta, the fade works fine on my system so I was wondering if you could be more specific about how it's not working "properly?" If you could give some details perhaps we could help sort it out. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dom, That's really bad - people who do such things need to be horse whipped at the town square, then sent to a Siberian salt mine for "recovery". If there is anything any of us can do to help you get data or information back please let us know. It may be possible to get information from various caches. Did you have your own server? If not, usually an ISP will have a backup though it may not contain all the most current data. Let me know if I can help any way with links, etc. Best regards, Lin

Go Here for Instructions: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index....amp;#entry31206 Lin

Hi Laura Anne, Actually, they are not backwardly compatible, that is you can't play beta 6 pte's in 4.48 and earlier, etc, because there are many features not previously available, but older pte's can be read and played now. Read Al's information about timing differences on the calculations of slides plus transitions on the other post, don't use wma sound files and they should work fine for all presently enabled features. We use our old pte's in Beta 6 without problems. Best regards, Lin