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The .PTE file - usually project(n).pte - is not the show program. It is a 'template' or list of instructions as to how PTE puts the show together from the images and sound tracks. PTE files do not contain any images or sound tracks, and will not run as a program. When you create a slide show, the resultant program is an .exe file, just like any other executable file, and it will run on almost any Windows machine from a thumb drive or memory stick. If you have created a file from your show, you will have an .exe file somewhere which is your show program. BTW, previewing the show does not create an .exe file. The 'Create' button does make the .exe file.

I would like to second Carole's comments about your frequent crashes. Windows per sé does not crash as often as you are experiencing. It's likely you have a hardware problem lurking somewhere in your system. Recently I installed new ram in my Intel P4 machine running XP SP3, and began to experience random crashes and reboots. I downloaded and ran the top memory tester available, Memtest 86 ver.3.5, and ran it. This program rapidly found errors in the memory. I changed the memory sticks around, hoping to pinpoint the faulty stick, but the faults were random and numerous. These new and expensive sticks used chips named Elpida, which googling found to be suspect, so I returned the ram to the supplier with printouts of the faults, and got a refund, $NZ 258, not cheap. I then bought 4 GB of Hynix ram which under test with Memtest ran perfectly over a 12-hour period. I have not had a computer crash since, the machine is rock stable. Could I advise you to download Memtest 86 - http://www.memtest86.com/ - choose Free download and get the ISO version which you can burn straight to a CD, then boot your computer from the CD, and let the test run for at least 4 or 5 cycles. I wouldn't be at all surprised if you find faulty memory in your machine.

AAaaarrrggghh!!! Yes, er, no - more than a typo - a senior moment maybe, attention deficit probably. Yessir, Audacity is an AUDIO editor! See, I know that. I knew that when I wrote. Now BIG problem, I can't find out how to edit that post. The Edit button is nonexistent. Please Mr Moderator, I give you my full permission to edit my post and restore my credibility, if I ever had any, that is. Regards, (pulling forelock) Colin

Are you sure that both stereo channels are playing? If one channel is out it might not be very noticeable depending on your speaker setup, and if the mono track is on the silent channel you will not hear it. When using a monaural source I duplicate the audio into both channels, a sort of pseudo stereo, in my case to allow the stereo effect to position the sound to the centre of the 'sound stage' instead of coming from just one speaker. I don't think PTE is the problem in this case, and Peter's advice to assemble the complete sound track in an audio editor before inserting the sound into the slide show is right. PTE has very limited audio editing capability, and using an image editor like Audacity (a free program) or Goldwave (free for limited use)is by far the best solution. Colin

Yes, I too thought that poster was somewhat immoderate, and nearly replied rebuking him for his attitude and choice of language, but thought then that any rebuke would probably inflame the situation so I left it. However, what made me write this post was surprise at your statement that you manually edited the registry. When I unlock VideoBuilder, and this works for new installations of PTE as well, I copy and paste the complete registration string including the speech marks into Notepad, then save it as 'reg.reg'. A file with an extension of '.reg' when run as a program will insert the data straight into the registry from any folder in the computer. It does not have to be in the PTE folder, and I generally store the file with my other registration data for other programs I have in my machine in case I ever have to reinstall.

By Golly, Anne, you have piqued my interest! My wife sings in two choirs here, and concerts are presented five or six times a year, sometimes in the cathedral, other times in the local theater. Recently they performed Creation with combined choirs, not long after I had downloaded from Beechbrook a slideshow based on that work. It occurred to me then that a visual accompaniment to the choral work would be stunning, but there were a few problems inherent in doing this kind of thing, not the least of which was projecting a big enough image into a brightly lit area adjacent to the choir and orchestra. I would appreciate reading about how you handled this problem, and if you manage to put up a show of part of your production I would love to see it. Kind regards, Colin

I might be a bit late with this, but see if you can find a copy of Canon's EasyPrint software that comes bundled with Canon cameras, and is probably downloadable from Canon websites. It allows automatic printing of selected images onto various sizes of paper, with options for 1-up, 2-up, 4-up ... to about 48-up on A4 paper. I don't know if it will work with non-Canon printers, though.

Quote from PC Tools: "The primary reason that this method is required is due to the nature of PicturesToExe's operation, creating a new, unique executable file for each slideshow created." What nonsense. EVERY exe file is a unique file, else it would be a copy of another (unique) file! A fine example of the adage 'if you can't blind them with science, baffle them with bulls**t'. There are plenty of other firewalls that do not have this problem. Colin

No, you didn't waste your money, you just have to climb the learning curve. PTE is the best slideshow program at the price, and better than most at any price. First, PTE is actually two programs, the slideshow maker, and the CD\DVD burner. When you buy PTE you are buying both programs, but the activation key is only for the slideshow maker. You need to purchase the second key to unlock the CD/DVD burner; alternatively you can use the slideshow maker to produce a *.avi file which any CD/DVD program like Nero or Roxio, or freebees like Imgburn can write to a disk.

In a nutshell, get rid of PCTools. It's buggy, and has caused grief to other PTE users. Colin

Hello Mark, My wife and I have just viewed your show; all the more interesting to us because we know Hong Kong well, and we are New Zealanders to boot! We are familiar with HK, as we have a daughter who is an associate professor at the Hong Kong University (HKU) in Pokfulam on HK Island, and lives in Discovery Bay on Lantau Island, an ex-pat community. We have stayed there for as long as four months on occasion, and from there have been to Macau, a fascinating place rich with Portuguese history; and to Bali for a week. These trips have been the highlight of our overseas experience. We have not been into China as yet but that's also on the drawing board for the next trip. HK is a photographer's dream, and I have a thousand or so images from there that I am slowly sorting into some sort of order with a show in mind sometime ... Macau has a romantic history, the site of the famous St. Paul's cathedral façade and the Jesuit monastery fortifications (now a weather station). In 1622 (I think), a Dutch war fleet sailed into Macau harbour intent on capturing the colony for Holland. The Jesuits in their fort atop the central hill loaded their cannon, and fired at the Dutch. Their very first shot hit the Dutch magazine ship, which blew up with a huge explosion, and forced the Dutch to abandon their invasion attempt. Although there are tall buildings everywhere now in Macau, the path of that cannon shot has never been built out, and standing by the very cannon that did the job you have a clear view of the harbour. I really want to do a show about that, but I need more images which hopefully I might get next year when we again go to HK. But, I am digressing from the point somewhat. I like your photography, but I can't say I really like verticals mixed with horizontal images - but if you have only verticals they are better than nothing. When I shoot with a show in mind I always try to shoot landscape mode, but of course if you have the shots before you think of making a show then ... I think my major concern is your choice of music. Mixing European music with oriental images just clashes in my mind - but I imagine that finding Oriental music that isn't too way out for our ears might be somewhat of a mission, but that's part of the challenge of making a show I guess. My final nitpick is the rather rapid slide changes and the abrupt ending, no credits, no fade out, just a wipe across the screen. The show could be slowed down a bit, and it begs for a credit screen, IMHO. I am in two minds about comments on each image, to give viewers some idea abou the image, where, what, why etc. I tend to identify the scene with a comment so viewers have a better idea of what they're looking at, but opinions vary on this. For what it's worth, Best, Colin

The probability is that the firewall is the culprit here, not PTE. As the PCTools 'wall appears to be free, perhaps you could try another well-known and tested free firewall, ZoneAlarm, from http://www.zonealarm.com/security/en-gb/home.htm?lid=en-gb ZA has several versions, from a very good free version up to a sophisticated Extreme Security for about GBP 43. I use the Extreme Security version, and I am very satisfied with its performance. It does not interfere with any of my numerous applications, including all versions of PTE. I note you don't mention your operating system; ZA Free works with all OS's, but Extreme Security and lesser implementations do not work with OS's older than XP. If you have Vista and PCTools version 5, then there are issues with that combo. Recommendation is to use PCTools version 4 with Vista. Searching Google for "PCTools firewall problems" returns several hits which you might find interesting. Colin

You would need to tell PTE what your show dimensions are so the black slide would be the same size as your images. I keep a few slides made in Photoshop for this purpose; a black slide, a white slide, and a couple of textured grey slides that I drag into the show when required. Colin

Thanks, Ken, that chart will come in very handy. Colin

Well, that story is more than sad; it is sickening, and makes me want to have five minutes alone with the lowlife scumbag that did that to a defenceless dog. He'd need more than a vet afterwards. As for the show reverting to the first slide, that did not happen on my machine, and I left the last page on-screen for about five minutes or more. The computer is a Dell Inspiron laptop, Intel Centrino duo-core 1.8 GHz, 3 GB ram, nVidia GeForce 8600M-GT video card, and running Windows XP SP3. That seems to point to the way your computer is running the show, maybe a memory problem. I would try running a memory test program, memtest 86 or better, to prove or remove any possibility of a problem. Colin

The url is at the bottom of Goddi's post above:- The slideshow depicts a true story of an Animal Rescue organization dealing with an abused dog. Though the story is sad, I do feel that the average person should be able to view the story. I have put it on MediaFire for you to make your own choice (10Mb): http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=17e171a...04e75f6e8ebb871 Regards, Colin

Hi again, Brian, No, I didn't miss your point about running more than one firewall, I agree with that completely. It was just your implied claim that Microsoft firewalls must be better than 3rd party that I wished to disagree with. I note that other posters in this thread have said that a router is all one needs. Of course most people running broadband will have a router, but I am unsure whether a router, or a firewall within a router, will stop 'phone home' messages from resident malware, as surely the router will consider any message from the computer to be legit. Likewise, malware from an infected website or email won't be stopped by a router either. In fact, the router and its firewall will only stop unsolicited attempts to access your system. Can you add any insight to those points? Cheers, Colin.

Hi Brian, I would like to voice a minor problem with your remark above. Microsoft are not really known for being on the ball all the time, and for some time they weren't with their firewall, which would work with incoming, but did nothing whatsoever to block malware from calling home. They took quite a time to provide a two-way firewall, which programs like ZoneAlarm and others had been offering all along. This is the reason I run ZoneAlarm Extreme Security as my only anti-malware software. Microsoft Video ActiveX Exploit, Nine Ball, Gumblar.cn Exploit, Conficker Worm, and zero-day exploits in general are all caught by ZA, and there's then there's the 'vault' into which I can put all sensitive data like bank numbers, card numbers, full name, and anything you can think of that you don't want sent out - ZA monitors all outgoing data and will catch any data stream that includes any of the stuff in my vault. It also runs a virus/spyware checker in the background, which I have been thankful for more than once. When Microsoft comes up with comparable software I might consider it - but I'm not holding my breath. The ActiveX exploit has been known for some time but they haven't yet fixed that, to my knowledge. Regards, Colin

I have thought about these free-for-ever upgrades of PTE, and I am somewhat concerned that Igor might well have cashflow problems as a result.. There are few commercial programs that offer free upgrades in perpetuity; one that comes to mind is Qimage, but I can't think of another. Basically, apart from a one-time cost - modest at that - the program is freeware, and my conscience says that is not right. My personal opinion is that Igor should rescind that decision if his cashflow declines. I would gladly pay for continued upgrades rather than see PTE collapse for want of cash. I realise that Igor might feel bad about doing that, so an interim solution comes to mind. A lot of programs, like Irfanview for instance, have a donation policy where users can pay what they feel is right for the use of the program. Igor, can you set up a voluntary payment scheme, maybe through Visa, or Paypal, where we can make donations? I'm sure a lot of users of PTE would be happy to donate, particularly professional photographers and slide-show makers who are earning good money from the use of PTE. Regards to all, Colin

There's a program called MultiExtractor - http://www.multiextractor.com/ - that recovers the original full-size images from exe files like PTE. Not exactly cheap at $US 75, but if you need it ... Colin

I understand that HDTV is 1920 x 1080 pixels, and the D300 is 3872 x 2592 pixels, twice the linear size of the TV. I guess there's not much you can do except crop existing images, but when taking fresh images intended for a slide show, leave the in-camera image with plenty of space around the wanted area. You'll still have more pixels in the image than the TV can use. Colin

The first thing to do is to replay it a few times to ascertain if it is a 'hard' fault, i.e. repeatable. You should make a practice of disabling any background programs like anti-virus/malware, ZoneAlarm, etc so the maximum time is available fom the cpu. If a background program springs into life at the wrong moment it can well disrupt a show. The same goes if you're burning a CD or DVD as well. Duo-core cpu's are very commonly used in modern computers including laptops, and won't be your problem. My own Dell laptop has a 1.8GHz duo core and runs shows flawlessly. Having said that, PTE makes extensive use of the graphics processor, as do a lot of newer graphics-intensive programs, and a good gpu is required. Can you tell us what gpu your machine uses? Although the gpu doesn't handle the sound, it's possible that if it's a bit slow it could interrupt the sound channel. If you are using stereo sound from the line out port, try a usb sound adapter, they're very cheap and they produce better sound than the on-board sound chips, unless of course you have a desktop with a high-end sound card. Your queries about duo-core cpu's or sound being on one core and video on the other, or the problem being with the way the program was written are, frankly, nonsense. PTE runs flawlessly on any good computer. There can be issues with marginal computers driving a data projector, but since you don't mention a projector, I presume that's not your problem. Finally, what was the source of the program - hard drive, memory stick, CD? If in doubt, always run a PTE program from the HDD. Let's know how you get on, Colin

Hey Barry, How do you feel about a quickie trip to New Zealand - only a couple of hours away for you now! - to preach to a few clubs here? I have been doing a low-key approach to getting people in my club (Palmerston North, Manawatu) interested in PTE, without much success. Some will do a show in powerpoint, some in Windows moviemaker, and I know some have Proshow, but few results are actually shown. I keep plugging PTE, presenting shows from this forum and from Beechbrook which are generally well received, but I can't seem to motivate them to have a go. But, I will borrow your idea of putting a copy of PTE Demo on a CD and encouraging them to set up a simple 10-slide effort. I think that is a brilliant idea. I'll even burn 20 or so CDs for them to take away. Ok, I'm joking about you coming over - but only partly! It could come to fruition if the cards fall right. Our club has forty-ish members, Wanganui club is only about 80 kms away - and was the home club of the late Jack Sprosen, an AV afficionado, after whom a national AV competition is named - The Jack Sprosen Memorial Trophy for best AV. Waikanae is an hour down the road, Levin is closer at about 40 minutes away, and there are plenty of others at greater distances. Blimey, what have I done? Regards, Colin

Brian et al, I am surprised by Brian's inference that zipped PTE files can lose quality! Like Xaver, I understand that zip compression is lossless, that is, the recovered (unzipped) files are identical to the original. If this were not so, then the almost universal practice of delivering downloadable executable programs as zips would render those programs inoperable. Colin

Ed, Most, if not all LCD panels on laptops - and a lot of larger units - display images as a 6-bit image, that is only 64 steps between black and white, and banding is accentuated because of this. Intermediate colors are dithered to recreate the effect of an 8-bit image. CRTs are analog and can handle 8, 16, or even 32-bit images with no trouble, but LCDs cannot, except for the very high-priced professional graphics units. Colin