Fersigo

Many thanks to everyone for taking the trouble to reply - much appreciated. As it turned out, Anthony's solution worked - I just opened the existing project file in PTE and re-saved it under a different filename and hey presto! I now have a shiny new avi file which works fine. I don't know if this made difference but I had originally started working on the slideshow in an earlier version of PTE (around 7.5-ish) and then finished it after upgrading to 8.0.9. As Peter hinted in his post, it may be that the paths to the files had somehow been lost during the upgrade even though they are stored on an internal hard drive and I haven't moved any folders around. Thanks again folks, Regards, John

Hi, I'm running PTE deluxe 8.0.9. I've already published a slideshow as mp4 and it worked fine. Now I want to publish the same slideshow as avi, but PTE can't seem to locate the image files. I get a black screen with a blue band across it - please see attached screenshot . In fact I get the same result whichever format I try to publish it in. A friend who is very experienced in PTE (Anthony Brewer) has tried publishing one of his slideshows as avi and has the same issue. Please can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Hi Yachtsman, I've now set the PTE virtual slide dimensions to align with the pixel size of my slideshow images and, whilst it hasn't affected the freezing issue, it has enabled PTE to use much more of my display, making it generally easier to work with. Great result - many thanks for the tip! Regards, John

Hi Yachtsman, sorry for the delayed reply. I've looked in "Project Options" -> "Screen" and the slide aspect ratio is set to 4:3 with a virtual slide size of 604 x 453. The images I've been using are either cropped to 1024 x 768 or, more recently, 1920 x 1080 (16:9). The freezing problem seems to be the same irrespective of image size. Do you think I should change these settings to see if it makes a difference? I've just left them at the default settings but maybe I should've been more careful.. Regards, John

I've now tried changing to 1280 x 800 and enabling the "real slide in mini player", and the problem seems to have gone away. When I return to 1920 x 1200 it comes back. Regards, John

Hello Igor, It's a Dell 2408WFP monitor running at 1920 x 1200. Sorry, in my last post I also should have said it's Win 7 x64. Regards, John

Hello Gentlemen, If it's of any help, I have similar issues to Pierre but first spotted a problem when PTE6 froze when trying to drag 'n drop slides in full-screen slide list view. De-selecting the "real slide in mini player" option does fix the problem for me. My system is: Motherboard: ASUS P5K Premium WiFi-AP Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.4GHz RAM: Crucial 4GB Kit (2x2GB) DDR2 667MHz/PC2-5300 Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 4350 OS: Windows 7 Home Premium John

Hi nobeefstu, a big step forward, many thanks. With the "Minimise video card usage" selected and the other two "real slide" options de-selected, the issue disappears. I can no longer play the show in the main window (the controls are greyed-out) but that is a price I will happily pay for now. There is no problem with playing executable files. I'm running Direct X 11 and, having gone through Start -> Run -> dxdiag, the diagnostic window that pops up seems to indicate everything is working normally. As far as I can see, my video card (GeForce 8400GS) is stated to be compatible with DirectX 10 so perhaps there's a conflict there. I have to say I'm right at the outer limits of my technical knowledge here! I may try un-installing the nVidia drivers and see if I can replace them with the generic ones that came with Windows 7 ... but as you will probably have guessed, this is my "try-everything-and-see-what-works" approach! Thanks again, though, you've been a big help.

Just a quick update - I've now upgraded to PTE 6.0 and have the same problems. Basically PTE does not work on my PC with Windows 7, but it worked fine with all the same hardware and Windows Vista. Oh, dear, now I'm in a fix. Rgds, John

Hi Carol, many thanks for these suggestions. A few months ago I moved from AVG to Norton Internet Security 2009 for exactly the reasons you describe, and have had no problem since. My video card is a GeForce 8400GS which seems to have had ample power for my applications and I got the latest nVidia drivers when I was installing Windows 7. The nVidia drivers might be "buggy" though - but that should affect other applications like DVD playback, which seems fine. I'm beginning to have stabbing pains in my wallet - maybe I'll have to upgrade to PTE6! Many thanks again, Carol. Rgds, John

Hi John, I just meant the PC was running better. I had PTE running fine under Vista x64 though, and didn't expect any issues when I moved to win 7. Rgds, John

Hi Folks, I've upgraded to 64-bit Windows 7 and, although nearly all my software is running fine, PTE 5.5 seems unhappy. It's kind of "sticky" - when running a preview for example, the time counter stops at the beginning of each slide transition and then jumps to the correct time at the end of the transition. There are also big delays when moving from the "slide sorter" view back to normal view - it seems to hang for 30 seconds or so, then starts again. Otherwise the PC seems fine - better than with Vista anyway! Does anyone know if there is a fix out there, or is v5.5 just not compatible with Win 7? Many thanks, John

This is excellent, thank you.

Hey guys, providing your version of Windows is up to date with appropriate security settings and you have competent antivirus software, I'm not sure that you can acquire spyware or other malicious software just by viewing a webpage. In my experience, a user needs to take positive action, such as deliberately installing downloaded software, to infect their PC - and you'd be amazed at how often people will do just that. If you want to take sensible precautions there is a wealth of information available from Microsoft - here is a link to a page giving basic steps to protect your PC: http://www.microsoft.com/protect/computer/default.mspx, and one specifically about spyware protection: http://www.microsoft.com/protect/computer/...re/prevent.mspx Hope this helps!

Mmm. Maybe I'm too rash - I clicked on the link and got taken to a soft porn website! But otherwise no malicious effects.