Claro Knowledge Base and FAQs

Contents:

Installation and getting started

See also: Problems with ClaroRead starting

If you try to install from a download and get the message "... is not a valid Win32 application" then the download is incomplete. Download and retry - a full download installation can be over 250MB for ClaroRead PLUS. If this does not work then try running Disk Cleanup (Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools in Windows XP) on your main hard disk (usually C:) and making sure "Temporary Files" is checked.
As with all software Claro programs work best on updated computers with the latest Microsoft updates. Use Microsoft Windows Update to check your computer is up-to-date: you can select Windows Update from the Tools menu of Internet Explorer and the Microsoft website will guide you through any necessary updates.
Claro programs use Microsoft Office extensively: as well as Windows Update, use Microsoft Office Updates to update Office.
Try installing the latest Microsoft Visual Basic 6 Service Pack 6.
Anti-virus programs can cause problems with installation. If you cannot install a Claro program try disabling your anti-virus program and installing it again.
If installation is stopped for any reason before it completes you may find that your Claro software does not speak or does not work. Open Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs, and uninstall the Claro Product if it is there. Then try installing again.
If ClaroRead or WordRead starts but then immediately crashes you may not have installed SAPI 4. Run the SPCHAPI.EXE file that can be found on the CD or download SAPI4. More on fixing SAPI4
If Serif WordRead 2 displays the splash screen but then disappears and will not run, try changing the display settings of your machine. Close all windows. Right-click with the mouse on the desktop and select Properties to open the Display Properties window shown below. Change to the Settings tab. Then change Color Depth to "Highest (32 bit)" and click OK. Serif WordRead 2 should now start up. If you cannot change the colour settings for any reason, contact Support for a new Serif WordRead 2 installer.
If Claroread starts but crashes with an error message about LHCOM02w.dll then you have a conflict between ClaroRead and an old SAPI4 voice, possibly installed by Dragon Standard 9. See Fixing SAPI4.
If ClaroRead starts, works for a while, then ClaroRead crashes and will not start up again, you may have a conflict with a component installed by Omnipage, the RealSpeak Jane voice, or Dragon Naturally Speaking. The component is the file RSMGR10.DLL in Program Files\Common Files\L&H Shared\PCMM RealSpeak V1. You can either uninstall the conflicting program - typically RealSpeak Jane - or run this update patch to fix the component: RSMGR10 DLL Update.
If ClaroRead gets 75% of the way through the progress bar and stops, you may have Data Execution Prevention running. How to fix Data Execution Prevention.
If ClaroRead displays a message "Invalid Hard Disk!" while loading and will not go any further then you may have the Windows Script Host disabled or broken. Download and install the Windows Script Host from Microsoft.
If Dragon NaturallySpeaking is very slow to start up on Windows Vista - taking up to two minutes - then try disabling User Access Control. This has security implications. Disabling UAC on Vista.
Claro products have been reported to work under Citrix (the thin-client solution). However, ClaroRead will not work with Microsoft Word if Microsoft Word is not installed normally on the machine: if Microsoft Word is also delivered through Citrix then ClaroRead will not work with it.
If you receive the message A fatal error occurred during installation and/or the Windows Installer error code 1603 when trying to install Claro software then try Microsoft Knowledgebase Article 834484.
If ClaroRead gets about one-third of the way loaded and then hangs then check that the Windows Audio Service is running. If there is no working audio on the machine then ClaroRead cannot start.

Solving problems with Scanners and Scanning

Scan2Text and ClaroRead PLUS support scanning documents: any modern, standard, TWAIN-compliant scanner should work fine. List of scanners supported by Nuance. ClaroRead PLUS version 1 and 2.5 and Scan2Text version 1 use Omnipage 12, ClaroRead 2007 and Scan2Text 2 use Omnipage 15, ClaroRead 2008 and v5 use Omnipage 16.
If the scan button is greyed out then you are probably not in Microsoft Word: open Word and click on the new document. The ClaroRead toolbar will line up on the top right of the Word window and the button will become available.
Make sure your scanner is fully installed and working before trying to scan documents. You should then run the Claro Software scanner setup wizard from Word: start Word and select File and ClaroScan2Text Settings and press the Scanner Setup wizard. This wizard is different from the Microsoft one in Control Panel and must be run before scanning will work.
If you're having problems running the scanner set-up wizard with you USB scanner try unplugging it, counting to fifty, plugging it in again and re-running the wizard.
If the Scanner Wizard has run and completed the tests correctly but then in ClaroRead or Scan2Text you get an "Error: Check the connection to your scanner" error message, please read Setting up a Scanner taking particular notice of point 6 which says to choose "Restore Original Settings".
Don't press the Finish button at the end of the scanner wizard as soon as it appears: some scanners cause scanner wizard crashes if you do so (such as the Epson 3490.)
If another application installs the Omnipage OCR engine then this may conflict with Claro software. Kerzweil installs Omnipage and if both are installed then neither Scan2Text nor ClaroRead Plus will be able to scan from paper or PDF. Uninstall Kerzweil and reinstall Scan2Text or ClaroRead Plus. Omnipage advises not to install multiple instances of the Omnipage engine.
If you are having problems scanning check that ClaroRead can play back text in Word. If this does not work then the problem is with Word, not scanning: try the solutions below.
In Office XP you will be prompted to enable macros when you start Word. In Office 2003 the file menu shortcuts will produce an error message. In both cases you can reduce the Macro security level to Low in Microsoft Word: the File menu shortcuts will now work properly.
If you are trying to use Scan2Text version 1 as a limited user, and did not install the software yourself, you may find that the Word File menu entries do not work when you click them. Try downloading and running Scan2Text Fix: this should fix the menu entries.
If scanning was working but is not now, and running the Scanner Wizard has no effect, try deleting the scanner wizard configuration files:
1. Open Windows Explorer (My Computer)
2. Go to the C: drive.
3. Go to the Documents and Settings folder.
4. Go to the folder for your username: if you log in to Windows as "John Smith" then there should be a folder called "John Smith".
5. Go to the Application Data folder. If you cannot see it then you have to select "Show hidden files and folders" from the Folder Options window, View tab, in the Options menu.
6. Go to the Claro Software folder.
7. Go to the Scan2Text 2 folder (for Scan2Text) or ClaroRead 3 folder (for ClaroRead PLUS).
8. Delete the scanner.ini file there.
9. Re-run the scanner wizard and try scanning again.
If you are using Office 2007 and you receive a pop-up message when scanning titled "Convert File" then Word 2007 is set to prompt you before importing all file types.

You can turn this off with the following steps:
1. Start Microsoft Word.
2. Click the Word start button (top-left-hand corner)
3. Click the "Word Options" button to open the options dialog
4. Select the "Advanced" tab on the left of the options dialog.
5. Scroll down to the "General" section on the right.
6. Uncheck "Confirm file format conversion on open." Scanning should not now produce the pop-up message.
If the Scan2Text menu options are not showing in Word, try the following:

Open Microsoft Word, is there a Security warning along the top? If so:

Click the Options button

Select "Trust all documents from this publisher"

If you have no security warning but the Scan2Text tab doesn't appear either, it's likely that the scanning macro has been disabled. To fix this in Word 2007:

Click the Word button in the top left and select Word Options

Select Add-ins from the left menu. Is claro.dotm in the inactive list?

If so, select "Word Add-ins" and "Go"

Ensure claro.dotm is checked and click OK

claro.dotm should now appear in the active list, click ok, the Scan2Text tab should now be visible

To fix in Word 2003:

Select Templates and Add-ins from the Tools menu
Ensure claro.dot is checked

The Scan2Text file menu entries should now appear in the File menu

Solving problems with Microsoft Word

See also: Problems with Microsoft Word.

If you encounter any problems using ClaroRead with Microsoft Word, such as:

Text failing to read when clicking play (although it reads when selecting with mouse).
Scanned text not being placed into Word.
Font/Colour Changes not occuring.
Check not working.

Then it is possible that there is an issue with Word "blocking" ClaroRead from interacting with it.

To rectify, then try the following:

In Microsoft Word, check Macro Settings (Tools menu > Macros > Security in Word 2002), and make them medium or low. Claro software does not use Macros, but this helps many users.
Go into the Word Help Menu, select "About Microsoft Word", and click "Disabled Items". There should be no disabled items, but if there are, enable them.
Run a Repair on Word. Open Word, and run "Detect and Repair" under the Help menu.
Make sure you run ClaroRead before Word as this will improve its performance in Word. For example, echoing typed sentences will not work unless ClaroRead is started before Word.

If the above items do not fix the issue, then you will need to re-install Microsoft Word. The re-installation of Word should fix the issue. If this still hasn't solved the problem, then we suggest you run a System Restore to a date when you know the operating system was allowing Word and ClaroRead to work together.

If you have a problem with the Microsoft Office Clipboard appearing when you do not want it to, then click the Options button at the bottom of the Clipboard pane at the right of the Word document and makes sure "Show Office Clipboard when Ctrl+C Pressed Twice" is not checked. This works on Office 2003 and later: contact us if you have an earlier version of Word or Office.

Solving problems with Speech

See also: Problems with speech.

First check that sound is working: either start Windows Media Player and press Play or try opening a .wav file in the Media folder in your Windows folder.

It's always worth trying to run the Microsoft SAPI5 installer, SAPI5.MSI which will fix many problems. Download SAPI5.MSI. If you have Acapela voices that are appearing in ClaroRead but not speaking this should make them speak correctly.

If you can't get speech to work (none of the voices, RealSpeak or Windows XP Microsoft Sam or Windows Vista Anna, say anything) and you receive an error message when opening the Speech applet in the Control Panel (for example "The requested task cannot be carried out because the necessary speech engine could not be created. Please select a different engine and/or a different audio device.") then you can try Microsoft Fix 838659. Detailed step-by-step instructions.

If you select a voice in the Speech applet in Control Panel and get the message This voice cannot be played. Please try selecting another voice or selecting a different audio output device then the voice may have been uninstalled, even though it still appears in the Speech list, or the RealSpeak voices on your machine may have been broken by another voice installer. Try uninstalling and reinstalling the affected voices: you can find them on the Claro CD. More details on broken RealSpeak voices.

Another thing to check: open Control Panel and the Speech Applet. Hit the Audio Output button. Make sure the first option "Use preferred audio device" is selected:

Picture of dialogue box: there is a two-option selection, and the first is selected.

If you try to open the Speech Control Panel Applet and select the Text To Speech tab and get the message "An exception occurred while trying to run "C:\WINDOWS\system32\shell32.dll,Control_runDll "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Speech\sapi.dpl",Speech" (it has a title of "RUNDLL") then the current system voice is broken. This can happen when incompatible voice installers clash with each other. Because the current system voice is not valid you cannot open the Speech applet, so you cannot change the current system voice. You have three options:

Re-run the voice installer for the broken current system voice. This should let you open the Speech applet. Change the system voice to Microsoft Sam. Then uninstall the voices you do not need to use, then reinstall the voices you do need to use.
Download and run SAPI5 Voice Remover, select the non-functioning voice from the list, and delete it from the machine. This removes the voice from Window's list of available voices, and the Speech applet when next run notices it isn't there and switches to another voice. The broken voice is not installed - it is still on your hard disk - but it will not work anywhere.
(For the technical) You can change the default SAPI5 voice manually to Microsoft Sam by opening regedit, navigating to the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Speech\Voices and changing the value of DefaultTokenId to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Speech\Voices\Tokens\MSSam" (no quotation marks).

If one of the RealSpeak voices stops when it comes to some punctuation (e.g. a comma, semi-colon)_then try uninstalling and reinstalling the voice.

Some users running Windows Vista have reported that their RealSpeak voices will not work if User Access Control is disabled. Re-enable the security feature and try again.

You may find that the RealSpeak Russian Katerina voice speaks very slowly. Increase the voice speaking rate by selecting the Settings button and changing the slider to the maximum value (10). This will speak at a normal speed: higher rates are not possible with this voice.

You can make ClaroRead speak non-Western characters using a Western voice, for example reading Greek characters in chemistry using RealSpeak Daniel. You need to be an administrator, you may need your Windows installation CD, and only one non-Western language can be supported in addition to English - English and Cyrillic, or English and Greek are fine, but not Greek and Cyrillic.

Open Control Panel > Regional and Language Options.
Select the Advanced tab.
In the "Language for non-Unicode programs" section select the language for the characters you want to read, for example Russian.
Restart your machine.
Open ClaroRead and Word.
Select and copy one character to be spoken, e.g. "Я".
Open ClaroRead settings and click the Pronounce button.
Paste the character "Я" into the "Word to replace" box. This may take a couple of tries: if it does not work, copy and paste again.
Type the English pronunciation into the "New Pronunication", e.g."ya" for "Я".
Click the "Add\Replace" button and ensure the character and pronunciation appears in the list to the left.
Click OK and OK the settings dialog.

ClaroRead should now correctly pronuounce the character "Я" as "ya" when it encounters it. You will have to do this with every character you wish to have pronounced.

Solving problems with magnification

If you use a Claro (or Sensory Software) product with magnfication such as Lightning on Windows Vista, you should have a Windows Experience Index for Graphics of 3.0 or more to run the program under Aero. Any lower than this and you may experience crashes and hangs, since the display system is too low-powered to perform effectively. However, you may find that some particular settings run fine, so if you stick to those then you will be okay - your computer will not suffer any damage from running the magnification software, even if your graphics card cannot support all the program's features. Guide to Windows Experience.

There are other ways to increase magnification performance in Lightning:

Reduce the colour depth of your display from 32-bit or True Colour to 16-bit or High Colour. You can do this by right-clicking on the Desktop, selecting Properties from the pop-up menu, changing to the Settings tab, and changing "Colour Quality".
Reduce the screen resolution of your display, for example from 1280 by 1024 to 800 by 600. You can do this by right-clicking on the Desktop, selecting Properties from the pop-up menu, changing to the Settings tab, and moving the "Screen Resolution" slider towards "Lower."
Increase the magnification of the magnifier. This means less screen to magnify, so less work.
Turn off smoothing.
Turn on Aero in Windows Vista. (You can also try turning it off if you have been working with it on.)

You can make Lightning smooth text on the Desktop (for example, the text under shortcuts) by changing the background colour of the Desktop to white.

You may find it helpful to have your mouse pointer move to the position of active default button in a new window. You can turn this on by going to the Mouse Properties dialog in Control Panel, selecting the Pointer Options tab, and checking "Automatically move pointer to the default button in a dialog box." and clicking OK.

Our magnification programs, such as Lightning, cannot magnify any area of the screen controlled by the Microsoft DirectX system. This means that videos in Windows Media Player will not display and full-screen graphical games will not work. Turn off magnification to view this content.

USB and pendrive versions

If you run a Claro program from a memory stick you will find that the settings for the last user are retained on the stick. You may find it more convenient to have the settings for the user saved in their normal user settings location, so if (for example) you are sharing one stick between different users each will have different settings stored on the network or machine. Just delete the file called "installed.ini" from the USB stick and settings will now be stored on the machine or network, not on the stick.

Saving speech to audio files

If the quality of audio files produced by ClaroRead or Save to Video is poor, then try installing this update packs from Microsoft:

Windows Media Codecs version 8 (wmpcdcs8.exe) as detailed in Microsoft Support Article KB324290.

If you want to save as Windows Media Video files (WMV) files on Windows Vista then you have to install this update pack, again from Microsoft:

Windows Media Encoder 9 Package (WMEncoder.exe)

MathML

MathML is a way to put complex mathematics and equations in web pages and other documents. We recommend getting the free MathPlayer plugin, which means that ClaroRead will then speak the maths when you point the mouse at it. You can also right-click on MathML equations and see many more reading options, including reading the equation aloud with highlighting.

MathPlayer plugin

Problems with ScreenRuler

Vista Edition: Please be aware that the minimum graphics specification for ScreenRuler Vista is a Windows Index Rating for graphics of 3 or more. If you have less than this, the ruler bar will only show a shapshot of your screen.

If you have Windows 7 64-bit, check the 64-bit section of this page.

Problems with ClaroCapture

ClaroCapture needs the Alt-tab menu to work normally. On some Toshiba laptops, there is a piece of camera software running in the background which does not allow this to happen, so you may have problems capturing text. To fix this, you need to stop the software from starting up, to do this:

On Vista, click the Start button, type msconfig and press the return key. On XP, click the Start button, click on Run, type msconfig and press the return key.
Select the "Startup" tab.
Look for "chicony traybar" in the list and uncheck the box next to it.
Click the OK button, it will recommend to restart your computer.
After a restart, ClaroCapture should now work normally.

Problems with Mac products

Please view the Mac support page.

Problems with 64 bit Windows

Problems with ClaroRead on 64-bit Windows

The great majority of ClaroRead functions work just fine. The following will not work on ClaroRead 5.0 or 5.1 on 64-bit Windows machines:

Speak-with-control-and-hover in 64-bit applications. So if you are running 32-bit Internet Explorer and 32-bit Office then this works just fine. If you are running the 64-bit versions then you will hear nothing.
Speaking calculator. You can start the 32-bit Calculator in C:\Windows\SysWOW64\calc.exe if you need it. (Fixed in 5.5)
Click-and-play does not work on 64-bit Internet Explorer. You must select with the mouse instead (Fixed in 5.5)

Problems with voices on 64 bit Windows

All our voices are 32 bit packages and will work with the Claro software with which they are sold on both 32 and 64 bit systems however on a 64 bit system the voice may not work in third party programs and will not be shown in the Windows Speech Control Panel or in the Narrator voice selection panel.

In order to display the 32 bit Windows Speech Control Panel on a 64 bit version of Windows...

Windows Vista & 7

Click Start
Enter C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Speech\SpeechUX\sapi.cpl into the search box and press Enter (assuming Windows is installed on your C drive)

Windows XP

Click Start
Click Run
Enter C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Speech\SpeechUX\sapi.cpl and click OK (assuming Windows is installed on your C drive)

Lightning and Windows 7 64-bit

By default, Lightning is set to switch off the Aero theme when it starts up. In Windows 7 64-bit, Lightning cannot do this and closes. To fix, switch off Aero manually. To do this:

Right click on the desktop
Select "Personalize"
Select the "Windows 7 Basic" theme
Lightning should now work OK

ScreenRuler and Windows 7 64-bit

On 64-bit Windows 7 computers, ScreenRuler loads as a black bar, rather than a transparent ruler. To fix this, you need to switch off the Aero colour scheme on Windows. To do this:

Right click on the desktop
Select "Personalize"
Select the "Windows 7 Basic" theme
ScreenRuler should now work OK, you might find it's a little jumpy - we are working on this!

Thunder Screenreader

You should contact Screenreader.net for Thunder support. But since you're here: if you find that Thunder will not speak then you must check SAPI5 and SAPI4 voices on your machine and check every one is working. For SAPI4: Fixing problems with ClaroRead starting up. For SAPI5: Fixing problems with speech.

Stop program starting up with the computer on Windows Vista and 7

Accessibility programs such Lightning get put into the Ease of Access Center in Windows Vista and above.

If you would like to stop them starting up with the system, do the following:

Click on the Start button
Select "Control Panel"
In the search box in the top right, type "Ease of Access Center".
Select the "Ease of Access Center" link which should have appeared.
Select the "Make the computer easier to see" link.
Scroll down to the bottom of the window - you should see a list of programs including the Claro product you have installed.
Uncheck the check box next to the program that you don't want to start up with the system.
Click the OK button - the program will now no longer start up with the system.