Design & Build Your Deck

TROUBLE-SHOOTING GUIDE

Overview

We hope you have a great experience with Design & Build Your Deck. As you 
use the program, however, questions may arise. Please consult this document if 
you have questions about any these subjects:

o Installation
o Launching the program
o Virus warnings
o Video drivers
o Printing
o Multi-level decks


Installation

If you have trouble installing Design & Build Your Deck, we encourage you to 
check these points:

o Is your computer correctly configured to use the program? You'll need a 
386 processor or higher, with at least 2 MB of RAM.

o Are you running version 3.1 of Microsoft Windows?

o Are you running Windows in 386 Enhanced Mode? You can check this by 
choosing "About Program Manager" from the Program Manager's Help 
menu. If Windows is running in Standard Mode rather than 386 Enhanced 
Mode, you can use the command WIN/3 (rather than WIN) to start your 
Windows session.

If you start Windows manually after you turn on your computer: Remember 
to use the command WIN/3 to start Windows before installing or running 
Design & Build Your Deck.

If Windows starts automatically when you turn on your computer: You might 
exit Windows and restart it manually using the WIN/3 command. 
Alternatively, you can modify your AUTOEXEC.BAT file to use WIN/3.

After issuing the WIN/3 command, you can verify that Windows is running in 
386 Enhanced Mode by again choosing About Program Manager from the 
Program Manager's Help menu. Windows modes are discussed in greater 
detail in your Microsoft Windows User's Manual.


Launching the Program

If you've successfully installed Design & Build Your Deck without any warning 
messages, but still can't launch the application, you may have a conflict with 
another program on your computer. If this problem occurs, you'll see the 
following symptoms: When you double-click the Your Deck icon in the Program 
Manager, you'll briefly get an hour-glass cursor, but the program will not run.

The cause of this problem is quite simple: Another program has installed a file 
named VIEWER.DLL or VIEWER.EXE on your computer. Some versions of 
Winfax Pro, for example, may install such a file.

Fortunately, the solution is equally simple. Please follow these steps:

o Rename the file used by Design & Build Your Deck from VIEWER.EXE to 
MVIEWER.EXE. This file is located in the VIEWER sub-directory of your 
BTW directory. Typically, its path will be C:\BTW\VIEWER\VIEWER.EXE.

o Then update the Program Manager item for Your Deck to use this new file 
name. To do this: Select the Your Deck icon in the Program Manager. Issue 
the "Properties" command from the File menu. In the dialog box which 
appears, change the name VIEWER.EXE to MVIEWER.EXE in the 
Command Line entry. Then click OK.

Double-clicking the Your Deck icon should now run the program successfully.


Virus Warnings

If you use a virus detection system, it may report that certain system files were 
changed when you installed Design & Build Your Deck. This will be true, but 
should not be a cause for concern.

During installation, Design & Build Your Deck installs new versions of certain 
system files if your existing files are older than those shipped with this 
application. Noting this, some virus detection systems will report that these files 
have been modified. Your system should allow you to "accept" these changes so 
that you're not warned about them every time you perform a virus scan.


Video Drivers

In some situations, Design & Build Your Deck may encounter video display 
problems when using high resolution video drivers from various video card 
manufacturers. This problem can often be fixed by obtaining updated drivers 
from your video card manufacturer. Make sure the video drivers you are using 
were designed to be compatible with Microsoft Windows version 3.1.

Contact the manufacturer of your video card for updated Windows display 
drivers. Their phone number should be in the manuals that came with your video 
card or personal computer. Another option for obtaining updated drivers is the 
Microsoft Download service, an electronic bulletin board that can be accessed 
via modem at (206) 936-MSDL (6735).

Drivers provided on the Microsoft Supplemental Driver Library (MSDL) are 
compressed with the PKWare utilities, and are in the form of executable files 
(.EXE extension). It is best to download the file or files you need into an empty 
directory on your hard disk, or to a blank formatted floppy. To decompress these 
drivers after downloading them, either:

o From the Windows File Manager: Double-click on the file name (e.g., the 
appropriate file ending in .EXE) that you downloaded; or,

o From the DOS prompt: Change to the directory containing the downloaded 
file. Type the filename. Press ENTER.

An alternative to obtaining a new or updated display driver is to change your 
video mode to a standard mode such as 640 x 480 resolution, with as many 
colors as your video card can support at that resolution. To use Design & Build 
Your Deck while waiting for an updated video driver from your video card 
manufacturer, you can use the standard VGA driver that comes with Windows. 
This mode displays only 16 colors, however. As a result, some images may not 
look as rich as they would in 256 colors. Also, image display takes slightly longer 
in 16-color mode. For instructions on installing the standard VGA driver, please 
see Help within Windows Setup in the Main program group in the Program 
Manager.


Printing

Certain dot matrix printers have difficulty printing from Design & Build Your Deck. 
The output may be all black, or may have black bands running through it. We 
have seen this problem with Epson dot matrix printers and other dot matrix 
printers running in an Epson emulation mode.

To eliminate this problem:

o Issue the Print Setup command from the File menu. A dialog box will 
appear.

o In this dialog box, clear the "Color" check box. (Ordinarily, this box is 
checked during the default setup.)


Multi-Level Decks

We created this product as a tool to help homeowners design, visualize and 
construct their own single-tiered decks. Unfortunately, this means that the 
program does not include a command for multi-level decks.

Nonetheless, some of our customers have used this software to design several 
deck tiers independently -- as separate ".BTW" files. That done, they plan to 
integrate the various tiers into a single deck at their construction site. We at 
Books That Work certainly hope that this plan is successful. We should note, 
however, that our software was not designed to be used in this way.

Even so, we are very excited about multi-level decks. In fact, we're now hard at 
work on a "Professional" version of this software, which will make it possible to 
design multi-level decks on your computer. We hope to ship this new product in 
1994. Please send us your registration card, so that we can offer you a discount 
upgrade!

Until then, we wish you great success with this software.

Best regards,


The BTW Team
