Been using POV-Ray for some time now, but just got
into the newsgroups, and cannot see a better solution
to a problem I have been having, so I offer my own
workaround for the mysterious "error in Help
file - contact your vendor" situation.

If you don't know what I am talking about you can
happily ignore the rest of this post.

I am running the latest POV-Ray for Windows
Version 3.1g.msvc.win32 (Pentium II optimized).

I got tired of re-installing and finally discovered that the
GID file associated with the helpfile seems to somehow
get corrupted.

Remove the GID file and it wll be recreated the next time
you access the help file, but there is a twist - you have to
also reboot before you try to use Help again. Don't ask
me why. It's dark in there. Anyway I added some lines to my
autoexec.bat file to clean away that GID file every time I boot.

I seem to get the error much less often, and when I do get
it, I just reboot and autoexec.bat cleans up. Put the following
lines in your autoexec.bat file without the leading quote used
here. Of course, you should also edit the path to reflect your
own installion directory.

"IF NOT EXIST F:\POVRAY\HELP\POVRAY31.GID GOTO AFTERPOV
"ATTRIB -H F:\POVRAY\HELP\POVRAY31.GID
"DEL F:\POVRAY\HELP\POVRAY31.GID
":AFTERPOV

Note the leading colon on that last line. It marks a GOTO destination.
and should be the first character on that line.

In case you can't guess, the "IF NOT EXIST" test avoids the error
message that would happen if you try to remove the file when it isn't
there (the file is only recreated when the help file is accessed), and
the "ATTRIB" line makes the GID file "unhidden" so the "DEL"
command can find it.

Pretty simple, and it works, but I still have to reboot when I get the
annoying "error in help file" message. It's a pain, but not so bad
as re-installing POV-Ray.

If a more permanent solution has been found and I have just not read
enough newsgroup material, please enlighten me.

Thanks,
Rstudio (aka Probity, aka Rob Rippengale)

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