RUSLAN CDROM TROUBLESHOOTING
RUSLAN CDROMS WITH WINDOWS VISTA AND W7 64 BIT
RUSLAN CDROMS WITH WINDOWS VISTA 32 BIT
Vista font problems
Vista sound or video problems
RUSLAN CDROMS ALL VERSIONS
"Files not suitable for running MS-DOS and Windows applications"
Truncated cyrillic text
Sound works on loudspeakers but not on hotwords
RUSLAN CDROMS EARLY VERSIONS
Administrator rights issues
Ruslan 2 MP3 sound. "No sound channel available"
On startup you just get a starter screen and nothing more
You cannot see the bottom row of navigation buttons
You cannot see various sections of text or rows of buttons
You cannot see the vertical scroll bar in the dictionary and elsewhere
You use Windows XP and you have difficulties playing video clips
Cyrillic fonts for people with specialist fonts already installed
Networking the Ruslan CDRoms
RUSLAN CDROMS WITH APPLE MAC


RUSLAN CDROMS WITH WINDOWS VISTA AND W7 64 bit systems
Ruslan CDRoms will not work in a 64 bit environment. However several 64 bit users have reported that they are running Ruslan CDRoms successfully by emulating Windows XP. If you search for example on "Emulate XP Windows 10" you will find several suggestions for XP emulation. We would be grateful to receive more reports of success with this from people using the Ruslan CDRoms. Please email info@ruslan.co.uk

RUSLAN CDROMS WITH WINDOWS VISTA AND W7 32 bit systems
It has been reported that the Ruslan CDRoms work well with 32-bit Windows Vista and Windows 7, once the necessary fonts have been installed. With other Windows versions these fonts are installed automatically during the installation of the Ruslan CDRoms. For 32-bit Windows Vista you may have to install them yourself. There are four font files. Please save them to your PC one at a time, then right click on each font file in turn, and select "install".
Cyrillic Helvetica
Cyrillic Brush
Cyrillic Compressed
Baccus

On stand-alone Vista and XP machines running under 'User Control' the user needs Administrator permissions to install these fonts.

RUSLAN CDROMS WITH WINDOWS VISTA
You can hear the music when the Ruslan program starts, but you cannot hear any sound when you click on Russian words or on loudspeakers, although the words blush red and the loudspeakers appear to be working. Please check your sound settings. In case you have your sound settings at DVD or studio quality, please reset them to CD quality and try again

RUSLAN CDROMS ALL VERSIONS
Problems have been reported running Ruslan CDs on Windows 2000 and XP systems that have recently been updated. The problem is that files and registry settings that are associated with the 16-bit MSDOS subsystem needed to run Toolbook can sometimes be deleted or corrupted during the update.

In this case you are likely to have one of the following error messages:
"Config.nt The system file is not suitable for running MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows applications"
"Autoexec.nt The system file is not suitable for running MS-DOS ..."

Microsoft's help and support pages offer the following solutions:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;324767
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;889506

Truncated cyrillic text
In the event that you notice that some of the cyrillic text in the Ruslan programs, particularly in the exercises, is truncated, with the last letters of words missing, please check your computer's language settings. For some specialist purposes you may have set your computer to run non-unicode programs in languages other than English. Setting this back to English or to Russian is likely to fix the problem.

RUSLAN 1 VERSION 4.0
Users who have followed advice in the readme file in order to run this program without the CD may find that the sound works on loudspeakers but does not work when they click on hotwords. To rectify this please move the "Clips" directory that you have copied to your C:\Program Files\Ruslan14 folder to a new location: C:\RusClips\Ruslan14\Clips
You will notice that this new path has no folder names with more than eight letters.

Then alter the HDMediaPath line in the Ruslan14.ini file in your Windows folder to give the new path for the sound files as follows:
HDMediaPath=C:\RusClips\Ruslan14\Clips

RUSLAN CDROMS VERSION 4.0
This version has been distributed for full Windows XP compatibility. Other than the difficulty noted above, no problems specific to this version have been reported.

THE NOTES BELOW WERE WRITTEN FOR EARLIER VERSIONS. SOME NOTES MAY ALSO APPLY TO VERSION 4.0 DEPENDING ON YOUR CONFIGURATION:

Earlier versions of Ruslan CDRoms. Administrator rights
Difficulties have been experienced with Windows XP users who have their PCs set without full administrator rights, and this has caused networking problems in some schools. Please contact Ruslan Limited for an upgrade.

Ruslan 2 CDRom uses MP3 sound compression
Some users may require an additional sound driver. In this case you get a message when you first enter the program that no sound channel is available. In this case please double click on the file l3codecx.exe in the CLIPS directory of the CD to install the necessary driver. Or download it from:http://soundamerica.com
For the Ruslan 2 Demo CDRom the same sound driver is needed.

When you start the program from the Hard Disk version you just get a starter screen and nothing more except possible error messages that the sound files cannot be located Probably you have forgotten to insert the CD in the CDRom drive. Possibly the Ruslan.ini file that was created on installation has been accidentally erased from your Windows directory. In this case you need to uninstall and then reinstall the program. See the readme file on the CD.


You cannot see the bottom row of navigation buttons
This is likely to be because you have a screen setting 680x480 for your monitor and you also have your task bar enabled. Please change the screen setting or disable the task bar. See Windows Help.


You cannot see various sections of text or rows of buttons.
This is likely to be because you have set your PC to "use large fonts", a regime often used for artwork and design programs. Please reset to "use small fonts". See Windows Help.


In Ruslan 2 CDRom you cannot see the vertical scroll bar in the dictionary and in other pages that normally scroll
This is likely to be because you are using Windows XP and you have set your display "theme" to an unusual setting. Please reset the theme to "Windows Classic". See Windows Help.


You use Windows XP and you have difficulties playing the video clips in Ruslan 1 and 2 CDRoms
These video clips rely on the proper installation of MCI drivers, which may be compromised by the subsequent installation of some specialist video software for Windows XP.


Ruslan 1 and 2 CDRom Fonts
On initial startup the Ruslan CDRoms look for certain standard cyrillic fonts:
CyrillicHelvet (file name CYHELV__.TTF)
CyrillicBrush (file name _FF299EF.TTF)
CyrillicCompressed (file name _181171E.TTF)
If the fonts are found, the program loads as normal. If not, the fonts are loaded before the program starts. A problem can occur when non-standard fonts with the same names are already present on the client computer. In this case the new fonts will not load, and the non-standard fonts will be used by the Ruslan program. The result is gobbledegook where you would expect cyrillic, in the text of the dialogues and explanations, and/or on some of the buttons. This problem is very rare in the UK, but has been reported in Israel with Hebrew versions of Windows. The solution is to delete the non-standard fonts from your system before loading the Ruslan program.


Networking the Ruslan CDRoms
These CDRoms were not designed to be networked, but as far as we know, everyone who has tried to do so has been successful, except with some Windows 2000 networks, see below. All schools, colleges etc have my permission to test network applications for 1 month prior to licence purchase. Longer if necessary - in this case please ask for permission. To set up a network, start by installing the hard disk version onto the server, then copy the media clips to a subdirectory on the server and edit and copy the file ruslan??.ini so that the program, when launched by the student, will refer to it, and so that it points to the media clips. The success of this method will depend on the way the network administrator has set up the network.

Please note that the fact that the program looks for cyrillic fonts when it first runs, and if they are not there attempts to install them, means that the program will not run on a networked machine without certain administrator permissions unless these fonts have been pre-installed (see above). A quick way round this problem, if you suspect it: first run the program in administrator mode to install the fonts. After this the program should run in other modes.

Unusually, some systems may delete these fonts every time the program exits. In this case please contact John Langran at Ruslan Limited for a special version with the fonts removed. With this version you can install the fonts once and then have no further problems.

A more serious potential problem is that when the program runs it creates some temporary files in the Windows directory with random names that it then deletes when the program exits. Some Windows 2000 and possibly other networks will not allow this without administrator permissions, and we are currently looking for solutions to this possible problem (December 2003). If this is a problem for you please contact John Langran at Ruslan Limited.


Ruslan CDRoms with Apple Mac
The Ruslan CDRoms will not normally work with Apple Macs, but I have had reports that they work well on Apple Macs with "Windows Emulation". I would be grateful of any reports of success with this.

Report on Ruslan with Macbook
Russell Davies, December 2009

I have both Ruslan 1 and 2 CD roms working without any problems on my Macbook. I use VMware Fusion to run Windows XP virtually, and I run Ruslan in that environment. VMware Fusion doesn't come preinstalled on Apple computers but it's very easy to install and use. All new Apple computers come with an application called Bootcamp which allows you to partition your hard drive and install a copy of Windows (xp, vista, or 7). You can then boot your computer into Mac OSX or Windows. By using VMWare Fusion you don't have to reboot, you can just run Windows from within Mac OSX and even drag and drop files between the 2 operating systems. It's like having 2 computers on the one machine. Here's a link: http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/ You have to buy this application separately. The only big snag with all these solutions is you still have to get a copy of Windows and install it which can be costly, though students can buy discounted versions of Windows (see http://www.microsoft.com/uk/education/studentoffer/default.aspx) In the interest of completeness there is also an application called Parallels Desktop which offers similar functionality to VMWare Fusion (see http://www.parallels.com/uk/products/desktop/) and Sun Microsystems has VirtualBox (http://www.virtualbox.org/) which is free (I would have tried this first but I didn't know about it until after I'd bought Fusion). There is also Crossover from Codeweavers (http://www.codeweavers.com/) which allows you to run some windows programs without Windows. I've tried installing Ruslan but it doesn't work unfortunately. I hope this is helpful. Thanks for producing an interesting interactive course. Russell Davies.