NaturallySpeaking Troubleshooting

While Dragon NaturallySpeaking will install and work on a system with 512MB of RAM and a processor of 1GHz, for satisfactory results Voice Perfect strongly recommends at least 1GB of RAM and a processor of 2GHz.

Please ensure that you are using an approved headset/microphone. Voice Perfect only stocks headsets that have been approved by Nuance themselves, so our entire range is guaranteed to work with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

Although you may have an approved headset, your computer’s soundcard may not be of sufficient quality to allow consistent results with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. While an approved soundcard will solve this problem, an easier and faster way is by using a USB adaptor. A USB adaptor contains a high-quality soundcard, and ports for your headset or microphone. By having the soundcard external to the computer case, you minimise the risk of interference from other components within your computer. Voice Perfect's recommended USB adaptor is the Buddy 5G USB Adaptor (RRP $99 inc. GST).

Microsoft Office XP/2003’s ‘Alternate User Input’ installs a background process called CTFMON.exe which can interfere with NaturallySpeaking.
It is recommended that this process be disabled. Please contact Voice Perfect's technical support desk for easy to follow instructions on how to disable the Alternate User Input.

One of the main ways Dragon NaturallySpeaking learns your speech patterns is through your corrections of its errors. The most efficient way to correct errors is to do so in Dragon NaturallySpeaking as you are dictating. However if you prefer to dictate into your programs and make your corrections at a later time, Dragon NaturallySpeaking will still update your user profile.

While Dragon NaturallySpeaking is designed to work with most Windows based applications, there are some programs that are incompatible with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. However you can use Dragon NaturallySpeaking’s Dictation Box to enter your spoken text, and transfer it into any application you can type into.

One of the most effective ways to improve Dragon NaturallySpeaking’s level of accuracy is to update your Custom Vocabulary with your commonly used words and phrases. Many users create specialised vocabularies to suit their business or interests.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking is designed to work most effectively with natural speech patterns. If you are over-enunciating your words, slowing down your speech, using excessive volume or drawing out your words will result in less accurate dictation.

While Dragon NaturallySpeaking does an excellent job of offering a wide range of alternate words in the Correction Menu, it is not 100% foolproof. If you can’t find the word you said in the Correction Menu, either spell the word one character at a time or type directly into the top text field.

If you have purchased a new microphone to improve your results with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, but aren’t getting satisfactory results, remember to re-run the Audio Setup to calibrate your new microphone with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

When you are issuing commands to Dragon NaturallySpeaking, if they are being interpreted as general text, make sure you leave a quarter of a second pause before and after issuing a command so Dragon NaturallySpeaking can identify it as such.

Make sure you don’t leave a pause when saying words that can be used as commands. If this fails, press the shift button as you speak; this prevents NaturallySpeaking from recognising words as commands.

The microphone can only be activated by voice when it’s in sleep mode. If you have told the microphone to shut down by voice, you will need to turn it on using the icon on the DragonBar or by using a previously defined microphone hotkey on your keyboard.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking will display the following message “Cannot generate a pronunciation for the word [custom word]” if you try to add a custom word immediately after you’ve deleted the same custom word. To add the word, close and reopen Dragon NaturallySpeaking, and you’ll now be able to add it.

While user profiles from earlier versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking can be used in later versions, using user profiles from later versions in earlier versions is not recommended. If you are encountering different versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking in a Roaming User environment, it is recommended that you create a separate user profile for each version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

You may find that certain commands, for example “Go to Bottom” or “Move to Top”, are being recognised, but not being executed. It has been determined that this issue occurs when Microsoft Windows Script 5.7 isn’t installed on Windows XP or Windows 2000 systems.

To download Microsoft Windows Script 5.7:
1. Go to http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/
2. Type "Microsoft Windows Script 5.7" in the search field and click the "Go" button.
3. Click on the title of the Windows Script 5.7 download that corresponds to the correct Operating System.
4. Click the "Continue" button to start the download process of the Microsoft Windows Script 5.7 file.
5. Install the Microsoft Windows Script 5.7 after the download has completed.

The following message appears when you exceed the reserved amount of megabytes for playback of audio files:
“NaturallySpeaking has reached the maximum amount of speech data that can be saved. You may continue dictating but some speech playback may become unavailable.”
If you continue to dictate once this error appears, the earliest dictation is removed and you cannot play it back or save it with the text. By default Dragon NaturallySpeaking maintains up to 40 MB of recorded speech on the disk.

You can increase the amount of disk space reserved for storing dictation by following these steps:

1. From the “DragonBar”, click the “Tools > Options” menu.
2. Select the “Data” tab.
3. Increase the allotted MB for “Disk space reserved for playback”.

If, when launching Dragon NaturallySpeaking on a Windows Vista system, the following error message appears: “Failure to launch UI automation server”, it is because the UAC (User Account Control) is in an unstable state. To resolve this problem, please follow these steps:

1. Close all applications.
2. Click "Start > Control Panel".
3. Click "Classic View".
4. Click "User Accounts".
5. Click "Turn User Account Control on or off".
6. Click the "Use User Account Control (UAC) to help protect your computer" checkbox (to turn this option to the opposite of what it is currently set to).
7. Click "OK" to apply the changes.
8. Restart the system.
Note: If the opposite setting of User Account Control is desired, follow the above steps again to reset this option to the desired setting.

When opening a user profile, you may see one of the following errors:
“Too many changes to the voice profile for the user have been made since the last time that Acoustic Optimizer has been run. Please run Acoustic Optimizer…”
Or
“There’s no new data for optimization because user’s speech files have reached the data limit.”
Or
“Speech Engine returned the following error: invalid topic… vocdelta.dat is over the size limit.”
Running the Acoustic Optimizer does not stop this dialog from appearing.

To resolve any of these error messages please use the following steps:
1. Close Dragon NaturallySpeaking.
2. Launch Windows Explorer.
3. Browse to the network location where the roaming users are stored.
4. Find the user profile name under which the error occurred.
5. Open the “Current\General_” folder.
6. Delete the file “vocdelta.dat”.
7. Repeat this in the “Backup\General_” folder.
8. Launch Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.
9. Open the roaming user profile.
The error message should no longer appear.
Note: The vocdelta.dat is an index of corrections and may have become corrupted. This file will be recreated by Dragon the next time it is launched.

In Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9, you can save your recognition history as a file. Please use the following steps:
1. From the Dragon toolbar select “Words”.
2. Select “View Recognition History…”.
3. Within the Recognition History window select “Save…”.
4. Choose a file name and location to save to.
Note: The Recognition History file will be saved as a .TXT file.

This can occur if the wrong information was used to activate the product. For example the serial number could have been entered incorrectly. This can also occur if the product was not activated because of no internet connection, or because something is blocking it from connecting to the internet (for example a firewall application).

If there is an internet connection on the computer, please use the following steps:
1. Launch Dragon NaturallySpeaking.
2. When the activation prompt appears choose "Activate Now" and then "Activate Manually".
3. Once in the manual activation dialog take note of the serial number. Very carefully compare this serial number to the serial number that appears on the back of the product’s CD sleeve or the e-mail confirmation received when the product was downloaded. Make sure that the serial number includes all zeros and no O’s. Also confirm that the characters are not reversed and that it matches exactly what it says on the back of the CD sleeve.
4. Once it is confirmed that the serial number is entered correctly, click the link at the top of the Manual Activation page to complete the activation. If there is no internet connection, use the information in the manual activation page to go to another computer with internet access to complete activation.
Note: A web connection is a system requirement to use these software packages.

When upgrading operating systems (Example: Windows 98 to Windows XP), Dragon NaturallySpeaking will prompt to activate upon first use after upgrading. This will decrease the number of activations by one. To make sure the activation count remains the same, Nuance recommends un-installing the software before upgrading the operating system.

In certain circumstances, you may see a message box appear when launching Dragon NaturallySpeaking. The message will be one of the following:
• "The feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is not available."
• "The feature you are trying to use is on a CD-ROM or other removable disk that is not available."
• "Please wait while Windows configures…"
This issue may appear if the initial installation of the product did not complete successfully.

Other causes may include, a deleted or altered registry setting or removal of a shared system resource, such as a *.DLL or redistributable. When a user receives this message, Nuance recommends inserting the installation media or locating the extracted download and navigating to the appropriate .MSI.
For example: Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.msi. This will initiate a repair of Dragon NaturallySpeaking and the missing or altered component that is generating the message will be resolved. To prevent these messages from appearing in the future, copy the installation CD to a folder on the hard
drive and install from that location. This will allow the installer to locate the appropriate *.MSI file without prompting the user to specify the location or insert the CD.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking has been tested on Windows XP Home and Professional. It has not been tested with the Windows XP Media Center Edition operating system. Even though Dragon NaturallySpeaking may function and install properly, Nuance does not officially support using the Windows XP Media Center Edition operating system.

When used in Vista, Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.5 can be repaired to resolve any installation errors. However when the User Account Control is turned on in Windows Vista, it may determine that you aren’t operating with enough privileges to operate the repair function. There are two recommended solutions:
Solution #1:
Instead of using the repair function, Nuance recommends uninstalling and then re-installing the product. The original serial number will be required.
Solution #2:
The repair function will work properly when User Access Control (UAC) is off. To turn off User Account Control (UAC), please use the following steps:
1. Close all applications.
2. Click "Start > Control Panel".
3. Click "Classic View".
4. Click "User Accounts".
5. Click "Turn User Account Control on or off".
6. Clear the "Use User Account Control (UAC) to help protect your computer" checkbox.
7. Click "OK" to apply the changes.
8. Restart the system.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking has registration reminder functions. However, if your web browser has high security settings enabled, the Nuance webpage may not be able to disable the registration reminder.
There are two recommended solutions for this problem:
Solution #1:
Select “Do not remind me again” from the registration dialog box. The registration prompt should no longer appear.
Solution #2:
Follow these steps to remove the registration reminder from a Windows XP system’s startup settings:
1. Click on “Start”.
2. Click on “Run”.
3. Type the word “MSCONFIG” without the quotes.
4. Click “OK”.
5. Click on the “Startup” Tab.
6. Uncheck the box next to “ereg”.
7. Click on “Apply”.
8. Click “OK”.
9. Reboot the computer.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.5 cannot be installed on 64-bit Windows XP/Vista operating systems and will prompt the user with an error message stating the operating system is not supported.

Note: Dragon NaturallySpeaking can be installed on systems using 64-bit processors where a 32-bit OS is used.

If you have the user profile folder open in Windows Explorer while Dragon NaturallySpeaking is trying to load a user profile, you will get the following message: “User files you have selected cannot be accessed.”

Nuance recommends closing Windows Explorer and attempting to open the user profile again. If the error still appears, please follow these steps:

1. Close Dragon NaturallySpeaking.
2. Open Windows Explorer.
3. Navigate to the following folder:
4. In Windows 2000/XP: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Nuance\NaturallySpeaking9\
5. In Windows Vista: C:\ProgramData\Nuance\NaturallySpeaking9\
6. Right-click on the folder and choose “Properties”.
7. Select the “Security” tab.
8. Highlight “Users” from the “Group or user names:” box.
9. Ensure “Read & Execute”, “List folder contents”, and “Read” are checked.
Note: In Windows Vista click “Edit” to check off the appropriate permissions.