McGoo Software FAQst

Here are the answers to some Frequent Asked Questions about McGoo Softwares ES-Builder and GoKeys!

GoKeys! will not work with Windows 7. What can I do?

This can be fixed! GoKeys! uses an older Microsoft technology called MSAgent that came out originally with Windows 98.
The Stoppy character in GoKeys! is a MSAgent character. Microsoft have removed this technology from Windows 7 onwards, but they have provided a solution for those people who want to keep on using MSAgent.
At this stage we have no firm plans to develop a version of GoKeys! without Stoppy, so if you want to continue using GoKeys! in Windows 7, you will need to use the Microsoft HotFix that allows it to work.
Information about the Microsoft Hotfix to allow MSAgent to work in Windows 7 can be found at this page.

Can I convert my ES-Builder 2 files into an ES-Builder 3 .tree file?

This is partially possible!
ES-Builder 3.0 uses completely different file structure to versions 1 and 2 so converting .esb files from these earlier versions is not possible. However, there are similarities with ES-TreeBuilder 2 .trb files. These may be opened in ES-Builder 3.0 and converted to .tree files for further development. Please make sure that you check all aspects of the converted file to make sure it is still valid.

Why do my images keep disappearing in ES-Builder?

Different people use ES-Builder in slightly different ways:
Some prefer to keep their work files on a flash drive and carry it back and forth between home and school where the drive letter for their flash drive may change, eg from E: to H: or similar. These people should make sure they have Use Relative Paths checked on the Publish menu in ES-Builder. With this option ticked, ES-Builder will look in the same folder as the .tree file to find the images and they will always be available. In this case ES-Builder will only save the filenames of the images and not the full location.
Some prefer to work only at school or at home and keep their (largish) image files in one location, eq a network folder at school. In this case the location of the image files never changes, but it is usually not in the same folder as the .tree file. These people should have the Use Relative Paths option on the Publish menu in ES-Builder unchecked. With this option unticked, ES-Builder will save the full location of the images and they can always be found as long as the user is on the same network.

Why won't Stoppy's voice work in GoKeys! in Windows XP or Vista?

On most home installations of Windows XP or Vista, Stoppy should find a suitable voice to use already installed. This will vary with the operating system. If there is no voice found automatically, you may need to go to the next option...
You may need to have the Microsoft Speech API and the TTS voice engine installed for this to work. The two install files you require for this are in the GoKeys! folder.
Just run spchapi.exe and tv_enua.exe from this folder to enable voice. If it still does not work, look at the following:
In some school network situations, eg EQs MOE, where students do not have local administrator rights over the local machine, the user will not have sufficient rights to the registry to enable the L&H TTS text to speech engine, so they speech balloons will come up okay, but Stoppys mouth will not move and no voice will come come out. Instructions to solve this problem can be found on the Microsoft Agent website.
Windows 7 problems? See above

Can I add more exercises/lessons to GoKeys!?

Yes, these lessons appear under the Extra Lessons heading in GoKeys!
To get one in there, just save your lesson as a plain text file from Notepad with the extension .txt
Keep the lines reasonable short. No more than 50 characters per line is preferable.
Save your text file in the Exercises folder inside the GoKeys! folder and next time you open GoKeys! your newly created lesson will be there under Extra Lessons!