PRB: MSDN Causes Error After Installation on External Drives

Launching the MSDN Library and selecting the Index tab throws the following error:



Or a message box appears with the title:



Beneath it you will see a animation displaying a book being written using a pen continuously. This goes on for a long time without terminating.

This error occurs because MSDN fails to create Msdn*.chw file in the %WINDIR%\Help directory. By default, this is Windows\Help for Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Millennium Edition (Me) systems, and WINNT\Help for Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000. This error occurs only when installing MSDN to an external drive and thus the path information above is valid only for MSDN files installed on an external drive.

NOTE: The exact name of the CHW file will change with each release of the MSDN Library. For example the Visual Studio 6.0 edition, the file is named Msdnvs98.chw. But with the April 1999 MSDN Library, the file is named Msdn910.chw.

This behavior is by design.