Shockwave Installation Issues

Introduction
Pitchsmart is a family of technologies which enable people to make presentations over the Internet. Pitchsmart Presenter helps people make real-time presentations to up to one thousand viewers. Pitchsmart Theater provides 24 x 7 access to self-running presentations stored on the Web.

Pitchsmart Presentations are based on Shockwave from Macromedia, which is freely downloadable from the Macromedia web site. While Macromedia claims over a quarter of a billion sucessful Shockwave downloads, there are occasional problems. This document is designed to help you troubleshoot problems that may occur when you install Shockwave.

Problems Seen
Shockwave is a relatively large download, which installs system-level components. As a result, Internet installations have a small, yet significant failure rate. Occasionally, most, but not all of the components required by Shockwave are installed. Failed installations seem to most often occur when the Internet installer is updating an existing version of Shockwave.

A failed/incomplete Shockwave installation can be discerned in a number of ways:

• At the conclusion of an Internet install, your web browser is redirected to the Shockwave "success" page, but the animation does not play.
  
  
• Your web browser displays some, but not all, Shockwave content. For instance, the animation on the Shockwave "success" page plays, but the Pitchsmart "areyouready" page does not display.
  
  
• Your browser hangs/crashes when displaying some Shockwave content.

Resolutions
If Shockwave content does not play after an Internet installation or update, quit and restart your web browser. For Internet Explorer under Windows, be sure to close ALL browser windows before you restart your browser.

Restart your computer after you install/update. This will give your operating system a chance to load the new Shockwave components.

If a restart does not solve the problem, perform a "clean install". Use the Shockwave uninstaller (Windows -- MacOS) to remove Shockwave. Then, reinstall.

Perhaps the most convenient way to install Shockwave is from CD-ROM. Request a copy of the Pitchsmart Installer CD. This CD-ROM contains the complete Shockwave installer, including the Shockwave 3D XTRA. It also includes a Quicktime installer and links to the Real Media installer. In addition, the CD-ROM contains a standalone viewer for Pitchsmart content.

Shockwave is incompatible with Netscape Navigator/Communicator 6.0; use another version. (Earlier versions are compatible, the newly release 6.1 version is said to be compatible.)

If you require additional problem resolution information, contact us at support@pitchsmart.com.

Document ID: PS/TN0002
Author: Tom McCrystal
Revision: 0.9 draft
Revision Date: 16 August 2001