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Please email support@notabene.com or call (718) 382-1500
The following suggestions will help us help you more quickly and efficiently. Please include those that are applicable. (Note that the numbers do not indicate a necessary sequence—they are numbered so that we can refer to them as necessary in our responses to your emails):
If we have not had recent email contact, and we don’t already know you well, please include your serial number (Help, About Nota Bene) and your “release” number (at the lower left on the same Help, About Nota Bene screen)
Don’t just say, “when I tried installing it didn’t work,” or “I got an error message when I was trying to run the program” (that’s all that many people actually write). Instead, tell us what you mean by “it didn’t work,” and tell us what error you got. Getting this information the first time often lets us respond with something useful right away, rather than having to write another email asking for further details, and then awaiting that response, all of which means that it takes longer to address the issue that is preventing you from working.
In general, the more information you give us, the better—we can track down and fix problems that are described fully more easily. But at the same time we don’t want to waste your time having you write a very full description when we might have a solution for you if you just gave us a general overview of the issue. If we need more information, we will always ask.
So if you are in a hurry, as most people understandably are, you’re more than welcome as a first step to just give us the basics, and not worry about anything that follows below. In most cases, we can in fact resolve most problems right off, even with sketchy details. But if you want to speed the diagnostic process, you can proceed with the relevant points below.
While we want to hear of anything that is serious, even if it happens only one time (we make note of it, in the hopes that we can find a pattern from what at first might seem to be a fluke), a problem that happens only once is both very difficult to diagnose and fix, and also could be caused by factors in the system environment, and not in NB proper.
A reproducible problem is the easiest problem to fix. If you encounter a problem, you should try to repeat the same steps again, to see if you get the same results (if the problem is a “crash” or a “freeze,” you may need to first restart NB. If you can:
We often get reports saying that “this used to work fine, but it suddenly stopped working.” When we respond with questions trying to help isolate the problem, we are often eventually told that “This problem began immediately after I downloaded x.” That’s a tell-tale sign that you need to start looking at this other program, to see why it is causing Nota Bene not to work. (It’s often a matter of that other program stealing keys that NB uses. The solution in such cases is to find out how you can change the keyboard shortcuts used by that other program.)
Since Nota Bene for Windows has been in use for two decades now, most of the time problems we hear about now are specific to a single file, and getting the file is necessary in order to diagnose and fix it.
We understand that anything you send to us is your very valuable (copyrighted or copyrightable) work. We use it only to diagnose and fix whatever problems are related to it. In the process—and thereafter—nobody other than people doing technical support or the programmers ever see your files.
For over twenty-five years NB users have been trusting their files to us. We’ve never violated that trust, and never will. To paraphrase a popular saying, “what gets sent to NB technical support stays in NB technical support.”
The best way to send a file is to attach it to the email that describes the problem — Nota Bene files are regular files, and can be attached to any email program just as you would a PDF or DOC or DOCX file.
If you have a file that is too large to attach, you can upload it directly to our web site. But you must also send an email to technical support telling us that you are doing so, or we will not be able to respond. (Be sure to describe the problem in that email.)
As the saying goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Although that is often not actually the case, sometimes it is. Indeed, sometimes we’ve had lengthy exchanges about an issue only to have it clear up instantly upon receipt of a screen shot. Particularly if you are reporting something that is difficult to describe clearly, sending a screen shot is a good idea. (For most versions of Windows, you can use the Snippet Tool. For other options, or if using other versions of Windows, click the Windows Start button, Help and Support, and type in “capture screen.”)
Nota Bene files are just easier to work with (and we have Nota Bene open all the time). It’s even easier to simply read about the issues in the body of the email than it is to open another file to get any sense of what the issues are. (Of course, you should send a separate file if necessary, as described in #6 above.)
If you have encounter an “Exception” or an “Access Violation,” please include the module name (for example, “SWSYS.DLL”) and the “address” (such as “7:0DAF”) of the error (this will usually be shown on the screen that reports the “GPF”).
Running the debugger is actually quite easy:
Note (for Windows users only): If you do not capture the problem the first time, and did not let the program create this for you automatically during installation, you may want to create a shortcut for the debugger (Go to Start, All Program (All apps on Windows 10 or 11), Nota Bene 14; right click on Debug NB 14, and choose Send To, and then Desktop [create Shortcut]) which you can use to start Nota Bene the next time.
Sometimes a problem rather magically disappears when running under the debugger. If a problem that is otherwise reproducible when running in regular mode does not happen when starting under the debugger, there is a second way to access the debugger which might capture the problem:
Lockups require running the debugger in a slightly different way:
Note that this process may not give us enough information the first time around to diagnose and/or fix the problem. But it will hopefully let us suggest how to proceed.
Sometimes a problem shows up — and persists — after you started Nota Bene the regular way (that is, not under the debugger). In such cases, you can “attach” the debugger to an already running version:
As noted above, Nota Bene for Windows has been available for two decades now. Such lengthy use has led to a program that is, overall, very robust (judging from reports we receive from users, and our own experience). However, each user uses the program differently, with different default settings (Nota Bene is extremely customizable). In many cases, it is these differences that turn out to be the source of the problem. To see if this is the case:
If the issue is in one of your customization files, once we have those, and your data file (see “Send Files…” below), along with a description of the problem, we’ll try to see what particular custom setting is causing it
If you would like to restore your various customizations, you can delete the new NB.INI and/or NB.DFL files (the ones pasted in from the INITIAL folder), and rename the original ones (which you renamed in step #2 above) back to their original names. (But note that if it turned out that your customizations were the source of the problem, the problem will reappear, at least until we can diagnose and fix it as described in #6.)
Computer systems are becoming increasingly complex—there are more and more programs trying to do useful and interesting things, and sometimes these can conflict with each other. The environment in which NB works is no exception. Sometimes that environment—or even the hardware you are running on—is the cause of the problem you are reporting.
Two recent cases are representative:
USER FOLLOW-UP: “I don’t want to be too hasty, but I might have solved the problem. I did a memory check with PC Doctor, but no problems were identified. By chance I noticed on the Lenovo Thinkpad users forum that some people had a lock-up problem when starting the computer and that this could be ascribed to the Nvidia graphics driver. I downloaded the most recent driver from the Nvidia website and installed it. Since then I have not yet had a lock-up with Nota Bene (after starting 3-4 times). This is probably too soon to declare victory, but previously I had not able to manage a single session without a lock-up.
AND LATER: “I think I can now confirm that the problem has been solved. I have used Nota Bene for a week without any lock-ups. Thanks for your support.”
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