Date Published: September 28, 2012
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Content upgrade from Beta to RTM is not supported. Remove all previously installed books before installing latest content. Help books can be removed in Help Viewer Manage content tab (or select "Add or Remove Local Help content" from IDE Help Menu item). When the user installs same topics in RTM that they installed in Beta, without removing the Beta content, they will experience duplicate nodes representing Beta and RTM installed versions for same topic in the TOC. The Help Viewer Sync TOC function may cause a Help Viewer crash in this case.
Visual Studio 11 Beta uninstall will remove Microsoft Help Viewer from users machine but Beta Help Content books will remain on the machine. Prior to removing Visual Studio 11 Beta, uninstall Help books from Manage Content tab (or prior to uninstalling Visual Studio 11 Beta select "Add or Remove Local Help Content" from IDE Help Menu item).
To correct the problem you will need to remove all duplicate book entries.
In Windows Server 2008 R2 video links may not work if the codec is not installed.
To resolve this issue:
Download and install a codec
In Windows 8, video links do not work.
To resolve this issue:
Video from local content is not supported in Windows 8.
Windows Server 2008 R2 displays Help content in raw XML.
To resolve this issue:
Turn off IE security from Server Manager.
500 errors can be caused by a number of issues.
To resolve this issue:
Verify local Help content is installed. Verify you are able to get local Help content, and that the 500 error is specific to a topic and not a system error. If you are not able to see any local Help content, then remove and re-install your content. If the 500 error is specific to a topic, and if you know the book the topic was installed from, then try re-installing the source.
The local Help viewer requires a number of command-line options in order to launch the correct content. Windows does not allow shortcuts to be pinned to the taskbar, only applications. Pinning help viewer executable to the taskbar would result in a non-functional experience and no easy way for the user to choose a specific content set.
To resolve this issue:
This is by design.
When content is installed from the Visual Studio 2010 local content package service (http://services.mtps.microsoft.com/serviceapi/products/), title search, for example "title:Help title:Viewer" will return results for keywords "title" and "Help" and "Viewer" where the expected return results should have the term "help" and "Viewer" in title of the topic. Additionally, "Code:C#:Xml" Return results for keywords "code" and "C#" and "xml" when expected results are those that have the term "xml" in C# code snippet.
To resolve this issue:
There is no work-around for this.
When the Help Viewer is launched elevated, it will not respond to the non-elevated IDE (for example, an F1 call to the local Help viewer).
To resolve this issue:
To resolve this, close the Help viewer and launch it from within the launched IDE. In the IDE, select the Help menu, then the View Help option.
When the Help Viewer is launched and in Viewer Options, the "Go online to get content and check for content updates" is selected, if the F1 or desired local Help topic is not found in the local content store, then the Help system will try to find the topic online. The setting for the timeout can be set in a registry key:
HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node(if OS is x64)\Microsoft\VisualStudio (the app id)\11.0 (version)\Help
OnlineContentRequestTimeout type DWord, specifying the milliseconds of timeout.
Visual Studio 2012 uninstall will remove the content for the language being uninstalled. During this, content uninstall can take some time. The Visual Studio 2012 setup UI does not wait for content uninstall to complete so it is possible that the uninstall is still occurring when setup finishes. If a second uninstall is started while content uninstall is still occurring; the content management from that setup will fail. The end result of this is that the content can in some cases remain on the machine for languages that have been uninstalled.
The Help Viewer crashes with System.IO.IOException when you try to remove a book from a store containing books from multiple locales.
To resolve this issue:
To resolve this, remove all books at same time.
In Windows 8, if the default browser is something other than IE, Online and local Help may launch the IE browser, not the default browser.
To resolve this issue:
To resolve this, check Windows 8 browser registration to make sure the expected default browser is correctly registered (default Programs UI, or search for "Default Programs," and set the desired browser as the default).
When the help viewer content store has been moved from its default location and the Visual Studio 2012 Patch is installed, the Help viewer will no longer reference the moved content store.
To resolve this issue:
With the patch, the content store location path registry key gets overwritten. The patch creates a content store at default location "C:\programData\Microsoft\HelpLibrary2\Catalogs\VisualStudio11."
For Patch installations over Visual Studio 2012 RTM, to reference the content store that was moved prior to the Visual Studio 2012 Patch installation, change the registry key, on x64 systems HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Help\v2.0\Catalogs\VisualStudio11\ and on x86 systems HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Help\v2.0\Catalogs\VisualStudio11\. The Help Viewer will use the content store defined in the registry key.
If the Visual Studio 2012 Patch was applied directly to an RC build, go to Add/Remove programs (Programs and Features on Windows 7), and select Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 (or your Visual Studio product) and at the pop-up select repair, which will re-install the Microsoft Help Viewer 2.0.
Note: Beta to RTM content store upgrade is not supported in the Visual Studio 2012 Patch scenario.
Visual Studio 2010 content can be found in two locations, either with the original media in the Product Documentation folder or the online service endpoint (used for installing and updating content from online).
To install content from the Visual Studio 2010 content service:
Once you have chosen your content source:
To provide feedback about Help Viewer 2.0 please tell us on Visual Studio UserVoice. For Help Viewer bugs, please use Microsoft Connect. If you do not have a Connect account, please try the MSDN online Developer Documentation and Help System forums. Check the Visual Studio 2012 documentation for more information.
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