• Help with installation (under MS/Windows)
• Help! No help! (The program's Help doesn't work.)
• Answers to common start-up problems
• Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
• Where to go for additional help

Starting with Volume 23, the program's Help system has been converted to a web-browser (HTML) format. This is because the Windows Vista (and later versions of Windows) no longer supports the older Microsoft forms of help. Therefore if you are running at least Volume 23, you shouldn't have problems with help (unless you also are having problems getting the AMPR program to start up a web browser, in which case look at problem #6 in the list below). If you are running an older version (Vol. 22 or earlier) of the AMPR and Help doesn't work, then it is time to upgrade.

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1) I can't find the start-up page for the program in my web browser.

The AMPR is not a browser application.  There is a separate program that runs the AMPR, and you must install the program before you can search the data. (If you are running the USB flash drive version, no installation is required; you can run the program directly from the flash drive.) Follow the installation instructions in the booklet that comes with the CD.  In simplest terms, in the case of the CD-ROM version, you must run the setup.exe program that is on the CD-ROM to install the program.  This will create a desktop icon ("Antique Map Price Record") which you can double-click on to run the program.

This was a problem that could sometimes occur with earlier versions of the AMPR. As of Version 25, the installation program should not fail, even if you already have a copy of an earlier version installed. It is possible, however, that after installing a new version you will see two copies of the desktop icons (Antique Map Price Record and Map Collection Manager). In this case, you can safely delete the older pair of icons, by just right-clicking each icon and selecting Delete off the pop-up menu. You will be warned that this step will just delete the shortcut and not the underlying application.

To avoid any problems, it is generally prudent to uninstall and prior version of the AMPR before installing a new version. Detailed uninstallation instructions are provided below.

This was a problem with earlier versions of the AMPR installation program. As of Version 25, the installation has been completely redesigned and it does not rely on the Windows Installer to do its work.

As with the previous question, this problem only relates to earlier versions of the AMPR. The Version 25 (and later) installer uses a completely different installation technology, and, as of yet, there have been no reports of this kind of problem.

When you install the program, only the program - and not the data - is copied to your hard disk.  The program always reads the data from the CD-ROM, so when you get this message, it means that the program did not find the AMPR CD-ROM; probably because it isn't in the CD-ROM drive.  Make sure the CD-ROM is inserted in the drive, and click Retry.

When the program wants to display something using your web browser, it looks in the Windows Registry to find out how to launch your browser.  In general, the common browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox and Netscape) correctly set up the needed Registry information for this to work, but in rare cases this information may not be present or correctly specified in the Registry.  You can work around this problem by taking the steps described here. You can also use this procedure to tell the program to use a different browser (other than your default browser) when opening a browser window to display anything (dealer's web site, Information Menu pages, reference images).

1) Locate the full pathname of the executable program that launches your web browser (or, if you are telling the program to use a non-default browser, the pathname of the non-default browser).  You can usually do this most easily by locating the shortcut used to launch the browser and looking at its properties to find the "Target" command used to start the program.  Though the exact pathname will depend upon where the browser is installed on your system, common locations are as follows:

For Intenet Explorer (IE):

"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.exe"

For Netscape:

"C:\Program Files\Netscape\Communicator\Program\netscape.exe"

For Firefox:

"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe"

2) Run the AMPR program. Choose Preferences from the File menu. At the top of the Preferences dialog you will see a choice between using the "system default" or using a "custom command" for invoking a browser. If "system default" is selected, the program will also display what that system default command is. (If nothing is shown, then this indicates that no default browser invocation command is defined on your system, which is why you are encountering the problem described in this section.) Choose "use system command" and then enter the full pathname for your browser (as described in the examples, above) in the text entry field. There is also a Browse button provided, so you can navigate through your filesystem to locate the browser program and select it. This is a good way to avoid having to type the full pathname correctly, which is susceptible to typos.

3) Exit from the Preferences dialog and see if you can now link to a web site, or invoke an Information menu entry. If you still are unable to get the browser the launch, contact user support.

This strange bug is due to a problem with earlier versions of Firefox (bug #263701 in the Firefox bug database maintained by Mozilla.org), which in some cases doesn't properly open and display local files (as opposed to files fetched from remote web sites, which it does handle correctly). All of the choices on the Information menu are local files, since they are on your own, local, computer. The U.S. Census Bureau tab is a bizarre side-effect caused by the fact that the Information files are in a sub-directory named data on the CD-ROM. (Try typing just the word data into Firefox's location window and hit <Return>. Guess what? You will be taken to the U.S. Census Bureau's home page!)

You can avoid this bug by making sure that a Firefox window is already open before invoking the Information menu from the AMPR program. As long as a Firefox window is already open, this bug does not occur. If you have just hit the bug, simply leave the empty Firefox window there (the one with the U.S. Census Bureau tab in it), and go back and choose the same item off the Information menu again. This time it should work.

Note: This bug appears to be fixed in the latest release of Firefox. The bug was seen in Firefox 5.0 rev.1.7.5, but it did not appear when tested in Firefox 5.0 rev.1.8.0.6. Therefore, if you are seeing this problem, I suggest that you update to the most recent version of Firefox.

This problem has only been seen running under Windows 98 or Windows ME with HP inkjet printer drivers (800 or 900 series).  Though the cause of the problem is still mysterious, the fix is pretty straightforward, and is suggested by HP's support pages: Switch your printer spooling format from EMF to RAW.  To do this, select Start>Settings>Printers from the taskbar.  When the Printers window comes up, right-click on the icon for your HP printer and select Properties.  The next step depends upon the version of operating system you are using:

• If, in the Properties window, you see a tab labeled "Details":

Select the Details tab. Click the Spool Settings button.  In the Spool Settings window there is a drop-down list below the spool settings radiobuttons, and this list lets you choose between EMF and RAW.  Select RAW.

• If, in the Properties window, you see a tab labeled "Advanced":

Select the Advanced tab. Click the Print Processor button. Select WinPrint in the left-hand (Print processor) list. Then select RAW in the right-hand (Default datatype) list.

Click OK as many times as necessary to close all the windows you have opened and re-start the AMPR program.  Printing should now work.

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FAQ - Frequently asked questions

* Can I copy the entire database to my hard drive, so I don't always have to have the CD-ROM inserted to run the program under MS/Windows?

Yes. As of Volume 25 installation of the entire database is given as a choice during installation. In the Choose Components page of the installation wizard, be sure that the Database checkbox is selected. This will cause the database to be copied. If you previously installed Version 25 (or later) without including the database, and now you have decided that you would like to have the database on your hard drive, simply do a re-install, being sure to check Database in the Choose Components section.

* I want to run the AMPR program from a memory stick (flash drive) since my small portable computer does not have a CD-ROM drive. Can I do this?

Yes. And as of Volume 25 the AMPR is being offered in both a CD-ROM and in a flash drive format.

* Will the CD-ROM run on my Macintosh?

As of Volume 24 (2009), only a Windows version of the CD-ROM is being produced. The Macintosh version that had been available up through Vol. 23 was a "Classic" Mac (OS/9) application. Fewer and fewer Macs are running OS/9 these days, since OS/X has pretty much taken over, and for some time now Apple has stopped shipping OS/9 software with new systems. (During the early years of OS/X, Apple shipped OS/9 software, as well as OS/X software, with their Macs, so that users could run either Classic Mac or OS/X applications on the same computer. That is no longer true.)

If you have a fairly new Mac that has an Intel processor, then you can run the Windows version of the AMPR CD-ROM on your Mac. To do this you will need some additional software. The simplest and least expensive solution is to get CrossOver Mac (from Codeweavers). This software lets you run Windows programs without requiring the installation of a Windows operating system. Not all Windows software will work under CrossOver, but the AMPR CD-ROM has been found to work successfully. Click here for more information and set-up instructions for using the AMPR program with CrossOver.

A more elaborate solution is to install a second operating system on your computer (e.g. Windows XP) and then use virtualizing software such as Parallels. This approach will let you run any Windows software on your Mac (including the AMPR program), but this is a more complicated and more expensive approach than using CrossOver.

* I have a very old PC that is still running Windows 3.1.  Will the AMPR run on mys system?

No.  The AMPR only runs on the 32-bit versions of Windows, starting with Windows/95.

* How can I do "fuzzy" searching for names like "pascaart", "paskaarte", "pascaert", etc. in map titles?

You can use wild-cards to approximate a fuzzy search, though you may have to think for a moment as to the best way to do this.  For the example given in the question, the common element in the word being searched for is the first three letters ("pas"), so you might try just searching for pas* (the asterisk means match any word that begins with "pas", regardless of what comes after it).  However, this will find more than you really want, since this wild-card pattern also matches "passages", "passim", and other words that have nothing to do with "pascaart" and its variants.

Since the next letter in what we are looking for is "c" or "k", we could search for pas[ck]* (which means words which begin with "pas" and then are immediately followed by a 'c' or a 'k', and then anything else afterwards).  This does a much better job of finding just the titles with one of the "pascaart" variants.

You may be aware that sometimes this word is represented in map titles in a hyphenated form, e.g.: Pas-Caert, or in a two-word form, e.g. Pas Caert.  A more complicated search pattern could do a pretty good job of catching all of these cases:

pas[ck]* OR "pas c*" OR "pas k*"

The double-quotes around "pas c*" and "pas k*" mean search for the word "pas" immediately followed by a word beginning with 'c' or 'k'.  You may wonder, why not just combine the last two sections of this search and do:

pas[ck]* OR "pas [ck]*"

Logically, this is correct, but it violates the restriction that any single word can't begin with a wild-card symbol (an asterisk, an open-square-bracket or a question mark).  If you try to do this, the program will tell you it is not allowed.  So you need to break it into the two separate patterns.

Also, you may be wondering how this search request finds names with hyphens between a pair of words such as "Pas" and "Caert".  No hyphen was included in the search pattern.  The answer is that hyphens are treated like all non-alphabetic and non-numeric characters: They are treated as word separators, just like spaces.  So "Pas-Caert" and "Pas Caert" are handled exactly the same way, as two words, so that "pas c*" will match either of these.  There is no way to explicitly say that you want to search for a phrase that contains a hyphen.  In fact, if you searched for "pas-c*", this would be treated just like "pas c*" and it would find both the hyphen-separated and blank-separated variants.

* Will I have to pay full price to receive the next update of the AMPR?

No.  Once you have purchased your first copy of the AMPR, you are eligible for updates at the subscription rate, which is $50 ($60 for the USB flash drive version). We will contact current users each spring, to announce the availability of the next update, which will be published each April.  You will remain eligible for the reduced subscription pricing for as long as you purchase the updates.

The first place to look for help is the on-line help that comes with the program.  If you can't find the answers you need there or on this page, please get in touch with me (Jeremy Pool) at:

e-mail: JeremyPool@comcast.net
tel: 617-661-3718
fax: 617-868-1229
snail mail: MapRecord Publications, 60 Shepard St., Cambridge, MA 02138-1523, USA