E/Trouble-Shooting

# E/Trouble-Shooting

This appendix discusses a variety of problems that may occur while you are using Alice, and what to do about them.

#### Can't Find the Helpfiles

When Alice is asked to provide help about a topic, she looks for the information in a large file named "helpfile.huf". Alice expects to find this file in the root directory. If you have moved this help file for some reason, you have to tell Alice about this using the `h=` option. See Appendix F of the manual for more information about this.

#### Can't Find the ap.ini File

Alice uses the DOS environment variable APINIT to locate the "ap.ini" file. If you move the standard initialization file or want to use a different file, SET the APINIT to the name of the new initialization file.

#### Alice freezes while performing a disk operation

This is a nasty kind of error. If you get an I/O error during DOS file operations (e.g. trying to write on an unformatted disk), DOS asks if you want to (a)bort, (i)gnore, or (r)etry.

Unfortunately, the user won't see this message because Alice removes the flashing DOS cursor from the screen.

You can still enter one of the letters to tell Alice what to do. Entering `a` aborts Alice. Entering `r` retries the I/O operation (you can do this if you figure out what the problem is and correct, e.g. by replacing the disk). Entering `i` will ignore the error and keep going. You may have to enter `i` a few times because there could be several errors.