FAQ

Question:
Penfriend W3 crashes when I try to make it speak. What can I do?

Affecting products:

Penfriend W3 with Speech (previously called Penfriend for Windows)

Problem:

Penfriend W3 works correctly in most ways, but crashes when I try to make it speak. For example when I go to the Speech options dialogue box and click on 'Example Sentence', it starts speaking or makes some noise, then I hear a buzzing sound, and a message appears on the screen saying that "pfwin.exe" has suffered an internal fault, and must be shut down.

Solution:

Unfortunately the speech synthesiser used by Penfriend W3 is only compatible with genuine SoundBlaster sound cards, and some others. Some computers contain 'SoundBlaster compatible' audio features which are not in fact compatible.

The only solutions are to buy a genuine SoundBlaster sound card, or if you are using Windows 98 or above, you can upgrade to Penfriend XP which uses a different speech engine.

FAQ answered:

by RIWS on 2001-12-13