Support

Purchasing Virtual Belfry does not buy any specific support services for it. The program has had extensive testing and is believed to be free of bugs and to be straightforward to install and use. If you do have a problem, please check the troubleshooting section first (see below): you may find a solution there. Failing that, get in touch. If your information leads to a bug being found and fixed, a free update will be sent by way of thanks.

If at any time you are not happy with Virtual Belfry and want your money back, send the disc back and you will be refunded the amount you paid for the disc plus your postage costs.

Troubleshooting

I want to uninstall the program but I can't find it in the list

Versions prior to 2.0 were called "Virtual Belfry", so they appeared near the bottom of the list of installed software that you have to scroll through via the Control Panel. Starting with version 2.0 the program is listed as "Belfryware Virtual Belfry", so you need to look closer to the top of the list.

All my method menus are the same (all minor, or all triples, etc.)

Copies of the program prior to version 1.0c have a bug that sometimes causes the program to "get stuck" on a certain method menu (resulting in every menu being the one for triples methods, or for doubles methods, or whatever). This only happens with menus brought up via the "Go" menu option, not via the toolbar or the function keys.

The Enter key doesn't do what the help for keyboard shortcuts says it does

That's because the help in version 1.0a is wrong! It is the Space bar that does these things (start the bells ringing; advance frame by frame; sound a bell that has been silenced)

The program closes as soon as I enter my licence key

Your copy of Virtual Belfry was supplied with a licence key on the sleeve. You should keep a record of this somewhere in case you need to re-install the program at a later date. In the meantime, if you are having problems getting the program to accept the key, make sure that you are entering it exactly as it is printed on the sticker. There should be four groups of four characters each, separated by hyphens. You need to type the hyphens as well as the other characters, but don't type any spaces.

Once the licence key has been successfully entered, you will not see the entry dialog again. The licence key is displayed in the "About box" (from the Help menu).

The bells take a long time to reach the upright position after starting the program

The animation for the twelve bells requires over 1000 images, totalling over 200Mb, to be loaded from the hard disc and configured in the computer's memory. This can take some time. Older computers may take a minute or so to complete this process. Later models should be quicker. While a fast processor and a fast hard disc are going to help, the most important factor is RAM. Even though the system requirements suggest that Virtual Belfry can run with minimal RAM, more is always better. If you're running Windows XP, aim for 1Gb. Double that for Vista.

If you have an older model PC and you start raising bells as soon as the program appears on the screen, the raising process, which operates in conjunction with the loading of images, will take some time. Alternatively, if you wait for a little while to give the loading process a head start before selecting bells to ring, the bells will then rise to the ringing position more quickly. Either way will take the same amount of time overall (although the raise-them-immediately approach wins if you are not raising all the bells).

You should also be aware that some anti-virus programs can increase both the load time and the amount of RAM required, possibly dramatically. Try temporarily disabling your anti-virus program to see if it makes a difference.

My computer shuts down when I increase the clock speed for the bells

The Preferences Dialog includes a setting to specify the maximum clock speed (to which you can then jump straight from normality by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Right Arrow). The program is written to force the speed back down if it is too fast for the processor to handle, but nevertheless, on some PCs running Windows 2000, running Virtual Belfry for a long time at a clock speed that appears to be OK can sometimes cause the computer to freeze (after which you would need to restart your computer). If this occurs, be conservative with your setting of the maximum and see whether the program can run through an entire peal successfully.

The program doesn't start up any more when I double-click the icon on the desktop

If this happens, take a look at your computer's Task Manager (right click on the task bar to find the option). On the tab labelled "Processes", scan down the list to see whether there are any processes with a name of "Virtual Belfry". If you find one, select it and end it. There might be more than one. Then try running the program again.

The animation is jerky and the striking uneven

The two likely reasons for this are connected with memory, specifically RAM (Random Access Memory): Generally the best advice is to avoid doing other things with your computer while using Virtual Belfry. And, as ever, having plenty of RAM solves everything. If you have 256Mb of RAM on a Windows ME system you will be OK. For Windows XP the safe level is 384Mb.

The program's window went black and I had to close the program down and restart it

Did you run some other graphics program (a screen saver, for example) while Virtual Belfry was loaded? This is the most likely explanation for the problem. Virtual Belfry does not like sharing runtime with other programs that use graphics or animation. If this is a serious problem there are changes that could be made to the program to make it behave more reliably, but the advice would still stand.

If you think the problem was not caused by conflict with another program, please send details!

When a bell has been lowered using the Manual Control window and it is only swinging through a small angle, the animation isn't smooth any more

When bells are swinging through their full range they move at their fastest around the bottom of the swing, so the number of images needed to achieve a smooth animation at that point is quite small. On the other hand lots of images are needed when the bells are mouth-up because they are always moving slowly at that time.

This need for lots of images around the top of the swing rapidly becomes a problem on computers that are not awash with working memory (RAM), so economies had to be made. To keep memory consumption within reasonable bounds it was necessary to limit the images near the bottom to just those necessary for the animation of normal full-circle swinging.

Unfortunately, lowered bells move slowly around the bottom of the swing, and the sparseness of images in that region then results in a jerky animation. Future plans may remedy this.

The function keys on my keyboard don't seem to work

Virtual Belfry uses the function keys to provide convenient access to method menus (F5 for doubles methods, F6 for minor methods, etc). If the function keys on your keyboard don't seem to be working, try looking for a key labelled "F Lock". Pressing it might do the trick.

I don't seem to have any methods or compositions any more

The files that store the methods and compositions are re-written every time you use the program, to update the ordering of items to reflect which ones are most recently used. It is possible that this process has gone wrong in some unusual way. Starting with version 1.1b, you can restore the default methods and compositions by choosing a menu option specifically for this purpose, then closing Virtual Belfry and restarting it.

If you have added methods and compositions of your own (and you have a backup copy), you can restore these files by manually copying them into the appropriate folder, as described in the online help. If you do perform any such recovery operations, make sure you close Virtual Belfry first.

I put methods and compositions of my own into the program; now they're gone

Unlike previous updates, version 2.0 is only provided as a new installation, not an upgrade. And the new installation shares nothing with the old, so any methods and compositions you may have entered before will not be present in the new installation. They will still be on your computer though - in the folders relating to the previous installation. The author can help you transfer these items manually to avoid the need for you to re-enter them.

I can't get my composition of Stedman to work

Check what is in the "Default Call Markers" field on the Composition tab. Most methods get by with just one default marker (normally the vertical bar character: "|") For Stedman, however, two characters are usually needed: "|/". This is because the place notation for Stedman includes two separate call positions - one identified by the "|" marker and the other by the forward slash marker. Most compositions would involve calls at both these positions (one occurs in a quick six, the other in a slow six) and nobody expects to distinguish between them in the body of the composition. To achieve this apparent ease of setting out, both call markers need to be defined as defaults.

Scientific Triples has a similar problem and would normally require all three markers as defaults.

The belfry fills the whole screen and there is no menu or tool bar. What do I do?

Click the right mouse button anywhere among the bells and the popup menu will appear, offering you a View... menu with options that will solve your problem.

Windows NT, Windows 95 and 98

Virtual Belfry is designed for Windows XP and later operating systems. Earlier Windows versions are likely to be problematic: Virtual Belfry has not been tested on Windows NT. It is not intended to be used on that operating system. If you are trying to use the program on a computer that uses Windows NT, success is not guaranteed. Timing problems may well occur. The program might not even work at all. There is no solution to this other than to contact the author for a refund. Virtual Belfry does not work on computers that are running the Windows 95 operating system (or any earlier systems for that matter) and is unlikely to work on Windows 98. It works on Windows ME, although the amount of RAM required for the twelve bells is likely to be a struggle for any computer still using this old operating system.