Posted: December 15 2003 at 00:53 | IP Logged

I have installed the latest beta/trial from the downloads page, and was so impressed I even purchased the program so I have a full version now. I have run the 3 speech related exe's and the text-to-speech works great. I am now trying to dabble with the voice recognition, but everytime I enable it and start PowerHome, I get a message stating "Initialization Error - An error occurred while attempting to initialize the voice recognition engine. Voice recognition will not be active."

I am running Windows XP and have gone through XP's voice training available in the control panel of WinXP.

What could be messed up that is not allowing the VR to work with PowerHome?

Thank you - Robert (Dallas, TX)

Posted: December 15 2003 at 13:32 | IP Logged

Robert,

Windows XP comes with Lernout and Hauspie Voice recognition already installed.  This will conflict with the Microsoft SAPI 4.0a drivers.  You'll have to uninstall all Lernout and Hauspie or L&H references and then reinstall the Microsoft SAPI.  You should be able to accomplish this from your Control Panel's Add/Remove Programs.

Let me know if this works for you.  Im currently running XP Pro at home myself and once I removed the L&H drivers, had no problems with getting the VR working.

Hope this helps,

Dave.

Posted: December 18 2003 at 00:17 | IP Logged

Robert,

I did some research at Microsofts site concerning the Speech Recognition within XP.  Apparently it isnt directly in XP and is installed when you install an XP service pack or Microsoft Office.  In any event, my understanding is that the engine may not necessarily be L&H.

To get the speech up and going with PowerHome, we'll have to remove all references to any current speech recognition including the SAPI 4.0 that was installed for PowerHome.  You'll find this in the Control Panel under Add / Remove Programs.  I also found the following instructions at Microsoft's site for removing the XP speech recognition:

How to Remove Speech Recognition

To remove speech recognition as a text service, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click Regional and Language Options.
2. On the Languages tab, under Text services and input languages, click Details.
3. Under Installed services, click Speech Recognition under the language you are using, and then click Remove. NOTE: If you remove speech recognition, it is not deleted from your computer. When you do so, speech recognition is no longer available as a text service and it is prevented from being loaded into memory. You can add it again at any time.

To completely remove the speech recognition engine from your hard disk, follow the instructions in the program with which it was installed, or use Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel.

Once all speech references are removed from your system, you should be able to attempt reinstalling the Microsoft SAPI 4.0a for PowerHome.

Hope this helps,

Dave.