New Users & General Questions - Help request

Help request - WSR suddenly won't work

Printed From: MSSpeech-Forum
Category: Windows™ Speech Recognition Forums
Forum Name: New Users & General Questions
Forum Description: Ask questions, give and get answers.
URL: https://www.msspeech-forum.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=282
Printed Date: 18/May/2024 at 3:48am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.02 - http://www.webwizforums.com

Topic: Help request - WSR suddenly won't work

Posted By: Teffy
Subject: Help request - WSR suddenly won't work
Date Posted: 26/Feb/2012 at 9:33pm

I have used WSR for a long time, but recently it won't work. It will start, meaning that the oblong little window/icon thingy appears,

as does a message window, which says:

Speech Recognition Error

Please restart Speech Recognition

Speech Recognition encountered an error. Please restart Speech Recognition to ensure that you can continue to use Speech Recognition.

I click the OK button and the message window disappears. The oblong WSR window/icon is still there with "Off" displayed. If I right-click on the microphone icon at the left end of the oblong WSR window/icon, I get the menu, but making one selection or another has no effect.

Using Windows Task Manager, I see that sapisvr.exe has used only 0:00:04 CPU Time.

What the heck is going on? Is there a way to "reinstall" WSR?

I have tried rebooting several times, to no avail.

I tried the following suggestion found online:

------------------------------------------------------------

For other problems, you can try to uninstall and reinstall Windows speech recognition program and check if it helps. Follow these steps:

1. Go to start and type in “turn Windows features on or off”.

2. Now from the Windows features window, uncheck Windows speech recognition.

3. Restart your computer.

To reinstall, check the option again in windows features.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Per the instructions above, I did uncheck the box for WSR, and after rebooting WSR is no longer on the "Windows Features" list, but the oblong WSR window/icon still behaves as described above.

I want my WSR and WSRmacros back! (Crying and gnashing of teeth....)

I have Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

Thank you!

Replies:

Posted By: mmarkoe_admin
Date Posted: 27/Feb/2012 at 7:29am

You could try a Restore point to a time before the problem started occurring.

Marty

Posted By: Teffy
Date Posted: 28/Feb/2012 at 2:07am

I restored Windows to the oldest restore point I have. The first time I said "start listening" it worked just fine. I used WSR for a while, and then said, "stop listening."

The next time I tried to get it to start listening, it did not recognize it as a command, and kept displaying "try saying start listening."

This behavior was repeated despite a couple Windows shutdown/startup cycles, and another System Restore. Very strange!

I suppose I could restore an even older Acronis True Image backup... but what a pain.

Posted By: mmarkoe_admin
Date Posted: 28/Feb/2012 at 11:46am

Teffy wrote:

This behavior was repeated despite a couple Windows shutdown/startup cycles, and another System Restore. Very strange!

I suppose I could restore an even older Acronis True Image backup... but what a pain.

I cannot recall every hearing of an instance where WSR just plain stops working.

Marty

Posted By: Teffy
Date Posted: 01/Mar/2012 at 1:00am

Marty, I experimented some more and found that WSR will not respond to "start listening" by acting on my verbal command (to begin following my spoken WSR commands). But, if I use the mouse to click on the toolbar microphone icon, open Notepad, then *dictate* the phase "start listening", it will correctly enter those words into Notepad. Same deal for "stop listening".

Could this be caused by a setting/parameter somewhere?

Posted By: mmarkoe_admin
Date Posted: 01/Mar/2012 at 10:44am

Teffy wrote:

if I use the mouse to click on the toolbar microphone icon, open Notepad, then *dictate* the phase "start listening", it will correctly enter those words into Notepad. Same deal for "stop listening". Could this be caused by a setting/parameter somewhere?

I seem to recall something similar them where there was a lag time between the start listening and stop listening commands were recognized. This was due to problems with Windows audio subsystem. It was so bad we had to program a feature into the WSRToolkit version 2 to Tune registry settings for the microphone levels Microphone.

When this Tune Microphone feature is used it creates static registry settings to hold the microphone levels. Are you using the WSRToolkit version 2? If so, try initially setting the volume at 20 and the SNR to 10. You are looking for the volume meter in the speech bar to only show one or two bars as you are talking. I just noticed all I was getting a lot of mistakes and I was getting three or four bars. This was probably because I have run the audio setup in Dragon NaturallySpeaking and this changed the volume requirements for WSR. We just readjusted the settings, closed the speech bar (this is necessary for the settings to hold) and restarted WSR. Speech recognition accuracy has now returned to almost 100%.

Let us know when this message helps?

Marty