Unable to open Windows CHM help file

Question

I have CHM file that always displays the same error: "Navigation to the webpage was canceled"

All nodes have the same error.

What can I do to fix it?

I am running Windows XP SP3 w/Internet Explorer 8.0.6001

Answer 1

Is the .chm file on a network share? Or was it downloaded from the internet or from a network share? Windows protects files it deems "untrusted" and prevents them from being displayed. To fix the issue, copy the chm to your local machine, then right click on the file and select "Properties" and click on the "Unblock" button.

Answer 2

Let me guess the CHM file was downloaded from the internet? This is a security mechanism. If you trust that file (and remember - CHM files contain HTML and scripts running under an external executable), just right-click it, select properties and then select "unblock".

Since this looks like a Mercury (should I say HP?) file, you're probably good - as long as you downloaded it from an authorized site.

Answer 3

Make sure you have write access to the CHM file and the folder it resides in.

Answer 4

You may like to know that you can 'extract' or decompile CHM files using the free archiving tool 7Zip. CHMs are a lot more fun to browse inside a browser.

Answer 5

Another solution is to use a CHM viewer that doesn't have this problem. Both SumatraPDF (http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/free-pdf-reader.html) and XCHM (http://xchm.sourceforge.net/) are free, open-source CHM readers that don't have the same problem with opening those files as built-in chm viewer in windows.