Microsoft eLearning Library (MELL)

[ThePassenger]

Does anyone have any experience of this?
Gods gift (the local IT guru in the eyes of the inlaws) has dropped round and installed, what appears to be, an old copy of MELL for Office 2003 on to the mother-in-laws desktop.

Now, this desktop is utterly shagged and I'm up to three complaints/dirty looks a day (this is after we dropped £150 on new innards for it in the hopes of shutting them up), I've tried simply copying the C:Program Files MELL folder to another computer, along with the shortcuts that basically start IE and point it at a webpage stored locally.

This doesn't work (cue, more moaning). So does anyone have any experience of MELL? Am I looking for some snide ActiveX module or registry entry 'somewhere' (despite the website saying it doesn't use them)?

Gods gift is mysteriously unable to fix the issue, provide installation media OR make an appearance to reinstall it....

God I hate those who think they know a lot about stuff and then run and hide when it all goes tits up.

[Nismo'D]

Any kind of errors? Is it after Java or any other flavour of media plugin (shockwaveflash etc)?
Generally speaking, locally stored web based training has had a requirement of either a codec or plugin to get it to work.

[ThePassenger]

Nismo'D said:

Any kind of errors? Is it after Java or any other flavour of media plugin (shockwaveflash etc)?
Generally speaking, locally stored web based training has had a requirement of either a codec or plugin to get it to work.

Javascript / Flash elements.

The problem is, on any other machine the thing 'appears' to work; the main page loads and lets you work through the menus. However the training courses themselves appear in a pop-up window. Even turning off all IE's content protection stuff just gets a window full of Flash doing a cute 'loading' screen but it never completes whatever it's doing and brings up the actual course.

Looking at the MELL specs it mentions Flash 6, so I wonder if it's some incompatibility between Flash 9 and the course?

Edit: Nope it's not an issue with Flash.

Edited by ThePassenger on Monday 20th November 16:42

[ThePassenger]

Right sortedish.

The problem, amongst other things is that this old version of MELL requires a small .reg key to be installed, despite Microsoft saying it doesn't touch the registry. Replicate that and no go.
However installing XP-SP1 in to a VM and wouldn't ya know the thing (once copied to the VM) shoots off in to the distance.

I'm guessing that several years worth of security fixes, lawsuits being lost and massive overhauls of IE have left this version of MELL tied to a platform that doesn't really exist on a modern PC.

I'm busy installing XP-SP1 on to the MIL's laptop and will be repeating the process on the desktop.

Yipiee!