Support

If you believe you have found a bug in the latest version of Abel or Mabel, please do tell us, so that we can correct it and make a new version available to you and others. The latest version of Abel is available as an update for free download by owners of the original CD. Updates of Mabel will also be available in the future, for those who have purchased Mabel as a download or on CD.

If you believe you have found a bug, or cannot find out how to do something even after studying the latest documentation - or simply want to share your experiences - please send an email to an address of the form
support@company.co.uk
where "company" is "abelsim". (Apologies for not writing the address more clearly, but this way may avoid us getting even more spam!)

If you are having problems installing Abel or Mabel, or getting it to run properly after you've installed it, please look through the lists of known problems below and also look at the troubleshooting section of the Abel/Mabel documentation before contacting us for help.

If you've got a problem and you're not using the latest version of Abel/Mabel, download and install the latest version: the problem may already be fixed!

Known Problems for Abel

Version 3.6
There are no reported problems in Abel 3.6.

Version 3.5.3b and 3.5.3 only
Two small problems in these early-2008 updates have been fixed in version 3.6.

Windows Vista
If you are using Windows Vista with Abel 3.5.3b or earlier versions, you may find that Abel's help system doesn't work, or that you can't save changes to method collections, option files, etc. These issues are fixed in version 3.6.

Installing Abel version 3.5.1 and before
The Abel CD (version 3.5.1 and before) was a multi-session disc, containing both audio tracks for listening to in a domestic CD player, and data for installing the program. A very small number of CD drives cannot read multi-session discs. If you have one of these CD drives you will only be able to use the CD for listening to, not to install Abel. If this happens to you, send an email to the address given above, and we'll send you a replacement CD.

On Windows 2000 and XP systems, when you instert the Abel CD (version 3.5.1 and before), you might get a message:

C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\AUTOEXEC.NT. The system file is not suitable for running MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows applications. Choose 'Close' to terminate the applcation.
This is a known problem affecting the installer (not Abel itself) and is caused by a missing or corrupt file on the PC (not by Abel). It is reported, with a fix, on Microsoft's website, see the Microsoft information (for XP, but it seems to apply to Windows 2000 too). Note that you can only follow their first suggested repair route if you have the CD for your version of Windows - and some PC suppliers no longer supply Windows CDs with their systems. The article does give further suggestions that don't involve the Windows CD. If you can't solve the problem, or are unhappy to follow such procedures on your PC, email AbelSim at the address given above to request a CD that avoids the problem.

Known Problems for Mabel

Version 1.0
There are no reported problems in Mabel 1.0.