This document will provide you with a brief overview of the support services Fusion Logic provides for users of its products. Perhaps more to the point, it will assist you in using our support services to resolve your software problems in a timely manner.

Like most software developers, Fusion Logic charges for most software support. We would like to see you fully realize the potential of the software you've bought, and to this end we're here to help you in the event that you run into difficulties.

Having said this, our resources are finite, and in order to continue to provide low-cost support for our products, we'll need your assistance in addressing your support issues.
We should also point out that, as per the license agreements for all Fusion Logic products, the cost of purchasing or licensing our software does not include payment for support. Purchasing a license for Fusion Logic software does not entitle you to support.
The circumstances under which we will decline to provide you with support are fairly extreme – they'll be discussed later in this document.

Before you contact us

Submitting a support request

Common software problems we can't fix

Common support issues and misconceptions

All software problems have identifiable causes. Some of the causes are extremely obscure, and from time to time a few of them appear to originate in alternate universes. Contemporary software is breathtakingly complex, and as such, some of the problems that occur in using it can be difficult to identify.
It's important to keep in mind that three general elements get involved in your using one of our applications:

The Fusion Logic software you're running.
The operating system the software is running on, that is, a version of Windows.
The other software that's installed and possibly running on your system concurrent with the Fusion Logic application in question.

When your software misbehaves, the cause of its bad manners can be a genuine bug in the software, or it can be a problem caused by the operating system that supports it, or other things running on your system.
It's a mistake to assume that all software problems are caused by bugs in the software that appears to be malfunctioning.

Here's one of the most important considerations in our addressing software problems.
If we can't reproduce the problem you've encountered, we wont be able to fix it.

If you encounter a problem with an Fusion Logic application, you should do the following before you contact us for support

Make sure the problem is reproducible.
Windows is rarely entirely stable, and it's not unheard of for it to crash applications running under it, or to cause them to exhibit unexpected behavior. Many such issues are one-time events which don't recur. If you run into a problem, make sure it happens repeatedly before you call in the big guns.

Check for upgrades.
Visit the web page for the Fusion Logic software in question and see if there's a newer version available. You can find the current version for your installed Fusion Logic software in the About dialog, typically accessed through the Help menu. If there's a newer patch level available, install it and see if your problem persists.

Our objective in responding to a software support request is to resolve the problem with your software. If your objective is something other than this, you probably need to read a different web page.
Here are some guidelines to assist you in getting your software problem resolved as effectively as possible.

As noted above, we usually need to be able to reproduce problems in house to address them. For this to happen, you'll need to provide us with a comprehensible, detailed, specific description of the problem you've encountered. "My CNC Workshop doesn't work" won't cut it.

Please avoid the use of jargon, abbreviations and other aspects of cyberspeak which we're unlikely to be able to understand.

If you encounter an error message, tell us exactly what it said – not just that you saw a message.

If you contact us and we reply, and then you reply to our reply – a phenomenon referred to as a "message thread" – please be certain to quote the complete message thread with each successive reply. This is the only way we'll be able to keep track of the conversation. Our support staff typically deals with hundreds of messages each day. If you don't quote your previous messages, we will not be able to continue your support session.

Software support requests are typically addressed within one business day, and usually within a few hours. Business days do not include weekends or holidays. We have been known to let this lofty standard slip from time to time when we get swamped, or when we're confronted by support issues that turn out to be real head-scratchers.

Some software support issues don't really involve software bugs per se. They're caused by interactions with other things on your computer, disagreements between what you think our software should do and what we designed it to do and unfortunate physical laws of the universe which we've petitioned the universe to change, but which it insists on keeping as is. Here are a few of the ones to watch out for.

Incompatible system libraries.
Grab something solid – this will get a bit technical. From the perspective of a program, Windows is a sort of enormous tool-box which the program in question can use to perform common tasks. If a program needs to open a window on your screen, play music, obtain the square root of a number, draw a three-dimensional sphere with realistic lighting – and buckets of other things too numerous to mention here – it can ask Windows for help.
Not all the buckets of the things Windows knows how to do are part of the main core of Windows itself – what programmers call its "kernel." A lot of its functions are provided by ancillary blocks of intelligence call "system libraries." Programmers call these libraries "DLLs."

Sometimes – for reasons which defy easy understanding – third-party software will use non-standard versions of these libraries. These non-standard libraries typically work correctly for the software that requires them, but often break other applications which expect to be able to call the real libraries installed by Windows.

In some cases, third-party software that relies on non-standard libraries uses "private" versions of the libraries in question. This means that if the misbehaving software is running, the non-standard library it requires will be loaded into memory. As only one copy of a library can be in memory at one time, any other software which wants to call the library will wind up calling the non-standard one, often with unpredictable results. Closing the misbehaving software will remove its non-standard library from memory. Other applications which need access to this library will then be free to call the original one installed with Windows, and the problem will appear to go away.

A more serious aspect of library incompatibility occurs when third-party software actually overwrites some of Windows' system libraries with non-standard versions. In this case, all applications which depend on the overwritten libraries will call the non-standard ones, and get into trouble as a result. This second group of library issues are very hard to track down, as it's usually impossible to know which applications have performed so vile a deed as this, and which libraries they overwrote. It's also not easy to fix, as having overwritten a library, the original one is usually history.

Recent versions of Windows have been designed to prevent the latter behavior, but some third-party software circumvents this protection.

For practical purposes, it's impossible for us – or any other software developer – to create applications which will run reliably when the operating system they're running on has been damaged or modified. In some cases we'll be able to provide work-arounds for library compatibility issues. In a few others, you're sunk.

Needless to say, we're working on an improved strategy to deal with these contentious little beasts – at the moment, we've opted for a data management structure which is as reliable as possible, as opposed to one that works well under some versions of Windows, and poorly under others.

Permission issues.
Some versions of Windows – most notably Windows 2000 and XP – can be configured for multiple users. This means that, for example, each member of a family could log into a single computer under his or her name, and have access only to those files which he or she installed or created. In addition to these regular users, such a computer has an Administrator account, which has access to all files.

Regular user accounts on these systems have specific limitations to prevent them from compromising the internal workings of the system and to keep the files of other users private. One oftentimes troubling limitation is that regular users can't write to the \WINDOWS directory, the folder where Windows keeps its working components. In that regular users can't write to the \WINDOWS directory, neither can software which has been installed by regular users.

There are all sorts of problems which arise out of permission issues. You might find that some perfectly valid files can't be accessed, or can be opened but not deleted or modified, because they belong to another user. It's not always obvious why these problems arise, especially if you're not accustomed to a multiple user environment.

Here's another common problem. Most of Fusion Logic applications store their configuration data in the \WINDOWS directory. If you're logged into a multiple user system as a regular user when you install one of our applications, that application won't be able to write its configuration data to your hard drive. Among other things, this configuration data is where Fusion Logic software stores its activation codes. Software installed this way will keep forgetting that it has been registered.

This latter problem is easily solved by uninstalling the affected software, logging in under the Administrator account and reinstalling the software

Drivers.
Peripheral devices, such as printers, scanners, monitors, CD-ROM drives and so on – are interfaced to Windows through special libraries called "drivers." Drivers are required because each model of printer works differently, and only its driver knows how to make it do whatever it was made to do. In a very simple sense, then, if Windows wants to print something to a printer, it uses that printer's driver to translate Windows' internal commands for printing into whatever the printer supported by that driver expects.
Like all software, printer drivers can embody software bugs, or things which their authors haven't implemented correctly. These issues are often very hard for us to address, as we have access to a limited number of printers, monitors and so on in house. If you're having trouble with one of our applications and, for example, a printer we don't own, tracking down the problem can be fairly time-consuming. In some cases, we'll be unable to resolve these issues.
For this reason, you should take advantage of the availability of demonstration copies of Fusion Logic software before you purchase it. You should also be sure to update your hardware drivers if you experience problems with these devices.

Corrupt or misnamed files.
The inability of Fusion Logic software to open or process specific files can be caused by genuine software problems. However, the vast majority of file access problems have to do with misnamed files. The use of formatting characters such as / \ . , ( ) etc can cause really weird results

System resources.
Your computer has a finite amount of system memory. System memory is also referred to as "RAM." This memory is where Windows stores parts of itself, where running programs are stored and where programs store the data they're working in. Your computer also has a finite amount of hard drive space, where files are stored. The two are not interchangeable.
If a program requires more memory than is currently available, Windows will attempt to honor its request by a process referred to as "spooling." It will see if there are any programs currently in memory which aren't doing anything at the moment. If it finds some, it will write them to temporary disk files and free up the memory they occupied. If it can't find enough free memory by spooling actual programs, it might start spooling lesser-used parts of itself.
In some extreme cases, this strategy can sneak up on Windows and bite it somewhere embarrassing. It might spool an important part of itself, realize it needs that part a few seconds later, recover the spooled part, spool it again and so on. Windows can appear to have locked up if this happens on a large enough scale.
This will typically become an issue if you attempt to run a lot of programs or work with large amounts of data on a machine with limited available memory.
It's important to keep in mind that what constituted a lot of memory a few years ago can be little more than small change to contemporary software. Later versions of Windows require significantly more memory exclusively for their own use – often leaving the software you actually want to run a bit short of real estate.
Some applications are serious memory pigs, and may tie up the bulk of your available memory. Chief among these are web browsers – if you encounter problems which seem as if they might be memory related, close everything else on your system, starting with your web browser.

Here's another common system resource issue. Inexpensive ink-jet printers are usually inexpensive because they don't include any meaningful amount of printer memory. When you have Windows print to one, all the work of arranging the pixels to be printed is done in your computer's memory, and then stored in temporary spooling files on your hard drive. High resolution color ink jet printers can require several tens of megabytes of memory to render a page, and at least this much hard drive space to spool it. If you print multiple pages, all the pages will have to be spooled before they're printed.
Should you have insufficient hard drive space to print all the pages in question to be spooled, your print job may fail.

First-release installations of Windows.
The installation of Windows that came with your computer, or which you bought in a box, is probably out of date. Like all software, Windows typically develops a few bugs and compatibility issues as it ages. Microsoft addresses these with downloadable patches and service packs. These can be automatically applied to your system over the Internet through the Window Update function.

It's truly amazing how many formerly insurmountable problems go away when you update Windows.

Note that if you aren't prepared to keep your installation of Windows up to date – and in so doing eliminate known Windows problems in attempting to resolve issues with Fusion Logic software – we probably won't be able to assist you with software support if we determine that the problem you've encountered might be caused by Windows issues.

All my other software works, so the problem with my Fusion Logic software must be a bug.
This reasoning has several potential holes in it. The most notable is that not all applications use all the functions of Windows. If, for example, a library compatibility issue, as described earlier in this document, exists on your system, only those applications which attempt to use the affected library will encounter problems.

My software was working last week, but now it's stopped – there must be a bug in it.
Unlike cheese, software doesn't deteriorate of its own accord. If your formerly working Fusion Logic application works no longer, something has changed. You need to consider whether you have changed any system settings, or added or removed hardware or software in the interval.

I bought my computer from a well-known manufacturer, and I had a professional technician install my software, so there's no way my system's the cause of my problems.
Not to put too fine a point on it, it doesn't work this way. A knowledgeable technician can go a long way toward ensuring that your system is properly configured, but only God or one of Her immediate subordinates can fathom all the potential software and hardware interaction issues in a modern personal computer.

We encounter extremely few situations in which we are unable to assist our users. The world seems a surprisingly agreeable place – there are times when we could almost persuade ourselves that all the disconcerting news that appears on CNN is actually a fabrication by extraterrestrials intended to soften earthlings up for an invasion. Just in case we're wrong in this respect, however, you might want to keep the following deal-breakers in mind

Fusion Logic software support is not a talking manual.
If you need help with something which is explained in the documentation for your software, we'll refer you to the documentation. This will be true even if you're in a massive hurry, if you claim to violently dislike the manual page color scheme or if you believe that the button used to access the manual in most Fusion Logic applications is a tool of unclean spirits.

We will only provide limited support for unregistered users.
If you have not paid for support, we will at our discretion assist you to the extent we feel is required to permit you to evaluate the software.

We will not provide support to unregistered users who, in our opinion, do not intend to register Fusion Logic software.
Call us capitalist pigs.