Survey of English Usage
- Home
- About the Survey
- Staff
- Research Projects
- The International Corpus of English (ICE)
- ICE-GB
- DCPSE
- Corpus Queries
- Next Generation Tools
- The English Noun Phrase
- The English Verb Phrase
- Subordination in Spoken & Written English
- Teaching English Grammar in Schools
- Research Resources
- Software Sales
- Mobile Apps
- Events
- Summer School
- Study With Us
- Courses for Teachers
- Survey Archives
- Links
Frequently asked questions
Problems installing the ICE-GB Sample Corpus
The problems that people encounter typically occur at one of four stages.
Downloading | Uncompressing | Installing (where) | Running (font problems)
The purpose of this FAQ (Frequently Asked Question) page is to help you sort out most installation problems quickly and easily. If you are stuck, please email Sean Wallis, but we may take a few days to get back to you.
Other questions
What’s in the download package? | What do I need to run ICECUP? | What can ICECUP do? | Will ICECUP continue to be developed? | How do FTFs work?
If you need a quick response on non-technical questions, you can email the Survey.
DOWNLOADING FAILURES
Typical message: "error in ZIP: use PKZIPFIX"
Typical cause. The download process is incomplete. If you are trying to download the package at home, please bear in mind that large downloads can be difficult. Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator may 'drop the line' and stop prematurely. Worse, you may not even discover this until you try to install the program. Of course, you will then get an error like the one above, because not all of the package has been downloaded.
- If the minimum package is downloaded correctly, it should be 1,255,854 (zip) or 1,325,575 (exe) bytes long.
- The complete package is 3,718,609 (zip) 3,788,330 (exe) bytes long.
Solution. You will have to retry the download.
- Try again at a different time (e.g., evenings, GMT).
- Try the minimum package rather than the complete one.
- If you are in real difficulty, we can email the software to you. This is a solution of last resort, however, because emailed attachments take up space on your mail system and may be blocked. Protocol demands that you must get your mail manager's OK before requesting this from us.
UNCOMPRESSING FAILURES
Typical message: "Overwrite ICE-GB.IDX (y/n)?..."
Typical cause. This used to be caused by 'double-clicking' on the download file in Windows (or hitting Open rather than Save). This problem has been solved by using a different zip program.
Old Solution (for the record). You had to run the program with the parameter '-d'. You can do this in a number of different ways. Suppose you want to expand the complete package, 'ice-gb-c' from the directory 'c:\temp' where it is currently residing after downloading.
- Go to Start | Run... in Windows 95+. In Windows 3.1/3.11, use File | Run... in Program Manager. Type 'c:\temp\ice-gb-c -d'. (The space after the program name is important. If you use the Browse button to locate the program, make sure that you add the '-d' parameter after the '.exe'.)
or
- Open an MS-DOS window or Restart in MS-DOS. Type:
- c:
- cd \temp
- ice-gb-c -d
- Then close the MS-DOS window or type 'win' to restart Windows.
If the uncompression has been performed OK, you will get a new directory, called 'download', inside the 'temp' directory. All the files will be put into subdirectories within this.
|
What this directory should look like: C:\temp\download
See below for where these files go when they are installed. |
INSTALLATION FAILURES
If you get this far, installation is usually pretty straightforward. Normally double-clicking on 'Install.exe' is sufficient.
Typical problem: crash or GP fault while installing
However you may still have hard disk space problems which can lead to the installation program generating an error.
Solutions.
Check that all material has been expanded OK.
- Run ICECUP3 without installation (you can double click on this). If this works, then the package has indeed been downloaded OK.
Check that enough space on the target drive is present.
- If there is not enough hard disk space - you need around 11Mb (minimum) or 20Mb (complete) before you start - then try compressing some files on your hard disk temporarily. (Hint: Word files typically zip to under 10% of their original size).
Suppose you specify the Corpus directory as C:\sampler and the Software directory as C:\icecup. Suppose also that Windows is running from the C:\windows directory.
This is what the installed file structure will look like. C:\sampler is simplified for brevity.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
- NB. If you are installing to a network, it may be preferable to copy the font, initialisation file and DLLs manually to the Software directory ('C:\icecup' in the above). The rule of thumb is that any version of ICECUP invoked by a remote user must be able to detect the presence of these files. Windows programs try first the invokation directory (which might be a remote 'X:\icecup' referring to the server) followed by the current Windows session directory (possibly a local 'C:\windows').
- The initialisation file specifies where the corpus, definition, and help files are to be found.
RUNTIME FAILURES (including font problems)
Missing files or software clashes can cause problems at run time. However, if you have followed the steps above correctly, you should have few problems. There is one possible exception to this.
“The program runs OK, but some of the text comes out jumbled up.”
The most immediately obvious way of telling if this is the case is that the text in the buttons along the top of the screen will be in disarray.
This seems to happen with NT4 only (let us know if it does happen with any other version of Windows). The bug appears to be due to an undocumented variation between NT4 and other versions of Windows.
Solution. Manually install the font so that the system knows where it is.
Go to Start | Settings | Control Panel and open "Fonts". Locate the file "Previews.fon" from the unpacked files with Windows Explorer and copy it into the "Fonts" window. When you next run ICECUP it will find the font. We cannot test this at the Survey because we do not run Windows NT, so the advice must be provisional. Email us with success or failure and we can firm up or correct this advice. The standard fonts that ICECUP uses are Times New Roman, Arial, Symbol and Wingdings.
And if all else fails...
You can try the new ICECUP 3.1 software, which is currently being actively updated, tested and fixed against a variety of Windows platforms including XP.
TRY BEFORE YOU BUY
“I am interested in buying ICE-GB.
Are there any known problems with my version of Windows?”
There is no known problem with Windows 2000, 98, 95, 3.1 or 3.11. There is a font conflict which can be overcome with Windows NT4 (see above).
The simple answer is try before you buy. Download the sample corpus.
If this works on your system (do follow the instructions!) then, disk space permitting, you will know that the full package will work.
Useful info:
The full ICE-GB corpus is 50x the size of the sample corpus but the ICECUP 3.0 software is 'given away free'. If you are going to do any kind of serious research you should use the full corpus. You cannot make any strong claims from a 20,000 word sample.
You pay for a licence to use the corpus, and there are 3 different kinds of licence, depending on whether you are using it for personal use (at home) in an institution or wish to allow any number of users to use it within the institution (department, library access, etc.). For more information see the order form and licence agreement, which is also included in the download package.
You are not allowed to use the corpus to develop a commercial product (not least because we do not own copyright on all the original text). We have a licence to distribute the original copyright text providing that it is for research or educational use. The annotation and grammar is all copyright Survey of English Usage.
We will be releasing an upgrade to the software in the near future. Watch this space for details.
This page last modified 14 May, 2020 by Survey Web Administrator.