Since the launch of Dragon Medical Practice Edition 4, we have had many issues with the Philips SpeechMikes not working properly with DMPE4. The biggest issue is that if you close down DMPE4 and restart it, the microphone doesn’t work properly. A reboot usually fixes this. The reason for this is when you close DMPE4, it really doesn’t close. There are still about a half a dozen processes that Dragon uses and it seems as though until these are restarted, the SpeechMikes won’t work properly due to PDCC not being able to communicate with Dragon properly. Note that this is being written about a month after the Dragon Medical Practice Edition 4 launch and there hasn’t been any patches yet so this may be addressed once a much needed first patch is released to address the many bugs. Also, PDCC we are testing on it is version 4.0.400 so an update to PDCC may fix this also. There is also an issue with poor response from the SpeechMikes when in toggle mode where there is at least a second or two lag after releasing the record button before the microphone turns off.
To help our customers work around this, we have create a script that will close all Dragon processes and PDCC and relaunch them. So far this has addressed any issues with the microphone not connecting to Dragon properly without having to restart the PC. There are three files associated with this script and the reason for three files is we need to run elevated to kill the Dragon processes BUT we can’t launch DMPE4 in elevated mode so we have a batch file that calls another batch file in elevated mode to kill the processes and the continues in regular mode. There is a third party exe that we are using to launch elevated called, elevate that we found at http://code.kliu.org/misc/elevate/. It is attached in the file package here as well. When the shortcut is launched, it checks to see if the dragon bar is still loaded and if so, we are assuming that the user profile is open and we don’t want to kill Dragon with that open so that we don’t do any damage to the users profile so we just prompt the user to close Dragon first. Also please note that this was created specifically for Windows 10 although it should work for other Windows versions as the processes will be the same.
To install this, do the following;
- Download the files here
- Copy the DMPE4Maint.exe, KillDragon.exe and elevate.exe to the DMPE4 Program Directory (C:\Program Files (x86)\Nuance\NaturallySpeaking15\Program\”)
- Set the security of these files to Modify for All Users (Unless the user is a local Administrator)
- Create a Desktop Shortcut to the DMPE4Maint.exe file. I recommend renaming the Shortcut to Dragon Medical Practice Edition 4. I also recommend updating the shortcut icon to the DMPE4 icon.
- Test it
Note that this was designed assuming the user is a basic user and not an Administrator. You will need Admin privileges to set the permissions on the files and possibly to copy the files the Dragon Program directory.
One other note is you can alleviate some of the lag with the record button is to not use the Dragon Command to toggle the microphone but instead map the hotkey in Dragon for Microphone toggle (Default is Number Pad +) through the Philips Device Control Center. One caveat of this is the record light on the SpeechMike will not turn on when in record.
If you still have problems with this, please contact us and we’ll be happy to help.
