HELP! Have lost ability to read epubs, not only with Calibre's viewer, but with Adobe

[lburg801]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

The run the viewer in debug mode from a command prompt as

calibre-debug -w

post the output

I don't know how to get to the basic c prompt. Tried typing calibre-debug -w in the "Run" window and in the app, "Terminal". Neither opened Calibre. Screen shots attached.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by lburg801

I don't know how to get to the basic c prompt. Tried typing calibre-debug -w in the "Run" window and in the app, "Terminal". Neither opened Calibre. Screen shots attached.

Did you do this?

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

First, reboot in safe mode and see if your files open there.

BR

[lburg801]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Did you do this?



BR

Win11Pro has all sorts of hurdles to starting in safe mode. I think I did it. Attaching results. Tried opening Calibre and got an error message. Restarted Calibre in debug mode and got same error message (I think). Viewer and edit = same results as when running in normal mode.

[lburg801]

Downloaded Aquile Reader and am able to open all epubs.
Did a reinstall of ADE 4.5, authorized it with username & password and, using my daughter's NYPL account, borrowed and downloaded a book. ADE opened, showing the book cover and then froze. I had to use task manager to close the program. When I restarted ADE no book showed. Tried adding the book to old ver (3.0) but it said book was already in library.
I could add the new book to Calibre but could not open it in viewer OR epub editor. Drm protected (@Sirtel had mentioned that if a book had DRM protection, the editor would not open it so my older book must not have DRM protection.).
I believe this is a Win11 problem.

[lburg801]

Installed Ver 3.48 which was the latest version that had worked in Win7 and I am able to read my old books with E-book viewer.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by lburg801

Installed Ver 3.48 which was the latest version that had worked in Win7 and I am able to read my old books with E-book viewer.

You have to stop using calibre 3.48. There have been changes to the database and eventually, 3.48 will have a problem.

[lburg801]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You have to stop using calibre 3.48. There have been changes to the database and eventually, 3.48 will have a problem.

I wonder what the latest version is that would work in Windows.

When I lost the ability to read with e-book viewer and ADE4.5, what had likely happened was an upgrade in Win10 (what I was using on my old win7 era pc) that was incompatible with it and Calibre's e-book viewer. But red herrings abounded at the time as I was trouble shooting loss of 3.0USB functionality and other issues with my ancient pc. I thought I might, somehow (despite it making no sense) have altered some common files in Windows. My expectation was that a new pc running Win11 would fix the problem. Unfortunately, Win11 (and likely Win10Pro lastest vers) are incompatible.

At this point, I'm just grateful to be able to read the many books on my long "To Read" list.

[Martinoptic]

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "threading.py", line 1038, in _bootstrap_inner
File "calibre\utils\mdns.py", line 44, in run
File "calibre\utils\mdns.py", line 28, in get_all_ips
OSError: Unable to obtain adapter information.

@Iburg801, Could this be a graphics driver problem with QT6?

Does changing your graphics driver make any difference?

[lburg801]

Originally Posted by Martinoptic

@Iburg801, Could this be a graphics driver problem with QT6?

Does changing your graphics driver make any difference?

I don't know enough to make sense of your comments.

What is QT6?

Lenovo's Vantage program scans for problems and does an auto update of drivers, etc.

Since my problem exists with ADE4.5, too, my belief is that later upgrades to Win10 (on my old computer) and Win11 have created conflicts. I don't know what the Aquile Reader does differently, but it works in Win11.

While Calibre 3.48 is working, I wonder if there are new versions that would still work in Win11 as some features aren't delivering like they once did (i.e., Edit Metadata only pulls book covers from Goodreads despite other options being selected in Preferences). No big deal, but I confess by being spoiled by how well Calibre worked until the snafus that triggered my search for help here.

[PeterT]

One thing I'd suggest is to try installing versions of calibre-portable. Do NOT uninstall your existing calibre, but simply install calibre-portable in a brand new location, add a book to it and see if you can read with it. This will let you
a) see if the problem is related to a calibre version issue
b) see if the problem relates to a configuration value in your existing calibre install

Sent from my Pixel 7a using Tapatalk

[theducks]

QT6 is one of the GUI building blocks that Calibre uses.
Old Graphics drivers seem to have issues with this version (I have a simple, ATI fanless Graphics card in my older Dell that won't work with the viewer (and minor issues with the main GUI). 7.16 uses the olde QT5... That works for me, I just can't run the Latest Calibre on that system.

Years ago, I had to retire my AMD Athelon mainboard because the modern code required something the CPU did not support. There is a point where old hardware just can't meet the needs of modern apps.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by lburg801

I wonder what the latest version is that would work in Windows.

When I lost the ability to read with e-book viewer and ADE4.5, what had likely happened was an upgrade in Win10 (what I was using on my old win7 era pc) that was incompatible with it and Calibre's e-book viewer. But red herrings abounded at the time as I was trouble shooting loss of 3.0USB functionality and other issues with my ancient pc. I thought I might, somehow (despite it making no sense) have altered some common files in Windows. My expectation was that a new pc running Win11 would fix the problem. Unfortunately, Win11 (and likely Win10Pro lastest vers) are incompatible.

At this point, I'm just grateful to be able to read the many books on my long "To Read" list.

Do you have a laptop with dual graphics chips? If you do, switch which graphics chip calibre is using.

calibre 7 will run on Windows 10 64-bit latest version and Windows 11.

One thing to try is to reboot into safe mode and see if the latest calibre works as long as your Windows 10 is 64-bit. If it's not 64-bit but the computer is, you'll need to basically start over and install Windows 10 64-bit.

[Martinoptic]

QT6 is the cross platform base upon which Calibre 7 is built.
I have a Lenovo running windows 10 and Calibre 6.29 which seems pretty robust. I’ve had problems with my graphics drivers not installing properly but as calibre 6 runs on QT5 I haven’t run into problems with my ebooks.
If you want to play with different versions of calibre I would suggest copying your library and then use a version of calibre portable on your copy of the library.
As the database control changes between versions, you are advised to use copies of your library whilst giving it a go.
I think though that your problem may with the update to windows 11 as you suggest.
Sorry I can’t help you more.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by lburg801

I wonder what the latest version is that would work in Windows.

I use the latest Calibre on Windows 10 Pro without any issues.

[lburg801]

Originally Posted by PeterT

One thing I'd suggest is to try installing versions of calibre-portable. Do NOT uninstall your existing calibre, but simply install calibre-portable in a brand new location, add a book to it and see if you can read with it. This will let you
a) see if the problem is related to a calibre version issue
b) see if the problem relates to a configuration value in your existing calibre install

Sent from my Pixel 7a using Tapatalk

Woo-hoo! That worked!

Now what do I do? Anyway to have it discover my existing libraries in Calibre?

And what does that tell those of you who understand how all this works?

What about DeDRM. Is that possible? My head has been spinning through this whole process. Before the C19 epidemic I was making patreon donations to Kovid Goyal. I guess it's time I stepped up again.

And someone needs to let Adobe know that they need to make changes as that is the public library's default app for epubs.