Specimen Download Bug
The latest version of Virtual Microscope (6.2.2) has an incompatibility with some recent operating systems that is resulting in a few users not seeing any available specimens to download in their 'Get More Specimens' section. New installs of the software will see the three included specimens in the top section, but no buttons to grab more in the lower section.
Working Around The Bug
If you are having this problem, there is a manual workaround. You will need to download the specimen files by hand and manually copy them to your Virtual Microscope specimens folder. Step-by-step:
- Visit http://virtual.itg.uiuc.edu/data/jars/.
- Right click and 'Save As...' any of the .jar files that interest you (each one is a full specimen file).
- Save them to a folder on your computer.
- Find your Virtual Microscope 'specimens' folder. For Windows users, this will be in C:\Program Files\Virtual Lab\specimens or something similar to that.
- Copy all of the .jar files you downloaded into the specimens folder.
- Restart Virtual Microscope.
- You should now see the new specimens in your 'My Specimens' area.
What's the Problem?
This bug cropped up after Windows Vista came out. Not all Windows users have it but some do. The software contacts our server every time it loads to check and see if there are new specimens available. Something in the newer versions of Windows is preventing this communication.
Virtual Microscope is no longer supported by ITG, as we have no staff or funds to do so. Therefore we have been unable to track down the bug and fix it. We have no current plans to do so in the future.