This page tries to answer frequently asked questions. If your question is not answered here, have a look at the Getting in contact section.
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1.1. | What is FreeGuide? |
FreeGuide™ is a TV listings viewer that works offline. See "What is FreeGuide". | |
1.2. | How do I install FreeGuide? |
See the installation instructions. | |
1.3. | How do I use FreeGuide? |
Look at "Using FreeGuide". | |
1.4. | I got an "Execution Error" message. What is wrong? |
Note: if you very quickly get an "Execution Error" message, check that you're connected to the Internet and try again. If you have to wait quite a while and then get the "Execution Error" message, everything may still be alright - click " " to see. If you get a message about "Username not specified" or "Config file not found" or "re-run --configure", try going to the " " menu and clicking " ", and following the instructions to choose your channels again. If you are in North America, don't forget to enter your username and and password, even though it says this is not recommended.If you keep getting the "Execution Error" message and you don't see any listings when you click " " then click " " and copy the error messages shown into an email and send it to freeguide-tv-users@lists.sourceforge.net with an explanation of what you were doing, what operating system you are on and what versions of Java and FreeGuide you are using. | |
1.5. | FreeGuide used to work for me but now it's stopped. What is wrong? |
If FreeGuide used to work for you and has now stopped, it is probably because the web site it grabs listings from has changed its format. Check the whether there is a new FreeGuide version. If there isn't a new FreeGuide yet, you can see whether there's a new xmltv version and then follow these instructions to install it:
Now try downloading and see whether it works. | |
1.6. | How do I completely uninstall FreeGuide on Windows? |
You can uninstall FreeGuide on Windows by going to the "Add/Remove Programs" screen in the Control Panel. That should be all you need to do. However, uninstalling FreeGuide leaves your settings (such as favourites, colours etc.) on your computer. Often, this is useful, since if you ever re-install FreeGuide it will already be set up for you, but sometimes you might want to delete these settings, for example if something has gone wrong and you want to start again from scratch, or if you just don't like programs leaving stuff all over your computer. To remove the FreeGuide settings from the Windows registry, follow these instructions: WARNING: messing with the registry can break your computer! Don't do it if you're not confident.
This should remove all trace of FreeGuide from your computer. | |
1.7. | How do I completely uninstall FreeGuide on Linux? |
First, uninstall FreeGuide using your normal package management tool. Now, for each user that used FreeGuide, delete the ~/.freeguide and ~/.java/.userPrefs/org/freeguide-tv directories. | |
1.8. | The "Choose Channels" grabber configuration step gives me an error. What is wrong? |
If your grabber fails to configure or run because it can't seem to get any data from the Internet, it may be because you need to use a proxy server. Read the proxy section for information on how to set one up. | |
1.9. | What version of Java does FreeGuide need? |
FreeGuide needs Java version 1.4.0 or above. You can find out what version you are using by opening a DOS window or Cmd prompt and typing "java -version". If it says you've got an earlier version, or if you get an error, you need to get an upgrade from http://java.sun.com/getjava/. | |
1.10. | Can I use FreeGuide from behind a proxy server? |
Yes. Have a look at "Configure proxy server" | |
1.11. | How do I change the order in which channels are listed? |
To change the order of channels, you need to make a channel set. Choose " " from the " " menu and create one there, than choose it from the drop-down in the top right hand corner of the screen. | |
1.12. | I've downloaded the listings but FreeGuide says some are still missing! What's happening? |
If you grab some listings late in a day, nearing the grabber's idea of the end of a day (e.g. close to 6am for the UK grabber) then you may be told that there are missing listings for that day even though you've just grabbed new listings. This is because the grabbing has started from tomorrow, so what's left of today doesn't have a full set of listings. Don't worry about this - just say " " and you should be able to see what you need. | |
1.13. | Something is going wrong - how can I help to diagnose the problem? |
If FreeGuide is not working or acting strangely, you should contact the developers - see How do I ask more questions?. When you do contact the mailing lists, it would be useful to know various pieces of information. You should find out your operating system (e.g Windows XP™), the version of Java™ you are using, and the version of FreeGuide. Linux users should also check theit XMLTV version. If you are having problems downloading, the first useful piece of information is the contents of the "Show details" window. Copy and paste the information in there into your email. If you are having more complex problems, the developers may ask you to try running FreeGuide from within a DOS or Cmd Window. Here is how to do that in Windows: From the choose , and click " " or " ".Now type the following 2 lines: cd "C:\Program Files\FreeGuide" <PRESS RETURN> java -jar startup.jar > log.txt <PRESS RETURN> Now copy and paste the contents of | |
1.14. | How can I make FreeGuide download more than 1 weeks' XMLTV listings at a time? |
Go to the "Tools" menu and choose "Options". Open the "Advanced" node and open the "Grabbers" node, and choose "XMLTV". In the lower text box is the command used to run the XMLTV grabber. It starts something like this: "%xmltv_path%/xmltv.exe" tv_grab_uk_rt (The uk_rt bit will be different if you are not in the UK.) After this bit are the other bits of the command, e.g. "--quiet", "--config-file" etc. If you add the string " --days 14 " after the main command (shown above) and before the other options (e.g. "--quiet") this will tell XMLTV to download 14 days instead of the default of 7. If something gets messed up and listings won't download, click the button labelled "Default" to get the old command back. Note that some of the listings sources do not provide listings for such a long time into the future, and some of the XMLTV grabbers for some countries do not listen to the --days option, so this change may not make any difference for some people. | |
1.15. | How do I use a listings grabber that is not part of the XMLTV project? (E.g. for using FreeGuide in Australia.) |
Here is some advice from one of our users on how he got Australian listings working: I went to http://minnie.tuhs.org/twiki/bin/view/TVGuide/ and signed up for an account, then i downloaded http://www.wireplay.org/xmltv_au/tv_grab_au.exe then i just went into tools, options, advanced,grabbers,xmltv, picked any one and changed the command path to C:\Program Files\video\FreeGuide\TVGuideGrabber\tv_grab_au_tuhs.exe --config-file "C:\Program Files\video\FreeGuide\TVGuideGrabber\tv_grab_au_tuhs.xml" If you manage to get any non-official grabbers working, let us know on the developers' mailing list so we can help others do the same. If any third-party grabber works well, and is not going to go into XMLTV for some reason (e.g. it's not written in Perl),and it's GPL licenced, we will consider distributing it as a part of FreeGuide to make it easier for others to use. | |
1.16. | FreeGuide doesn't list the look-and-feel I installed - how do I use it? |
If you have installed a look-and-feel that FreeGuide was
unable to identify, you may type its class name into the combo
box in the General section of the Options screen.
Note that you must provide the fully-qualified classname - one
that includes several words separated by periods, such as
If you type in the class name and nothing happens, FreeGuide is unable to find the specified class. Make sure you spelled the class name correctly. If everything is spelled correctly, make sure you installed the look-and-feel correctly. | |
1.17. | How do I change my GTK theme? |
If you're using a Unix-like operating system, use the tool
provided by your distribution vendor to install and select the
theme. Now, simply start FreeGuide and, if you haven't already
done so, select the GTK+ look-and-feel and enjoy the new look. In
general, themes are installed by extracting their files into the
If you're using Windows (or you don't want to install the
theme on your Unix-like operating system), it's not necessary to
install the theme. Extract the theme files to a directory,
keeping each theme in its own directory, and keep all the theme
directories together in a single directory to make them easy to
find (I recommend using Since most of the themes will be distributed in "tarballs" (a common way to distribute software for Unix-like operating systems), you will need an extraction tool that can handle tape archive files (tar files) and GZIP and/or BZIP2 compression. One such tool for Windows is 7-Zip. Once you've extracted the themes, you're ready to use
them. To do so, just specify the location of the
java -Dswing.gtkthemefile="C:\gtk\Theme Name\gtk-2.0\gtkrc" ... Where "..." means fill in the rest of the shortcut command that was already present. | |
1.18. | Are there any other web sites about FreeGuide? |
Richard Turnbull has assembled lots of useful information about FreeGuide on his site, along with a clever script to keep you up-to-date with the very latest versions of XMLTV and FreeGuide. You can find all this at www.kudos.byethost15.com/freeguide/. | |
1.19. | How do I find out what's being planned for future versions? |
Check out the TODO list on the developers' wiki. | |
1.20. | How do I ask more questions? |
See "Getting in contact". |