Text to speech – installing components individually

The combined TextToSpeechCX installer is advised in all cases, but advanced users can also choose to install the components individually if they have a particular reason to do so.

All the components are available from http://www.microsoft.com/MSAGENT/downloads/

The following components are required, and must be applied in this order:

  1. The speech API (it has to be version 4 - even if you have v5 which comes with WinXP, you'll need v4 too, because MS Agent requires v4).  This file is called spchapi.exe (824KB) and is listed in the 'SAPI 4.0 runtime support' section of the Microsoft downloads page.
  2. Microsoft Agent core components.  This file is called msagent.exe (approx 395KB) and is listed in the 'Microsoft Agent and localization support' section of the Microsoft downloads page.
  3. The Lernout & Hauspie® TTS3000 TTS engine - British English (2.5 MB exe).  This file is called lhttseng.exe.  Choose 'British English' from the drop-down box in the 'Text-to-speech engines' section of the Microsoft downloads page.

There is a registry permissions issue for the speech engine which means that you will have to configure your registry permissions appropriately if you want the text to speech to work for users who do not have Administrator or Power User rights.  See  http://www.microsoft.com/msagent/support/user/tts3000deploy.asp for details. 

Additionally, tests have shown that you will have to give away Modify permissions to the appropriate users or group (typically the Users or Domain Users group) on the following folders:

  • Modify permissions on %SYSTEM%\lhsp
  • Modify permissions on %SYSTEM%\Temp

Where %SYSTEM% is the folder where the Windows operating system is installed (typically C:\Windows).

You can set these permissions manually using the security permissions features built in to Windows.  Alternatively you can use the following program from Careersoft to set these permissions for you: SetTextToSpeechPermissions.exe  (approx 84KB).

The combined installer - a reminder

A reminder that in nearly all cases the Careersoft combined TextToSpeechCX.exe installer is the easiest way to update clients for text to speech. It installs all the required components and sets the necessary permissions, avoiding the need to set them manually as detailed on this page.

Page date 03/08/09