CHM help files error: The page cannot be displayed

This happens with most CHM files in Windows XP. Have a look at the solution :)

A CHM file is the Microsoft preferred format for help files within applications, and in my case I had many books in CHM format and I was surprised that after some housekeeping that none of the CHM files in a certain directory would open, and they would give a “The page cannot be displayed�? error while showing the contents in the left-hand pane.

After some fiddling around and searching online to no avail (Microsoft identified the problem but offered no solution) I found out that the reason for the problem was because there was a hash (#) in my file path. The files that were not working were in a folder called ‘c#’ and the hash in the directory name was causing problems. The problem arises when there is a hash in any part of the directory path to the CHM file. The problems seems to arise because the hash character signifies an anchor in HTML so the CHM file is getting a bit confused as to where to look for the content.

More info here - http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;312456