Problem:
The SimUText application downloads and installs, but then you encounter an error message that reads Unable to write to user directory: C:/Users/?? Cancelling download.
The SimUText application is installed correctly; you can use the icon to launch it, but then cannot download any chapters after logging in and opening the My Assignments page.
Diagnosis:
This problem has been reported on Windows 7 when the user name or the user's home directory in the Windows file system contains characters that are not in a Roman alphabet.
For example: a user name ᄘ might have a Windows file directory name of C:\Users\ᄘ
(This problem is also theoretically possible in Mac OS X, although to date we have had no reports of it.)
Workaround: Create a new Windows (or Mac) user with Roman characters
As noted, the problem may be that the Windows user name or user's home folder contains characters that are not in common Roman-based alphabets. Renaming the user does not necessarily work, because Windows changes the display name without changing the underlying folder name in the Windows file system.
SimUText is not qualified to work on operating systems that are based on non-Roman language sets. (However, testing has shown that it will work in Windows user accounts that contain letters with umlauts, tildes, acutes, and other characters in languages that are based on the Roman alphabet.)
To work around this problem, create a new standard (or administrative) Windows user account with a name that contains only Roman-alphabet characters (A through Z, spaces, dashes, and numbers are all OK). You can then run SimUText from that user account. (If you installed SimUText for all users on your computer, you will not have to reinstall first.)
Note: This is not the same as changing your SimUText user name! Your user name is based on an email address and does not need to be changed to solve this problem.