Shoretel Retrieving Prompt Error: Fixing the Director Glitch

If you manage ShoreTel (Mitel) IP telephony through Shoreware Director and try to open an Auto-Attendant or Workgroup’s audio prompts, you may find the page sticks on “Retrieving Prompt” indefinitely before eventually timing out.

Cause

This happens when the ActiveX (OCX) components Shoreware Director uses to play back prompts aren’t correctly registered on the client machine you’re using to access Director.

The Fix

1. From the affected client machine, download the two required OCX files directly from your HQ server:

https://<HQIPAddress>/ShorewareDirector/twentyfour7.ocx
https://<HQIPAddress>/ShorewareDirector/voicemessage.ocx

Replace <HQIPAddress> with your system’s actual HQ server IP address.

2. Open an elevated Command Prompt and browse to the folder where you saved the two files.
3. Register each one:

regsvr32.exe twentyfour7.ocx
regsvr32.exe voicemessage.ocx

Close and reopen your browser, then navigate back to the Auto-Attendant or Workgroup prompts — they should now load normally. This typically only needs doing once per client machine, since the registration persists until the OS is reimaged or the OCX files are removed.

A Note on ActiveX and Modern Browsers (Updated for 2026)

Worth knowing before you start troubleshooting a stuck “Retrieving Prompt” screen: ActiveX controls like these two OCX files simply do not run in standard modern browsers at all — not Chrome, not Firefox, and not Edge running in its normal mode. If you’re accessing Director from any of those in their default configuration, no amount of re-registering the OCX files will fix prompt playback, because the browser won’t load ActiveX content regardless. The one path that still works is Microsoft Edge’s IE mode, a legacy compatibility feature built specifically to keep older ActiveX- and IE-dependent line-of-business tools like Shoreware Director functional. If Director isn’t already configured to open in IE mode, that’s the setting to check first — via Edge’s Internet Explorer mode site list (edge://settings/defaultbrowser or an Enterprise policy-managed list) — before assuming the OCX registration itself is at fault. It’s also worth factoring in where this system sits in its lifecycle: Mitel (which acquired ShoreTel) stopped selling add-ons and patches for the legacy ShoreTel/MiVoice Connect platform at the end of 2024, with extended support ending at the end of 2025; full support is slated to run through 2029 under Mitel’s published timeline. If you’re maintaining a Director install this old, it’s worth checking where your specific deployment sits against that timeline, since it affects what support and patches are actually still available if this or a similar issue recurs.

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