So I decided to finish Crysis and had many issues along the way.  Understandably I’m running Windows 7, however the game had Vista support.  Since I’ve been running Windows 7 x64, I’ve ran flawlessly in terms of games outside of the initial issues with Battlefield, which always seem to exist on releases from Dice and they were clearly the issue of a game needing TLC from the developers.  However, with Crysis it seems to be bugs, as well.  I ran into turrets that wouldn’t fire properly (they’d stop, only fire once per click or not work at all) and then suddenly start working without issue.

There was one point where I saved the game while trying to take a boat with heli’s on my ass and I died in the boat, however, when I re-spawned they were on top of me and I died immediately every time I spawned…over and over and over again.  I got pissed, left the game to play something else and started the next night and viola, it was like it was the first time through, where the heavy fire was after I got into the boat and I made it after a few tries.  This occurred a few times including the game saving during a fight for some reason (reminded me of Men of Valor issues) and I died every time I spawned and had to go back and start over from the previous save.

I had a few lock ups here and there that reminded me of the old days of gaming where after a few hours of play, a game would crash.  This seemed to remedy itself when I restarted.  Finally tonight, I get to Reckoning, the final level, and the game started locking up again.  There’s a cut scene with the Admiral that requires you to knock down the door and head for the flight deck for the showdown.  First time through the flight deck door wouldn’t open so I restarted the last save and pressed space bar to get past the cut scene.  I kept locking up when I went out, so I restarted, rebooted and finally reloaded the previous save, which put me through the freakin’ cut scene again that I let play through since I thought that skipping it corrupted the last save game.  FINALLY!!  The game saved as I entered the flight deck door (that opened this time) and I was on to the finale, or so I thought.  I hit the flight deck and it crashed again.  I rebooted, turned off AA and got out on the flight deck, kicked some ass and boom…blue screen, which is where I draw the line.  I finished the game by watching it on YouTube after reading a lot of people having issues on Reckoning but most of the posts were from 2008 and even 2009.  I didn’t go far enough to see if anyone tried the game this year.

I can only hope that Warhead won’t be the same crap.

Is an updated gaming PC?  We’ll see.  The ATI Catalyst 10.7 hit on July 26 and working fine.  I also noticed that Creative released new drivers for the X-Fi Platinum as well as new Alchemy drivers on June 16.  We’ll see how those go after installing them.  Creative isn’t always as diligent about making things better on updates and I really don’t think a company as large as Creative could have a freakin’ slower server to download updates from, I think I maxed around 140KB/sec. on the downloads and rarely did they stay that high.  I really need to get my PCI-E X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro reinstalled, I shelved it after the issues with UT3 and how long ago was that?   Then again I’ve been playing it recently but with all the updates, I’d hope the crash issues are gone, even if it’s just running on Windows 7 x64.

’til next time….

So I’ve tried Chrome where I found that I consistently got DNS errors when loading pages. I refresh and it loads fine and I don’t mind the browser but it’s not Firefox.  This week I’ve been giving Safari a try, again it’s OK but not Firefox and I’ve noticed a few issues with it like accepting gifts in Facebook.  It doesn’t return you to the request page properly and when you browse back, it’s f’d up…shows incorrect tags on buttons, lists the wrong apps for buttons, etc.

Firefox never had these issues, even IE, while having more than FF, doesn’t have these little issue. So I rebuilt this past week with Windows 7, installed Firefox 3.5.1 and viola, Firefox has started having the EXACT same issues. Could it be my AT&T Uverse? Maybe, but not in the past have I noticed these issues but with Chrome. It almost seems that Firefox has made their changes for private browsing and whatever else they changed under the hood and added this annoying bug. I ended up logging into Facebook earlier using IE because it allowed me to rather than telling me there was a DNS error with Firefox for about 5 minutes straight. Oddly enough after I logged in with IE, it worked on Firefox with some delay.  Could it be Windows 7? Maybe but my laptop running FF 3.0.x has yet to show this behavior.

The newest problem seems to be with 3.5.2 and EXTREMELY slow page browsing. I load a video on YouTube and it keeps stammering as it tries to keep up. So I reset my router thinking maybe my connection was to blame (although speedtest.net didn’t seem to show it but could be lost packets somewhere) and the same thing. I tried to load the same page in IE and it works flawlessly. I’m not sure exactly what they’re doing with Firefox but it almost seems like Coke changing the formula while on top of the world. Firefox has slowly, and more recently, quickly started to make huge grounds on Internet Explorer but now at the height they seem to have stopped testing released code? I’m not sure, I’m just reporting what I’m seeing… Maybe others are seeing different results but when Facebook, Youtube and other popular sites are loading slow, it’s not good when the desktop browser is chugging along fine.

Again I’m a huge Firefox user and supporter but not if they’re trying to keep up with a fledgling browser and in the process have started to disregard the user experience. As for the testing, it’s already been published the security flaws in 3.5 so I’m wondering if this is the beginning of them being in the spotlight? What is that, now famous, quote? With great power comes great responsibility.

I finally uploaded a few pictures of my Goliath project that I upgraded last month.   My network naming standard is based on UnrealTournament vehicles.  My main system is Leviathan (the powerhouse, although not accurate with the 2x300GB Velociraptors), the 5+ TB server is Goliath, laptop is Raptor and the iPhone is Manta.   Scorpion was my media PC but I’ve combined that with Goliath and use the Xbox for streaming media but will probably be back up online once I am able to reduce it down to an extremely small case for my Ubuntu box.

Anyway… I put up 4 images of the hardware and what it looks like finished.  It’s a lot of storage but not a lot of power, it actually runs quite efficient on an Antec 300w PSU that I’ve tested output on.  It has ran rock solid since I brought it up and since I’m using as a media server as well as storage, it’s running Windows Vista x64 w/8GB of RAM.   Still not much of a fan of Vista but XP didn’t do what I wanted for this project, so I had to move to it.

Here’s the images… The installed components are slightly blurry (first image) but it’s the gist that matters.   As you can see from the side view it took some, ummm, pliers to get the SuperMicro enclosure in since it had 5 1/4 rails.  This didn’t turn out to be too bad since it kind of hugs the enclosure and secures it better.  I also did some wire management after I verified things were working.  The case is a simple Thermaltake M9 which is realatively cheap.  I had no intentions of doing the enclosure when I bought it or I would have probably went with another Antec 900.  I may eventually upgrade my main rig to a 1200 and move it into service, but honestly this little Thermaltake is great for $50.  I also have a 650w PSU waiting in the wings but if I can keep things running without peaking out the 300w, it’s going to stay for efficiency.  If I decide to throw in my ATI 3870 I’ll add the 650w but for the moment there’s really no need.

As I said, this has ran quite well other than some of the things I took for granted in Windows XP for speed like simple items of searching for a file and doing a sort after searching, folders remaining after moving the contents to another location with the same folder name (after confirming to move and replace), the speed that folder deletion occurs and a few other things that I find annoying as hell with Vista.  At least Raptor is running well with Windows 7 x64 beta other than the damn start menu and lack of classic, but that’s for another day.

Specs:

Thermaltake M9 Case  |  Antec 300w PSU  |  Asus P5W Deluxe Motherboard  |  Intel E6600 Processor  |  8GB Corsair RAM
3Ware 9650SE-4LPML RAID Controller (4 Port)  |  4 x 1.5TB Seagate Barracudas in RAID5  |  1 x 750GB Seagate Barracuda
ATI 2600XT  |  2xCD/DVD Recorders (no BD yet)  |  SuperMicro Hot-Swappable Mobile Rack 5×3.5 | 5-in-1 Card Reader
Logitech MX5000 Bluetooth Mouse/Keyboard  |  Gateway 2400 24″ LCD  |  Perelian X2040 LCD  |  Antec Veris Remote/IR

Upgrades will be moving to maybe a Q6600 if I find a used one cheap, the 650w PSU and maybe the ATI HD3870 which would make this a decent gaming box as well.

Click an image below for individual images (or click here for the full gallery):

I’m about to rebuild my secondary box (see previous post) and was thinking of finally using my Vista Ultimate x64 disc (that I still really am hesitant to install on my main PC) but with the Windows 7 beta available and how I use the system I thought that I’d just download the beta and install it.  When the time comes, I’ll either go to Vista x64 or pick up Windows 7 x64.

Anyway, I went out to get my key today, did a quick search on Google and got the following results:





Note the interesting “This site may harm your computer.” below the Download the Windows 7 Beta header.  I clicked on the link and it gave me the malware screen warning me about proceeding and I had to copy and paste the URL into the address bar.  I checked before posting but it appears they’ve “fixed” it already but thought it was interesting enough to post.  I didn’t take a lot of time to learn how sites get this designation but I’d assume that it’s possibly some Microsoft haters reporting the site or Google…er um… having fun?

A while back I must have wandered into a bad, bad site. I was browsing on FireFox, checking some old bookmarks when I noticed a graphics tips site acted odd and locked up (it was also no longer what the title in my bookmarks suggested). FireFox appeared to lock up, I killed it and had to take care of something else. While I know the story is always “I didn’t install anything”, I can honestly say that all I did was go to the site which was almost immediately followed by the lockup.

Regardless, a bit later I heard talking coming from my office.  I at first thought I’d lost my mind and my dogs were having a conversation.  Luckily (or maybe not) I found there were multiple Internet Explorer 7 windows opened and I saw tasks in the system tray running and realized I got hit with something while, I assume, on that page.   I did a clean up with several adware apps, Windows Defender and did a full virus scan which gave me multiple references in my registry and files on my drive (most residing in Windows, System32 or my temp folder). I deleted the files, allowed the programs to do the cleaning process of the registry in addition to me removing a few items listed in both the local user and local machine run keys and rebooted. On reboot, my Anti-Virus reported additional files. I rebooted into safe mode (which I should have done to begin with) and did additional cleaning which rendered little additional finds.   I rebooted again and things seemed to be OK until I attempted to launch IE7 for something (which I don’t use that much). I received the message Windows cannot find ‘C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe’.   When I right clicked on the icon, it took me to the path and selected the file, so it was still intact.

A few things I tried: Restoring IE default settings, copying the Internet Explorer folder from a working XP system (thinking iexplore.exe or a dll may have been corrupted or compromised), updating to IE8, uninstalling IE7 from Add/Remove programs and reinstalling, downloading IE7 again and allowed automatic update (which still worked) to install patches and when none of this rendered results, I cursed and screamed loudly at my PC but for some reason this too didn’t resolve the issue.

I had quit worrying about it, for the most part, since it’s the system I use as a media player, storage and a utility PC for backups, etc. and don’t really browse on it.  But it was always there laughing at me, pointing at me and making fun of me!!   So tonight I painted my face, stared the monitor down and said “Prepare for war”….

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