Jade_Dragon
04-26-2006, 06:40 PM
Okay, as I mentioned when I logged on, I have a new computer system. It's a pretty funny story (or maybe I'm just easily amused -- or it's one of those "better to laugh than cry" things) so I thought I'd share it with you. This is likely to be pretty long, so I wanted to put it in its own thread.
Anyway, this all started because I got Auto Assault this weekend. I knew looking at the Minimum Requirements neither of my two computers would meet them, but I was willing to try it out anyway. After all, my computers aren't really up to spec for City of Heroes either, but they still run it. I know some games will just shut down if you don't meet the Requirements, but I figured, if it doesn't run, I'll just upgrade.
I have two computer systems, a laptop, with a 1.6 GHz CPU and an NVidia graphics chip (which only has 16 Meg memory but still runs CoH) and my desktop, a 1.2 GHz AMD system with a Radeon All-In-Wonder 7500. Now, I got the All-In-Wonder because I wanted to do video editing, my last graphics card had video in, and I wanted to keep that capability. It JUST BARELY meets the requirements for CoH, in fact for the first six months or so after release it didn't actually work, as all the characters were totally black with no detail. It ran on the laptop, though, so I figured I had lucked out. (I actually bought the Radeon for Earth and Beyond, as that old card wouldn't run it. And I didn't have the laptop back then)
The 1.6 CPU in the laptop was good enough to run Auto Assault, but I wasn't sure about the graphics chip. Sure enough, it wouldn't even start, the launcher installed and patched the game, but the moment it went to the game, the splash screen appeared and then shut down. And it took me some time to install it, too, that game is like 8 Gig, and I only had 4 G free. I had to uninstall some other games (SWG for one, I thought I'd uninstalled it but apparently not) to make room.
Anyway, after all that time and effort I was hoping it would install on my desktop fine. I wasn't worried about the graphics card, but it was the 1.2 CPU that worried me, Auto Assault's minimum requirements was 1.6. When I tried to power up the system, though, I found out the power supply had blown out. I've been having trouble with the power supply before, so I think I have some spike voltage on my home power. Anyway, the machine was dead.
Fortunately, my mom has a computer too, so I borrowed her power supply. I powered up the system, and installed the game, and just as before, it got as far as the splash screen and shut down. I even used my mom's graphics card, which is a Radeon 9500 (bought so she can play CoH, though she never does :D) and still no dice. So this time I was sure it was the CPU speed that was shutting me down.
Well, I'd always considered it a little funny that my laptop had a faster CPU than my desktop, so I decided to just build a whole new system. I could give my mom my old 1.2 (she had an 800Mhz, which would only just barely run CoH) and either use her motherboard (it was identical to mine) or get a new one. I ran down to the store and picked out a 2.0 GHz 64 bit Athlon, which seemed right in the middle of the range I needed, better than the Minimum Requirement, but cheaper than the Recommended. I did need a new motherboard with that, so I got one, a new power supply, a backup in case of future failures, and a surge protector.
Of course, I needed a new Graphics card, too, so again setting myself somewhere in the middle of the range I needed, I picked a NVidia GForce 6600. I was fed up with Radeon, I never liked how dark the graphics looked, and I'd only gotten the original because it was the only all-in-one graphics and video input card I could find. This time I got a separate video input card, so if I ever want to upgrade again, I don't have to throw out the video in. Plus, I got a motherboard that had two video slots, in case I ever wanted to upgrade to a dual graphics system.
Once I got this system put together, however, it wouldn't boot. I got the startup sequence and it recognized all the hardware, but once it started trying to load Windows, it crashed. It was the new motherboard, of course, but my first thought was that it was the graphics card. The problem is that the new motherboard I bought was PCI Express, while all my old graphics cards were AGP. I had no backup to test it out.
So, I was about ready to call it quits and give up for the night (this was Monday, and everything was closed) but at the last minute I decided to do an Internet search. Sure enough, I found lots of people with the same problem with this motherboard, and the advice was always the same: Reinstall Windows. Now, I hate to reinstall Windows. I come from an Amiga background, so I feel any OS that makes you reinstall it every six months is not stable. :D But, I had also neglected to flash the BIOS, and I should have known better in the first place, so I downloaded all the latest versions of everything and set about installing them.
That proved a bit of a chore as well, as by this time I had disconnected the floppy and was booting only with the hard drive and CD-ROM installed. Plus, I had very few floppies laying around, and they were all several years old. I managed to get to the point of installing the OS, however, and eliminated everything else as a possibility. I had flashed the BIOS, went into the Setup and eliminated everything that wasn't absolutely important, and so on.
Unfortunately, now I couldn't find my install CD for Windows XP. I had given it to my mother as backup in case something happened to her system, but she had moved from Beaumont to Houston after Hurricane Rita and the CD didn't make it with her, apparently. My laptop's backup CD was useless as it was configured specifically for a laptop. I did find an old 8 Gig hard drive laying around, it had nothing on it because I had wiped it years ago, when I installed my current setup. It wasn't bootable, though, and I wasn't really sure that if I tried to boot the XP CD, it would work. I had no other bootable CDs.
I went ahead and prepared for a full reinstall, though, backing up my main hard drive to the 250 Gig I keep as secondary. It's got plenty of room, it's for all those video files I never have the time to scan in. :D I was still hoping I wouldn't have to reinstall, but I couldn't do anything else anyway, so I ran the backup. (Using my mother's computer with the drives installed in it)
Tuesday morning I went and got a copy of Windows XP, as well as the cheapest PCI video card I could find. It was just to make sure the graphics card wasn't the problem, as well as to have a backup. (Since I had no PCI graphics cards, only AGP, and the one REALLY old one which was from before the PCI days) I was still aggravated that my ACTUAL copy of XP which I'd already bought for the machine was missing, but I figured my mom's copy had always been -- shall we say -- "unofficial", so she could keep that one.
Well, I installed XP on that 8 Gig HD that I had found, and sure enough, it came up with no problem. I'd tried the PCI card, but when it didn't help I just put it away as a backup. I put the hard drive away as well, I figured having a fresh installation of Windows for emergencies might be helpful. I then turned to my existing hard drive. I was afraid I would have to reinstall, but there was a "Repair" option on the menu. To my surprise, it actually worked, it overwrote Windows and all the drivers but left my registry and other settings intact.
Now, however, comes the single most annoying thing I have ever done in my life. The new install of XP (which, I was happy to note, included SP2, so I didn't have to download it separately) was protected by some form of piracy protection. Supposedly you were able to use it for 30 days, and sometime in that time "activate it" by either calling or going online.
Unfortunately, it would NOT let me log on. In retrospect I think it's because it was an existing install of XP that was upgraded, and the old version was more than 30 days old. At any rate, I couldn't log on to set up the Ethernet connection, and I couldn't use the online feature because the Ethernet wasn't set up. So I had no choice but to use the phone.
Not recognizing that this is a new install, and giving me the 30 days is a bad programming feature. Not being able to get to the Internet was the fault of the motherboard, it has a built in firewall and other features I needed to get to Windows to access. However, this telephone interface has to be the single worst example of customer support I have ever seen in my life. First of all I get a machine, not a person, and then I have to say nine combinations of 6 digits, with a space in between so my voice can be registered. Then I have to listen to the machine say nine groups of 6 numbers back to ME, and confirm each. To say it was tedious would be the understatement of the year. Throughout the entire process I was thinking, "What if I have to do this again? What if I totally rebuild my system? Will this machine be smart enough to know that I'm trying to reinstall, and not pirate the software?"
I get over that particular hurdle, and start installing the graphics drivers and the drivers for the features of the motherboard. Of course, I'm still only using the CD-ROM drive and the main hard drive, but I figure I'll get the OS up and running first and then add the other peripherals. The first thing I notice is there's a firewall built in and it's popping up messages to me. I have a firewall installed, but I deactivate it and take it out of the startup sequence. I check the settings on the new firewall, and it seems fine, it's obviously letting through some packets that Windows is sending out as it initializes.
Unfortunately, when I bring up Internet Explorer, it's blocked. The firewall recognizes, even says that it's a trusted application and I don't have to tell it I want to let it through, but despite that it WON'T go through. I check the settings but can't find what's wrong with it, I try different permissions, and nothing seems to work. I finally have to turn it off completely.
At least with the firewall off IE seems to work all right. So I go to Windows Update, download all the patches, then download the latest drivers for the NVidia card. Finally everything seems to be running right, so I log on to CoH and let you guys in on what's going on. So that establishes about what time it was. :D
I still want to install the second hard drive, though, install the video input card, and, well, TRY OUT AUTO ASSAULT!!! That's what all this was about after all. :D So I shut the system down, and install everything. That turns out to be a mistake, as the OS refuses to boot. I start unplugging things, finally get the OS to boot with the secondary hard drive installed. It recognizes it, installs the driver, so I reboot with one more peripheral at a time until it all comes up.
By now I am wondering why there is no sound. :D I know there's a sound board on the card. I start looking through the manual for how to access the control panel, and remember I turned it off when I was setting up the BIOS. So I go into the BIOS, turn the sound chip back on, and that comes up fine as well. I'd noticed the drivers for the sound didn't show up in the menu when I was installing it, but assumed it was just a typo in the manual and it was installed somewhere else. I load back up the CD, though, and sure enough now the drivers appear on the menu. So I load the driver (even though Windows had just installed it as well) and it installs the control panel. Excellent.
I take a bit of time to install some case fans, make sure all the screws are accounted for, close it up, and load up Auto Assault. By now it's about 1 am, so I really only try out the tutorial and then shut it down. But it certainly seems to work fine, and the graphics are pretty nice, too. It actually seemed a little sluggish, but I turned the graphics quality down a little and it smoothed out. I think I will probably have to get a new stick of memory to get it really going well, I only have 512, and if I was reading the BIOS correctly, it's only 256 MHz instead of 400. It's an old stick...
Anyway, there's my adventure. Hope I didn't bore you. :D
Anyway, this all started because I got Auto Assault this weekend. I knew looking at the Minimum Requirements neither of my two computers would meet them, but I was willing to try it out anyway. After all, my computers aren't really up to spec for City of Heroes either, but they still run it. I know some games will just shut down if you don't meet the Requirements, but I figured, if it doesn't run, I'll just upgrade.
I have two computer systems, a laptop, with a 1.6 GHz CPU and an NVidia graphics chip (which only has 16 Meg memory but still runs CoH) and my desktop, a 1.2 GHz AMD system with a Radeon All-In-Wonder 7500. Now, I got the All-In-Wonder because I wanted to do video editing, my last graphics card had video in, and I wanted to keep that capability. It JUST BARELY meets the requirements for CoH, in fact for the first six months or so after release it didn't actually work, as all the characters were totally black with no detail. It ran on the laptop, though, so I figured I had lucked out. (I actually bought the Radeon for Earth and Beyond, as that old card wouldn't run it. And I didn't have the laptop back then)
The 1.6 CPU in the laptop was good enough to run Auto Assault, but I wasn't sure about the graphics chip. Sure enough, it wouldn't even start, the launcher installed and patched the game, but the moment it went to the game, the splash screen appeared and then shut down. And it took me some time to install it, too, that game is like 8 Gig, and I only had 4 G free. I had to uninstall some other games (SWG for one, I thought I'd uninstalled it but apparently not) to make room.
Anyway, after all that time and effort I was hoping it would install on my desktop fine. I wasn't worried about the graphics card, but it was the 1.2 CPU that worried me, Auto Assault's minimum requirements was 1.6. When I tried to power up the system, though, I found out the power supply had blown out. I've been having trouble with the power supply before, so I think I have some spike voltage on my home power. Anyway, the machine was dead.
Fortunately, my mom has a computer too, so I borrowed her power supply. I powered up the system, and installed the game, and just as before, it got as far as the splash screen and shut down. I even used my mom's graphics card, which is a Radeon 9500 (bought so she can play CoH, though she never does :D) and still no dice. So this time I was sure it was the CPU speed that was shutting me down.
Well, I'd always considered it a little funny that my laptop had a faster CPU than my desktop, so I decided to just build a whole new system. I could give my mom my old 1.2 (she had an 800Mhz, which would only just barely run CoH) and either use her motherboard (it was identical to mine) or get a new one. I ran down to the store and picked out a 2.0 GHz 64 bit Athlon, which seemed right in the middle of the range I needed, better than the Minimum Requirement, but cheaper than the Recommended. I did need a new motherboard with that, so I got one, a new power supply, a backup in case of future failures, and a surge protector.
Of course, I needed a new Graphics card, too, so again setting myself somewhere in the middle of the range I needed, I picked a NVidia GForce 6600. I was fed up with Radeon, I never liked how dark the graphics looked, and I'd only gotten the original because it was the only all-in-one graphics and video input card I could find. This time I got a separate video input card, so if I ever want to upgrade again, I don't have to throw out the video in. Plus, I got a motherboard that had two video slots, in case I ever wanted to upgrade to a dual graphics system.
Once I got this system put together, however, it wouldn't boot. I got the startup sequence and it recognized all the hardware, but once it started trying to load Windows, it crashed. It was the new motherboard, of course, but my first thought was that it was the graphics card. The problem is that the new motherboard I bought was PCI Express, while all my old graphics cards were AGP. I had no backup to test it out.
So, I was about ready to call it quits and give up for the night (this was Monday, and everything was closed) but at the last minute I decided to do an Internet search. Sure enough, I found lots of people with the same problem with this motherboard, and the advice was always the same: Reinstall Windows. Now, I hate to reinstall Windows. I come from an Amiga background, so I feel any OS that makes you reinstall it every six months is not stable. :D But, I had also neglected to flash the BIOS, and I should have known better in the first place, so I downloaded all the latest versions of everything and set about installing them.
That proved a bit of a chore as well, as by this time I had disconnected the floppy and was booting only with the hard drive and CD-ROM installed. Plus, I had very few floppies laying around, and they were all several years old. I managed to get to the point of installing the OS, however, and eliminated everything else as a possibility. I had flashed the BIOS, went into the Setup and eliminated everything that wasn't absolutely important, and so on.
Unfortunately, now I couldn't find my install CD for Windows XP. I had given it to my mother as backup in case something happened to her system, but she had moved from Beaumont to Houston after Hurricane Rita and the CD didn't make it with her, apparently. My laptop's backup CD was useless as it was configured specifically for a laptop. I did find an old 8 Gig hard drive laying around, it had nothing on it because I had wiped it years ago, when I installed my current setup. It wasn't bootable, though, and I wasn't really sure that if I tried to boot the XP CD, it would work. I had no other bootable CDs.
I went ahead and prepared for a full reinstall, though, backing up my main hard drive to the 250 Gig I keep as secondary. It's got plenty of room, it's for all those video files I never have the time to scan in. :D I was still hoping I wouldn't have to reinstall, but I couldn't do anything else anyway, so I ran the backup. (Using my mother's computer with the drives installed in it)
Tuesday morning I went and got a copy of Windows XP, as well as the cheapest PCI video card I could find. It was just to make sure the graphics card wasn't the problem, as well as to have a backup. (Since I had no PCI graphics cards, only AGP, and the one REALLY old one which was from before the PCI days) I was still aggravated that my ACTUAL copy of XP which I'd already bought for the machine was missing, but I figured my mom's copy had always been -- shall we say -- "unofficial", so she could keep that one.
Well, I installed XP on that 8 Gig HD that I had found, and sure enough, it came up with no problem. I'd tried the PCI card, but when it didn't help I just put it away as a backup. I put the hard drive away as well, I figured having a fresh installation of Windows for emergencies might be helpful. I then turned to my existing hard drive. I was afraid I would have to reinstall, but there was a "Repair" option on the menu. To my surprise, it actually worked, it overwrote Windows and all the drivers but left my registry and other settings intact.
Now, however, comes the single most annoying thing I have ever done in my life. The new install of XP (which, I was happy to note, included SP2, so I didn't have to download it separately) was protected by some form of piracy protection. Supposedly you were able to use it for 30 days, and sometime in that time "activate it" by either calling or going online.
Unfortunately, it would NOT let me log on. In retrospect I think it's because it was an existing install of XP that was upgraded, and the old version was more than 30 days old. At any rate, I couldn't log on to set up the Ethernet connection, and I couldn't use the online feature because the Ethernet wasn't set up. So I had no choice but to use the phone.
Not recognizing that this is a new install, and giving me the 30 days is a bad programming feature. Not being able to get to the Internet was the fault of the motherboard, it has a built in firewall and other features I needed to get to Windows to access. However, this telephone interface has to be the single worst example of customer support I have ever seen in my life. First of all I get a machine, not a person, and then I have to say nine combinations of 6 digits, with a space in between so my voice can be registered. Then I have to listen to the machine say nine groups of 6 numbers back to ME, and confirm each. To say it was tedious would be the understatement of the year. Throughout the entire process I was thinking, "What if I have to do this again? What if I totally rebuild my system? Will this machine be smart enough to know that I'm trying to reinstall, and not pirate the software?"
I get over that particular hurdle, and start installing the graphics drivers and the drivers for the features of the motherboard. Of course, I'm still only using the CD-ROM drive and the main hard drive, but I figure I'll get the OS up and running first and then add the other peripherals. The first thing I notice is there's a firewall built in and it's popping up messages to me. I have a firewall installed, but I deactivate it and take it out of the startup sequence. I check the settings on the new firewall, and it seems fine, it's obviously letting through some packets that Windows is sending out as it initializes.
Unfortunately, when I bring up Internet Explorer, it's blocked. The firewall recognizes, even says that it's a trusted application and I don't have to tell it I want to let it through, but despite that it WON'T go through. I check the settings but can't find what's wrong with it, I try different permissions, and nothing seems to work. I finally have to turn it off completely.
At least with the firewall off IE seems to work all right. So I go to Windows Update, download all the patches, then download the latest drivers for the NVidia card. Finally everything seems to be running right, so I log on to CoH and let you guys in on what's going on. So that establishes about what time it was. :D
I still want to install the second hard drive, though, install the video input card, and, well, TRY OUT AUTO ASSAULT!!! That's what all this was about after all. :D So I shut the system down, and install everything. That turns out to be a mistake, as the OS refuses to boot. I start unplugging things, finally get the OS to boot with the secondary hard drive installed. It recognizes it, installs the driver, so I reboot with one more peripheral at a time until it all comes up.
By now I am wondering why there is no sound. :D I know there's a sound board on the card. I start looking through the manual for how to access the control panel, and remember I turned it off when I was setting up the BIOS. So I go into the BIOS, turn the sound chip back on, and that comes up fine as well. I'd noticed the drivers for the sound didn't show up in the menu when I was installing it, but assumed it was just a typo in the manual and it was installed somewhere else. I load back up the CD, though, and sure enough now the drivers appear on the menu. So I load the driver (even though Windows had just installed it as well) and it installs the control panel. Excellent.
I take a bit of time to install some case fans, make sure all the screws are accounted for, close it up, and load up Auto Assault. By now it's about 1 am, so I really only try out the tutorial and then shut it down. But it certainly seems to work fine, and the graphics are pretty nice, too. It actually seemed a little sluggish, but I turned the graphics quality down a little and it smoothed out. I think I will probably have to get a new stick of memory to get it really going well, I only have 512, and if I was reading the BIOS correctly, it's only 256 MHz instead of 400. It's an old stick...
Anyway, there's my adventure. Hope I didn't bore you. :D