World of Hellreject

During my vacation these last four weeks, I’ve been spending some time playing new games that I haven’t had the chance of playing earlier. All of these games were really great, and so I think they deserve some mentioning. Not all of these games are new, and some of them might even have received a lot of media coverage, but not all of that coverage is positive. Therefore, I decided to give them some mention myself.

During the next few weeks, I will be doing a weekly mini-feature which will feature most of these games. I’ll review one game per week, and tell you why this game is worth playing.

Ever since I installed Windows 7 back in January, I’ve had some problems with the Devices and Printers window. It would just load and load, with no apparent progression. This, naturally, drove me crazy.

I’ve browsed forums and web pages for weeks now, and without any luck. But today, I found a post made by slappydog on the W7Forums. And his solution worked perfectly!

Apparently, there’s a bug with the Bluetooth service in Windows 7. After you install your bluetooth drivers, one or more of the services will be set to Manual startup. This will cause the Devices and Printers window to hang. To fix it, go to the Start menu, write “services.msc” in the search field, and press enter. From there, browse to any Bluetooth-related service, double click it, and set the startup type to Automatic on any that is set on manual. Now, try opening your Devices and Printers window. Lovely, isn’t it?

Have you ever installed a set of updates on a Windows Vista-based computer, only to see it go on in a continous loop of reboots and startup repairs? Well, you’re not a lone. Apparently this problem is very well known, and luckily, there’s an easy solution out there to fix it.

It kind of reuqires you to have the original setup disk for your Windows Vista version (or any version for that matter, as long as it’s a Vista install disk). If you don’t, this might not be as easy for you, so try to find one before reading this guide.

1. Pop the install disk in, and boot from it. When booted, select language options, keyboard options et cetera, and continue.
2. Select “Repair your computer”, and select your Windows Vista installation.
3. At this point, your computer might or might not start automatically repairing. In any case, whenever you can, choose “System Restore”.
4. Select a restore point prior to installing the faulty updates, and continue. When it finishes and boots into Windows, don’t install any updates.
5. Head on over to this Microsoft webpage. Select the language that applies to your version of Vista, and download it.
6. Install the patch, and reboot. Then, install remaining updates, and reboot again.
7. ???????
8. Profit.

Note: If the update refuses to install on your system, it means you already have it installed, or you might even need some previous updates before you’re able to install it. In any case, your system should be up and running again by the time you’re about to apply the update, so you can completely ignore any Windows Updates if that makes you happy. It’s completely up to you.

The Windows 7 release candidate is finally out and availible for download. And even if it’s just the RC, it still will resemble the finished version a lot, and not much will be missing. And since it’s availible to you for free for almost a year, this surely will tempt poeple to try it out.

What happens after that year is gone then? Well, the retail version of Windows 7 will have hit store shelves by the time we reach March 1st, and Microsoft probably wants you to buy it and use the proper version. But some people will find the RC version good enough, and have no reason to switch over to the full version. Or do they?

Microsoft has got it all planned out. You see, when we hit March 1st, computers with Windows 7 RC will automatically shut down after two hours of use. And if that isnt enough to force you to switch, by June 1st, the OS won’t even boot. So don’t plan on using the RC forever.

I’m not saying that there won’t be a way around the problem by then though. Someone probably will find a way to stop all of this from happening, so if you have no plans of buying the retail version of Windows 7, be on the lookout for W7 hacks and cracks as March 1st draws closer.

Up until now, norwegian ISP’s have had to keep their mouths shut about the identities behind the IP adresses. Now, however,  “Post- og teletilsynet” (postal- and telecommunicatiion services) have spoken up, and they’re saying otherwise.

Earlier, if a lawfirm suspected filesharing from a certain IP address, then all they would get was that IP address. But PT has now decided that the ISP’s must reveal a person’s identity if the court think there’s enough reason to suspect a person for filesharing.

This resolve has been decided for one particular case, but head of PT Willy Jensen states this resolve also has a principal side to it.
- “We think it’s about time we make the Internet a more legal and structured place, where anarchy and small or big pirates are avoided. Cultural life on the web is too important to us for us to have such unfortunate events where an artist’s copyright is being broken.” Jensen had said to norwegian website, “Dagens IT.”

In the end, the court still decides if an identity is to be revealed, but in any case, it’ll be a lot tougher for file sharers to keep their identities hidden if their IP addresses should be tracked.

Finally, the day is here. The time for Ulduar has come.
After some weeks of waiting, the new World of Warcraft patch has come online, and it will introduce a handful of new stuff for the masses of vivid World of Warcraft players to enjoy. And to be honest, some of it is quite fantastic, just keep on reading:

• Ulduar is now open! This old Titan city will include 14 epic boss fights (some even with hard mode), 800 new items, the new Tier 8 armors, and over 100 new achievements.
• The Argent Tournament is up and running, and will introduce Horde/Alliance-faction specific mounts, tabards and items. Build up your reputation with the City factions in a completely new way. Also, it has mounted combat, which is awesome.
• The dual spec feature is finally here! Pay a one-time fee of 1000 gold, and you’ll be able to switch between specs, glyphs and pets like there is no tomorrow. Accessible by players level 40 and above.
• A whole new batch of mounts and vanity pets, for those who are interested. Some are easy to get, others will give you quite the challenge.
• The Vault of Archavon has gotten a new wing with a new raidboss, which will drop the new Season 6 PvP items, and the new Tier 8 set. Go farm those easy epics. On a related note: the VoA bosses will now banish themselves 10 minutes prior to a new fight, and will do a zone-wide yell to inform people of this. They will not, however, banish themselves if engaged in combat.

It also includes huge profession changes, new instance maps, a lot of class tweaks and changes (I strongly disagree with a few of them though, mostly warlock changes), instance changes, bugfixes and more.
Just make sure to step by either WoW-Europe or MMO-Champion to find out more about the patch. There’s a lot of things to read about.

UPDATE: More information is out on the problem, decided to rewrite the blog post to correct some errors and wrong assumptions I made.

The problem:
Trend Micro Internet Security 2008 (as far as I know this is the only version with the problem) was updated Thursday September 4th, and the update contained some poorly written code. Trend would now recognize “UxTheme.dll” as a virus, and quarantine/delete it. This meant bad news for a lot of Windows XP users, as they could now no longer use their computers. Explorer, amongst other important programs, would no longer run.

The solution:
The good thing is, this is quite a simple thing to solve. And indeed, it’s not that hard. You need a good copy of the UxTheme.dll (the one that matches your current service pack preferrably), access to a CD burner or a memory stick, and off you go. Do keep in mind however, that this is the way I solve the problem. There might be different solutions for you out there, I’m just throwing you one.

First things first, get UxTheme.dll. You can find it here Download it, and burn it to a CD or put it on a memory stick. Now, open the Task Manager (CTRL+ALT+DEL for those who didn’t know.), and select the button “New Task..”
Now, browse your way to your memory stick or CD (make sure that the dropdownlist at the bottom of the “open file dialogue” says All Files instead of Programs when browsing), right click your UxTheme.dll file, and select copy. Now, navigate to C:\WINDOWS\system32 (in some cases the systemroot will be named WINNT), and paste the file in there. Don’t be surprised if you see the file get deleted within seconds. Paste it again, and this time write-protect it. The file will stay put now.
Now, run “explore” from the “New task..” dialogue, and like magic, Explorer will run again.
Restart your computer, and things should be back to normal.

UPDATE 2: Trend Micro can in some rare cases delete another file, “samlib.dll”. If this happens, and you power down your computer, things will be a lot harder to solve. The first thing you’ll notice is that you cannot use the Task Manager anymore, that trick won’t work. You’ll actually need to remove the hard disk drive from the computer, and insert it into a disk adapter or a working computer. Next, download the “samlib.dll” file found here. Now, just navigate to C:\WINDOWS\system32 (as before, systemroot might sometimes be WINNT), and paste the .dll file there. Insert HDD in its original computer, boot up, and things should work again.

In both cases, update Trend Micro Internet Security at ONCE, just to make sure this won’t happen again.