Recent Posts

6951

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Game Review: Defense Grid: The Awakening

« Last post by Deozaan on October 09, 2009, 11:24 PM »

Defense Grid is now available for 50% ($10) on Steam. I think it may be new pricing, i.e. $10 permanently.

If you haven't gotten it yet, it's totally worth the $10.

6952

Living Room / Re: Samarost Developers Working on a Full-sized Adventure Game: Machinarium

« Last post by Deozaan on October 07, 2009, 03:34 PM »

I just downloaded the demo on Steam. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm about to.

Also, if you pre-order the game you can get 25% off. ($15 instead of $20)

6953

General Software Discussion / Re: Win7: Anyone else getting excited?

« Last post by Deozaan on October 05, 2009, 02:02 PM »

I heard that an upgrade to Win7 from Vista takes about 3.5 hours, but a clean install takes only about 20 minutes.

6954

General Software Discussion / Re: Win7: Anyone else getting excited?

« Last post by Deozaan on October 04, 2009, 07:40 PM »

Thanks for that info Innuendo. I was looking for something like that but for some reason I didn't see the Location tab on my first perusal.

I suppose leaving AppData on the system drive isn't that big of a deal to me.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Win7: Anyone else getting excited?

« Last post by Deozaan on October 04, 2009, 03:00 PM »

Does anyone know how to change the default Users directory? I can't stand the idea of storing "My Documents" and other personal files on the system partition.

I followed the instructions listed here, but it didn't seem to work.

Downloads still default to C:\Users\[username]\Downloads. And DropBox install defaults to c:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Dropbox\bin.

I vaguely remember changing it three years ago when I had Vista on my PC for a few months, but it's been so long I can't remember how and I'm still getting used to the new interface.

Thanks in advance!

6956

Living Room / Re: Google demonstrates new communication platform "WAVE": mail, chat , wiki, ..

« Last post by Deozaan on October 01, 2009, 06:22 PM »

Me too. I signed up for an invite a few months ago and still nothing... except a Google Voice invite.

EDIT: Spelling fix.

6957

Adventures of Baby Cody / Re: Baby Cody with Ampa... and time to move on.

« Last post by Deozaan on October 01, 2009, 01:43 AM »

It's always enjoyable to see the adventures of Baby Cody!

... while Cody made friends with the meercats.

-Ampa (September 30, 2009, 03:54 PM)

Is that anything like a Srikat?

6958

Living Room / Re: RobotWar and the Army of Clones

« Last post by Deozaan on October 01, 2009, 01:03 AM »

I am really feeling an itch to get into coding little robots for a pretend war game.. does someone on DC feel like coding us an online game?
i don't mean a direct clone of RobotWar.. but something unique that involves writing robot programs and having them fight it out.

-mouser (September 30, 2009, 07:57 PM)

AHEM! I believe I proposed an idea similar to that (and more) to you about 1.5 years ago (April 2008?) and you didn't like the programmable robots part of it. So I took out the programmable robots part of it and began working on my Universe project.

6959

General Software Discussion / Re: Win7: Anyone else getting excited?

« Last post by Deozaan on October 01, 2009, 12:55 AM »

I was kind of indifferent about Windows 7; I planned on getting it eventually but wasn't in any rush to get it.

But now because of this thread I'm excited to get it.

6960

Living Room / Re: How much Soda/Energy-Drinks you drink / week?

« Last post by Deozaan on September 30, 2009, 07:54 PM »

On average, none.

I've never had an energy drink, but on rare occasions I'll drink a (caffeine-free) soda.

My drink of choice is Kool-Aid.

6961

Found Deals and Discounts / Left 4 Dead for $15 (50% off)

« Last post by Deozaan on September 29, 2009, 03:25 PM »

Hi everyone!

Steam is having a sale to commemorate some new (free) DLC called Crash Course. So now you can buy Left 4 Dead for 50% off, which is $15 USD, or you can buy a 4-pack for $45 USD (which is essentially buy 3 get 1 free).

Left 4 Dead on Steam.

As always, I'm willing to gift the game to anyone for whatever reason can't buy it themselves. Just PayPal the money to me first (and a little extra to cover PayPal fees) to paypal (at) deozaan (dawtt) com and be sure to include a note on which game(s) you want and what e-mail address you want me to send the gift to.

6962

Living Room / Re: Help? Learning how to drive...

« Last post by Deozaan on September 28, 2009, 07:47 PM »

I'm hoping that some of you can give me some thoughts on how I can prepare myself better before I go out to BtW (prior experience is a requirement).

-wreckedcarzz (August 22, 2009, 03:32 PM)

You absolutely must have prior driving experience before you can attend your Driver's Ed class? That doesn't make sense. Isn't the purpose of Driver's Ed to teach you how to drive?

I had never driven a car until I did so in my Driver's Ed class. Then after I got my license I had to learn how to drive stick shift because that's the kind of car we had, and my mom didn't want me driving her BMW.

To be honest, I didn't want to drive her BMW either. I hated driving for the first two or three years. I always saw it as a huge responsibility and not a fun, enjoyable thing.

6963

Living Room / Re: Help with Toshiba Portege M200 Tablet PC

« Last post by Deozaan on September 27, 2009, 04:22 PM »

Thanks again for all the help. I'm running into another problem:

When trying to boot to the drive (on both the Toshiba and in the other machine with a CD drive) it says:

[Select]

GRUB Loading stage1.5.


GRUB loading. Please wait...
Error 22

And never brings up a prompt, so I can't do the last step of installing Windows XP.

I think that has something to do with the fact that I had Ubuntu installed on it earlier. But I deleted all partitions and formatted the disk, so I don't know how that is still on the hdd. Any tips on how to get rid of this GRUB loader?

6964

Living Room / Re: Help with Toshiba Portege M200 Tablet PC

« Last post by Deozaan on September 26, 2009, 01:45 PM »

a) I'll make you a custom ISO as soon as I get home, working overtime today
b) XCOPY

-scancode (September 25, 2009, 05:53 PM)

Thanks for the help. I appreciate it!

6965

Living Room / Re: Help with Toshiba Portege M200 Tablet PC

« Last post by Deozaan on September 25, 2009, 05:20 PM »

What I did when I had a M200 is to connect the drive to a computer with a CD Drive, booted it using a Windows 98 Boot Floppy converted to CD, fdisk and format /s'd it, copied both Windows XP Tablet PC Edition CDs to \SETUPXP, put the drive back on the TabletPC, booted it up and ran \SETUPXP\I386\WINNT.EXE

Hope it helps.

-scancode (September 25, 2009, 01:07 AM)

Thanks, that's some progress. But I'm running into other problems.

When I type format c: /s it tells me "insufficient memory to load system files" and won't do it. Consequently, the drive won't boot without the boot disk in. I don't know why it thinks there isn't enough memory. The machine has 2GB of RAM in it.

Also, do you have any tips on how to quickly copy over the contents of the Windows XP CD? DOS can't copy subdirectories recursively so I had to manually create each directory and copy all the files over from each directory and subdirectory.

Thanks for the help!

6966

Living Room / Re: Help with Toshiba Portege M200 Tablet PC

« Last post by Deozaan on September 25, 2009, 12:48 AM »

Well I ended up putting the hard drive into another machine that has an optical drive and installing Windows XP.

It appeared to work just fine in the machine I installed Windows on, but after moving the hard drive back into the Toshiba it won't boot windows. Watching the files load while attempting to boot into safe mode I see it gets stuck loading mup.sys.

So I put the hdd back into the laptop with an optical drive and installed Ubuntu. After swapping the hdd back into the Toshiba, Ubuntu boots perfectly. The only problem is that I don't think Ubuntu has any drivers or anything to make use of the touch screen. I can't say so for sure right now though, because I can't download drivers or updates to Ubuntu until I take the Toshiba somewhere I can plug it in using an ethernet cable.

Thanks for all the help.

6967

Living Room / Re: How to host you Windows 7 house party... wtf?

« Last post by Deozaan on September 24, 2009, 09:10 PM »

I just noticed in the video toward the end: There's a clock on the oven behind them, and you can see where they spliced the video because time keeps going back and forth.

Or maybe time travel is one of the new features of Windows 7?

6968

Living Room / Re: How to host you Windows 7 house party... wtf?

« Last post by Deozaan on September 24, 2009, 09:03 PM »

Hey, there are some useful tips in there for the socially inept... address your guests by name, for example.

hahahah 

yeah.. i'd love to see microsoft expand a bit and make some videos for the rest of us just on general stuff like.. how to trick people into being your friends.  how to throw a birthday party.. how to go on a date.. how to have a conversation with your friends, etc.

-mouser (September 24, 2009, 06:03 PM)

Windows 7 House Parties: For geeks, by geeks.

6969

DcUpdater / Re: DcUpdater Feature Requests

« Last post by Deozaan on September 24, 2009, 08:46 PM »

3. Better support for installing new programs

• DcUpdater can already install new programs that it knows about for you but perhaps this can be improved.
• Ability to be told about web pages where it can "discover" new programs available for installation.  This should make it possible for people to publish lists of installable tools that DcUpdater can check for updates on and install for you.

-mouser (January 17, 2009, 05:15 AM)

I had an idea that relates to this.

Maybe DcUpdater could have a hidden (or not hidden) package that it always checks for updates for. The package would contain a bunch of "not installed" .dcupdater files for official DC applications and coding snacks. This would be a great way to highlight new DC applications and new coding snacks easily through the DcUpdater progam.

In fact, it might be fun to be able to subscribe to a certain author's/site's applications. i.e. "Show New Coding Snacks" or "Follow Skwire's applications" or "Subscribe to Mouser's Applications." Though I suppose most of your applications are already included as "not installed" .dcupdate files.

And finally, just a reminder that I'm still waiting for my original requests to be implemented.

6970

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Xna Xsi free tool to make 3D games - Pinky Egg RPG

« Last post by Deozaan on September 24, 2009, 05:28 PM »

It sounds and looks a lot like an indie version of Harvest Moon^w, which is a fun game.

6971

Living Room / Re: Help with Toshiba Portege M200 Tablet PC

« Last post by Deozaan on September 23, 2009, 06:31 PM »

Save the .reg file at the root of the C drive and you should be able to easily find it from Safe Mode with Command Prompt. Even if you can't see the file, knowing what you named it and where you saved it should allow you to open it.

-app103 (September 23, 2009, 04:41 PM)

I just tried that and even from the command prompt when I attempt to run the .reg file it asks what program to open REG files with.

Unless there are any other tips, I think I don't have much choice but to format completely and reinstall... if I can find an external optical drive that works with this thing.

Does the malware have a name? Does it pop up any kind of windows that could help identify what it is? Usually a Google search will turn up some ways to remove it and undo it's damage. I am suspecting it is some sort of fake antivirus/security product, so be alert to anything popping up complaining of malware or some other sort of "attacks".

-app103 (September 23, 2009, 04:37 PM)

No. The only thing that pops up is a Windows Security Alert that says that Avast! is out of date.

6972

Living Room / Re: Help with Toshiba Portege M200 Tablet PC

« Last post by Deozaan on September 23, 2009, 04:33 PM »

boot up into safe mode

go to start> run

• type in "command" without the quotes.
• then hit enter
• type in "notepad" without the quotes.
• then hit enter

When notepad opens, type this in:

[Select]

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell\open\command]
@="\"%1\" %*"

(there is a space before the second %)

save it to the desktop as fixexe.reg and then run it.

You should be able to run exe files now.

-app103 (September 22, 2009, 01:29 PM)

Two problems:

1. Booting into safe mode and typing in "command" into the Run dialog says that Windows doesn't know how to run command.com.

I rebooted into Safe Mode with Command Prompt and then I was able to get notepad to run and safe the file, but then it didn't show any files on the desktop. So then I rebooted back into regular Safe mode and...

2. XP doesn't know how to run .reg files.

And since regedit is an exe, I can't manually enter that information either...

Do you have any other tips on any other methods to modify the registry?

Thanks!

6973

Living Room / Help with Toshiba Portege M200 Tablet PC

« Last post by Deozaan on September 22, 2009, 01:19 PM »

Hi all,

A friend of mine has a Toshiba Portege M200 Tablet PC that's so infested with viruses and who knows what that the PC doesn't even know how to run exe files anymore. Nothing runs except Internet Explorer.

My friend would have just formatted and reinstalled himself, but the machine doesn't have an optical drive. I have an external drive I can plug an optical drive into, and have done that. But I can't figure out how to get the machine to boot from CD. I don't even know how to get into the BIOS.

Pushing F8 brings up an advanced boot menu which has options to boot into safe mode or reboot or boot normally, etc. Pressing F2 or F12 shows a few images: The first one looks like 3 CDs stacked on top of each other. The next one looks like a single CD. The next one looks like an SD card and a floppy disk. The next one looks like two computers networked together. And the final one looks like a stick of RAM.

I interpret these to mean: Boot from HDD, boot from CD, boot from floppy/removable media, boot from LAN, and possibly access BIOS? The problem is that they all go straight into booting Windows except boot from LAN, which tries to access something on the LAN.

So I can't tell if the machine even recognizes the external (USB) optical drive because I can't check the BIOS and I can't figure out how to get the machine to boot from CD. It does recognize it from within Windows and even launches the Auto Run menu, but when I click the button to install Windows it doesn't do anything, probably because the machine doesn't know how to run exe files.

Does anyone who has used a Portege, perhaps even this model, have any tips on how to get the machine to boot from CD or get into the BIOS? I don't have the instruction manual or any of the original information that might have come with the Portege.

Any useful information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

6974

DC Gamer Club / Re: Tales of Monkey Island (Episode 1) - for free

« Last post by Deozaan on September 21, 2009, 12:55 PM »

I never received my reminder e-mail so I missed the download.

6975

DC Gamer Club / Re: Tales of Monkey Island (Episode 1) - for free

« Last post by Deozaan on September 18, 2009, 09:11 AM »

Telltale does a good job and I´m sure this monkey-island remake also will be great.

-Crush (September 18, 2009, 03:43 AM)

It's not a remake. It's an entirely new game in the series.