Recent Posts

901

DC Gamer Club / Re: Ludum Dare 45 Reviews

« Last post by Deozaan on January 12, 2020, 03:29 AM »

I don't know what happened. I intended to browse the LD45 entries myself as well as play some of the ones you wrote about here. But somehow I missed and/or forgot about this thread and now it's been so long I'm not sure I feel it's relevant enough to me anymore for me to personally delve into any of the entries.

That said, as of now I'm planning to participate in and submit an entry for Ludum Dare 46 this April, if the schedule for it manages to work for my situation. So I expect I'll be starting a new thread about that in a couple of months.

Thanks anyway for often starting up these kinds of threads. There are so many entries that you can't possibly view them all, so it's nice to see what interesting games other people discover and what they think of them.

902

DC Gamer Club / Re: Free Game on Humble Store

« Last post by Deozaan on January 09, 2020, 03:06 PM »

Headsnatchers is free for about 2 days:

https://www.humblebu...dsnatchers-free-game

903

General Software Discussion / Re: REQUEST: Tool to make a Big-All-in-One.MP3 with Track markers, tags and pauses?

« Last post by Deozaan on January 09, 2020, 02:05 PM »

I don't know about MP3, but FLAC can be used for this.

904

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Deozaan on January 09, 2020, 02:03 PM »

Unlike other satire sites, everything we post is 100% verified by Snopes.com.

-dantheman (January 09, 2020, 08:59 AM)

Concerning Survey Finds Too Many People Believe Snopes Is A Legitimate Fact-Checking Website

905

N.A.N.Y. 2020 / Re: NANY 2020 Release: Portable Application Updater

« Last post by Deozaan on January 02, 2020, 11:22 PM »

This looks interesting. But to be honest, I'm not really sure exactly what it is or how to use it. Is it an app to be used like DCUpdater used to be?



FYI VirusTotal shows 1/63 scanners marking the file as unsafe, and Jotti has 0/15 scanners marking the file as unsafe.

To others: Given that hamradio is a longtime, trusted member of this site, I feel it is safe to say that the 1 hit out of 78 scanners is very likely a false positive.

906

General Software Discussion / Re: Chrome Extensions: Your favorite or most useful

« Last post by Deozaan on January 02, 2020, 08:01 PM »

I just came across this one:

Dark Reader

It essentially enables dark mode for just about any website. I've been longing for something like this for a few weeks/months. So far it works pretty well on the few sites I've tried it on, except for DonationCoder. The forums here use too many graphics designed to be viewed on a light background.

I see this extension was posted about by KodeZwerg in the Firefox Extensions thread over a year ago, so I guess I only have myself to blame for not knowing about it earlier. But to be fair to myself, I don't really follow these Browser Extensions threads very closely and I also wasn't really looking for a way to enable Dark Mode everywhere I could back then.

They have extensions for multiple browsers, so feel free to learn more about them and see if they support your browser from their homepage.

https://darkreader.org/

907

Living Room / Re: Movies you've seen lately

« Last post by Deozaan on January 02, 2020, 05:21 PM »

For music recommendations, I think the thread Recommend some music videos to me! would be a more appropriate place.

908

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by Deozaan on January 01, 2020, 07:14 PM »

I had a credit card with an expiration date of December 2019, which I assumed meant it was good throughout the entire month. But a couple days before the New Year (Dec. 30th) I started getting notifications from all sorts of places that my card had expired and that I needed to update my payment information. I even got a "payment declined" notification from one vendor.

No worries, I got the replacement card about a month or so ago. I just updated the information and everything went through. But I was a little puzzled as to why the card was expiring a few days before the end of the month instead of being good through the entire month. And then today I saw this:

Why 2020 started on December 30th

That explains that.

909

N.A.N.Y. 2020 / Re: NANY 2020 Release: Apps You Forgot

« Last post by Deozaan on January 01, 2020, 11:55 AM »

windows defender jumps on this download

-flamerz (January 01, 2020, 09:59 AM)

Same here.

But Jotti gives it a clean bill of health: 0/15 scanners found malware
VirusTotal was not so sure: 4/64 engines flagged it as potential malware.

910

Living Room / Re: Happy New Year 2020 -- Soon!

« Last post by Deozaan on December 31, 2019, 07:49 PM »

<-- me

911

Official Announcements / Re: Upgrading forum Dec 28, 2019

« Last post by Deozaan on December 30, 2019, 07:27 PM »

I just noticed that people who have a website in their profile have it showing twice.

912

DC Gamer Club / Re: GOG Connect - DRM-free access to your Steam library

« Last post by Deozaan on December 27, 2019, 01:00 PM »

I'm seeing five games on GOG Connect right now. A few of them have been there for the past couple of weeks, but a few of them are new.

913

Living Room / Re: Why did it never occur to me.. You can wash a keyboard in water.

« Last post by Deozaan on December 27, 2019, 03:55 AM »

I'm resurrecting this old thread because I just saw a recent Linus Tech Tips video where they experiment with different keyboard washing methods. It reminded me of the discussion that took place here all these years ago.

The tl;dw version is that washing your keyboard in the dishwasher is as good as meticulously washing it by hand, as long as you remove the keycaps.

914

Living Room / Re: Merry Christmas to All

« Last post by Deozaan on December 25, 2019, 03:43 PM »

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Thanks for making this place such a wonderful place to keep coming back to.

915

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Review of Ethervane Echo

« Last post by Deozaan on December 25, 2019, 12:15 AM »

Ethervane Echo website is down.

-smaragdus (December 24, 2019, 07:06 PM)

I found it on the Internet Archive. Maybe you can get what you need from there.

But it looks like Tranglos, the author, hasn't been around here since May.

916

General Software Discussion / Re: How to fix "NTLDR is missing" error in Windows 10?

« Last post by Deozaan on December 24, 2019, 04:01 PM »

I just went ahead and installed a fresh copy of Windows 10. Now it's just a matter of getting everything back up and running the way I like it again.

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. And thanks to Shades I was finally able to fully move my Users directory off the OS drive!

917

General Software Discussion / Re: How to fix "NTLDR is missing" error in Windows 10?

« Last post by Deozaan on December 24, 2019, 02:09 AM »

It seems Lazesoft was a bust. The home edition says it can "fix Windows Boot Problems due to corrupted MBR, Boot Sector, Boot File, Registry, etc." But in order to "fix missing file crash such as 'ntldr is missing', 'bootmgr is missing' etc." I need the pro version.

918

General Software Discussion / Re: How to fix "NTLDR is missing" error in Windows 10?

« Last post by Deozaan on December 24, 2019, 01:49 AM »

If you are willing to wipe and rebuild, you could try doing these two commands:

bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot

-x16wda (December 23, 2019, 08:16 PM)

The first one said it completed successfully. The second one said access was denied even though it was an administrator command prompt. 

Could also try Lazesoft Recovery Suite if you're at the point where you might reinstall anyway.

Home Edition is free but you'll need a working computer to install it on to create the WinPE bootable drive/disc.

-4wd (December 24, 2019, 01:05 AM)

I'm in the process of making the WinPE USB drive. Thanks for the tip!

If you are starting anew, that is the time to apply this trick of moving user folders to a separate partition or (network)drive:
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-move-default-user-folders-new-drive-windows-10
Problem with the above method is that you'll need to repeat it for every account on your PC.

-Shades (December 23, 2019, 07:49 PM)

That one doesn't actually move the User directory. It just moves some of the default folders such as Music and Documents. But the big one is the AppData directory which everything just kind of stuffs full with all kinds of random, but often important, things. And I've not seen a way to move the AppData directory after installing Windows 10.

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/1964-move-users-folder-location-windows-10-a.html
After applying this method you won't need to think again about repeating configuration steps. It will all happen automatically.

-Shades (December 23, 2019, 07:49 PM)

This one, however, appears to actually move the Users directory, so it looks like it will indeed do what I would prefer to do with Windows 10. I'll give this a try if I end up installing fresh. Thanks!

919

General Software Discussion / Re: How to fix "NTLDR is missing" error in Windows 10?

« Last post by Deozaan on December 23, 2019, 05:34 PM »

I booted into Linux and backed up everything from the OS drive that I felt could be useful. Then I booted back into Windows recovery and attempted to "Reset this PC" but it said there was an error and it couldn't continue with that process.

So unless anyone else has any suggestions, I think I'm just going to wipe the drive and reinstall fresh.

Thankfully I do all in my power to keep my OS drive separate from any important user data. If only Microsoft would allow me to move my User directory off the OS drive, then I could keep things totally separated. . .

920

General Software Discussion / Re: How to fix "NTLDR is missing" error in Windows 10?

« Last post by Deozaan on December 23, 2019, 03:50 PM »

Thanks for the detailed response.

bcdedit /export c:\bcdbkup --- never hurts

-x16wda (December 23, 2019, 02:44 PM)

This seems to have made a backup of something.

ren c:\boot\bcd bcd2.old --- you don't necessarily have to do this, this renames the existing file so it doesn't get looked at

-x16wda (December 23, 2019, 02:44 PM)

This says file not found. (The cmd window does say I'm running in administrator mode, so I don't think it's a permissions issue.)

bootrec /scanos --- verify that it finds a windows installation

-x16wda (December 23, 2019, 02:44 PM)

It didn't find any Windows installations...

bootrec /rebuildbcd --- reply yes to add, exit to restart

-x16wda (December 23, 2019, 02:44 PM)

This appears to do nothing since it didn't find any Windows installations.

So what did I make a backup of in step 1 if there's no Windows installation that it can detect?

921

General Software Discussion / Re: How to fix "NTLDR is missing" error in Windows 10?

« Last post by Deozaan on December 23, 2019, 01:56 PM »

I have a Windows 10 installation USB I can use to get to the setup/troubleshooting thing, but if I click the option to diagnose/repair it just tells me it couldn't repair the problem.

922

General Software Discussion / How to fix "NTLDR is missing" error in Windows 10?

« Last post by Deozaan on December 23, 2019, 01:20 PM »

Last night I told my computer to go to sleep and left it as it was doing its thing since it can take a good 10-20 seconds to fully go down into sleep mode. This morning I returned to my PC to find it hadn't fully entered sleep mode. The displays were off, power had been cut from USB devices, but I could hear that the fans were still running.

Wiggling/clicking the mouse gave no response. Pressing keys on my keyboard resulted in no response, other than the keyboard backlighting briefly turning on and then off again (it turns off when my PC enters sleep mode). Pressing the power button on the tower resulted in no response.

It didn't occur to me to try ctrl-alt-del at the time, and I ended up just holding the power button long enough until it fully powered down.

When I turned the machine back on I was greeted by a BSOD before it even made it to the "loading Windows" startup animation. After the machine rebooted itself it went into self diagnostic and ended up checking the disk(s) for errors. Then it told me it couldn't repair the problem.

If I manually boot from my OS SSD from the BIOS (UEFI) I get an error saying something to the effect of:

"NTLDR is missing. Press ctrl-alt-del to restart your computer"

Everything I've found in my searches on the error seems to indicate that this error message is for Windows XP/7 and I should only be seeing it if I upgraded my PC from an older version of Windows to Windows 10. But I haven't done that. I have formatted this SSD and installed a fresh copy of Windows 10 on it in the past.

Other guides I've seen either don't work (probably because they're written for Windows XP/7) or I can't be guaranteed whether or not they'll work since they suggest using some program(s) (usually partition managers) that are not free, and I'm hesitant to buy something that I'll likely only need this one time without knowing for sure that it will solve my problem.

I've booted into a Linux Live USB and the SSD itself seems to be functioning properly and the data appears to be in tact.

It seems the problem stems from the fact that the PC failed to fully enter sleep mode. Perhaps that changed some files or boot configurations and I just need to modify or replace some files somewhere, but so far I haven't found any useful information that is actually helping me to repair the boot problem.

Any helpful tips, suggestions, or pointers would be greatly appreciated.

923

DC Gamer Club / Re: Latest GOG Giveaway

« Last post by Deozaan on December 11, 2019, 04:19 PM »

Make sure you're doing it on Wasteland 2 Director's Cut.

924

DC Gamer Club / Re: GOG Connect - DRM-free access to your Steam library

« Last post by Deozaan on December 11, 2019, 01:30 PM »

A few games are on GOG Connect right now, as already mentioned here.

Folks who follow this thread: What's your opinion about having it merged with the GOG Giveaway thread so we don't have to concern ourselves with posting in both threads since these things often happen at the same time?

925

DC Gamer Club / Re: Latest GOG Giveaway

« Last post by Deozaan on December 11, 2019, 11:29 AM »

Wasteland 2: https://www.gog.com/#giveaway

For the next 45 hours or so.

-mwb1100 (December 11, 2019, 09:44 AM)

The storefront description of Wasteland 2 says it comes with a code for Wasteland 1. And that includes this giveaway version. 

Follow the instructions below after you've claimed Wasteland 2:

Please go to your account:
https://www.gog.com/account
click on the game, click More > Serial Keys
to view your code.

-https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/360010674374?product=gog