Author Archives: Brad

The Operative – No One Lives Forever

Posted by Brad

I just finished NOLF and have to say it was a fun game.  Lots of cool gadgets to use, a good variety of weapons, and a good story. There are 15 missions, some longer than others. The Game of the Year Edition includes a bonus mission which has you take out a HARM base while on vacation.

The game also included a couple of vehicles to drive (motorcycle and snowmobile), but you could not fight from the vehicles so they were there just to get you from one place to another quickly. There were some challenging parts included timed areas to either escape from or do something before time was up. There were also some jumping challenges and falling out of an airplane with no parachute part; these were difficult and could be frustrating, but are definitely doable.

There are many funny conversations to overhear throughout as well as a lot of story to keep things interesting. The game was not totally free form,  but I felt like you had enough freedom to get from Point A to Point B a few different ways – do I sneak around or run in guns blazing; do I go through an open window, locked gate, etc. or take the direct approach.

I found the sneaking around parts the most annoying – dodging cameras and guards without setting off the alarm could get old after a while. Fortunately these parts were few and far between.

Overall, this is a fresh take on the shooter genre, and I am looking forward to playing NOLF 2.

HP Laserjet 2420D Upgrades

Posted by Brad

I recently had a D-Link 300U print server die on me. It’s been fairly reliable for a few years; every now and again I would have to power cycle it to make it work. I liked the fact that you could share up to 3 printers from it – 2 Parallel Port and 1 USB. I looked for something similar that just had USB but could not find any print servers that supported more than 1 printer, and most of these were for wireless not wired networking. D-Link still sells the 300U but the 2 Parallel Port thing was not good for the future.

I had had an HP Laserjet 1200 and HP Laserjet 2420D printer attached to the print server when it died. They were both using Parallel Port connections, although both support USB as well. The 1200 does not have an internal HP Jetdirect option (they recommend you use the HP Jetdirect 175X with it which is a single USB print server). I have setup one of these before, but opted instead to use a USB hub and switch the 1200 to USB. The 1200 is next to a Canon All-In-One on USB so it was easy enough to add the USB hub and put both the Canon and the HP 1200 on the hub.

This left me with the 2420D to address. I knew I could install an EIO card in it, but it took some time to figure out which one. Resellers do not list every printer that a particular EIO card works with (sometimes they do not list any). After looking at the Jetdirect 620n and confirming it worked with the 2420D, I had to decide where to buy it. I found the card for $300 – $400 on some retail sites, but some online sites were selling OEM/bulk versions for around $100. Then I found there were 2 different models of the 620n – J7934A or J7934G. After more research I found that the only difference was the “G” model had a built-in web server – very nice. So I opted for the “G” model.

On buy.com I found several sites that sold the 620n, and I bought the card from entercomputers.com. I had never used them before and there were some negative reviews on them, but they looked okay and they also sold a 500 sheet tray for the 2420D in new condition for around $120. So I purchased both the card and tray from them – they even had free ground shipping. I received both items in about a week and both worked just fine. The EIO card came in a static bag, but it was worth it to save $200+ over the retail version. Anyway, it was just a matter of removing a cover from the printer, sliding the card in and screwing it down, and configuring the card through the printer’s menu. The tray was a plug and play affair – remove printer, set down tray, set printer carefully on top of tray in the proper position. The printer recognized both and both work without problems.

Like my old friend Robert Langford used to say, if you have an empty slot fill it. For the 2420D, I think I’ve filled every slot between these upgrades and a previous memory installation. I am glad most new printers come with built-in networking now – print servers are okay, but built-in networking is a lot less hassle.

Dragon Age Origins Install Problems

Posted by Brad

I purchased this game recently from GamersGate (the Collector’s Edition – I could have gone with Impulse too but GG is easier to find the install files so you don’t need a separate client like Impulse or Steam to run the game – more on this later). First thing I had to do was find the setup files which GG always hides when you don’t run the installer through them. The setup files are usually decompressed to your download folder, but this time they were not there. Time to hunt for wabbits!

I found the install files in a folder called Dragon Age Temp or something similar under my user folders. The three files are GameuxInstallHelper.dll, Installer.exe, unrar.dll. I copied these to my DA install folder and ran the installer myself.

Everything appeared to run smoothly, but when I went to start the game I received an error “The game cannot launch because of a misconfiguration. Please reinstall your game and try again.” I found some information on this on Impulse’s forums here. Sombody recommended installing EA’s Download Manager, which I did, but I still had problems. I also was receiving an error referencing PhysX. Nvidia’s PhysX software is on the Dragon Age DVD, but someone on the Impulse forum gave a link to an updated version on Nvidia’s website. I had problems with both because of the MSI error I mentioned receiving when trying to install Corel Paint Sho Pro. Time for more hunting.

So I finally found the solution to my original problem with PSP and with installing PhysX from MSI installers. There’s a nice troubleshooting writeup by Install Shield here. The relevant part for me was concerning changes I made to the Registry under the keys:

HKCU/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer/Shell Folders & User Shell Folders and

HKL/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer/Shell Folders & User Shell Folders

Under these keys I change the locations of My Documents (the “Personal” key) and Favorites so I can share these folder on the network and use them from multiple computers.  After I changed the “X” drive back to “C”, the installer worked fine. Kind of stupid that my changing a totally unrelated value bonks an installer.

That finally fixed my Dragon Age run problem. I can now get into the game, but I have not tried playing yet. Hopefully the worst is over.

Windows Vista / 7 Error – “Server Execution Failure”

Posted by Brad

I’ve been running Windows 7 Ultimate for about 2 months now and I’ve only had one problem that was annoying and luckily not a major show stopper. I was working on the computer and decided to reboot for some reason. When I logged in, I received the error “Server Execution Failure” and could not open the Computer to view any drives and could not connect to any network drives. Otherwise, Windows worked fine.

I did some searching and found people who had experienced the problem under Vista. Solutions included reload (obviously a last resort) and re-registering certain dlls (which didn’t work for me). Someone described the problem as a “DCOM” error. There was also some complicated solution involving doing stuff with COM settings that also didn’t work for me. Finally, I found a solution which involved creating a new user profile. This was difficult because I don’t think I could get into Control Panel.  There was talk of enabling the Administrator account if it was disabled and using that account to create a new user or going into Computer Management | Local Users and Groups and creating a user there. I happened to have a user already that I had created when I first setup the computer. I logged in with the other user, and everything worked fine. It was almost like a reload since I had to reconfigure everything (very annoying), but at least I avoided an actual reload.

Lost Audio Problems in Vista / 7

Posted by Brad

Sometime after I built a computer a couple of years ago with Vista, I started having random loss of audio which would require a reboot. I was never sure if it was caused somehow by iTunes since iTunes always seemed to be running when it would happen. This problem recently cropped up again since I have upgraded to Windows 7. However, I did finally find a solution. What fixes the problem is restarting the Windows Audio service (which also restarts the Creative Audio service). I’m not sure if one or both of these services is the problem, but at least I am able to fix it without a reboot.

Impulse First Impressions

Posted by Brad

A few weeks ago I had my first experience with Impulse, Stardock’s new Steam-like digital download site. After downloading the client, you can purchase games pretty painlessly. The games are available for immediate install or save to your hard drive. I bought an expansion for Galactic Civ 2, but since I didn’t have the original game installed, it wouldn’t even let me download the game I purchased (I am a firm believer in making backup copies of any digital downloads – you never know if the company will be gone tomorrow).

Impulse offered me a link to download a demo of Demigod. I went for it because I wanted to see something install. The download and install were silent. When the game was ready, I had the option to launch it from Impulse. I also found Start Menu shortcuts to the demo. I did enjoy the one game I played of Demigod, but unfortunately I missed the Labor Day sale on it so I’m waiting for the next time it goes on sale.

One last cool thing I found out about Impulse is that you can enter the serial numbers for any Stardock games you have (by registering the product in Impulse) and they will then show up in Impulse for download wherever you are. So, on the other side of the coin, I just made a backup of my purchased Stardock games in the cloud. They also update the version of the games available so you always install the latest version of the game.

I am happy with Impulse so far – they have sales weekly like other download sites and have a good selection besides Stardock games. The new client also eliminates the need to go to the website since it integrates everything from a list of your games or software purchased, community information (news, forums, etc), and the Impulse catalog of games and software for sale:

Impulse Client

Paint Shop Pro and Error 1327

Posted by Brad

I tried to install Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 today on my Windows 7 Ultimate PC and ran into an error at the beginning of the installation. The error message I kept receiving was “Error 1327: Invalid Drive x:\.” I did a quick search and several people had received this message. Solutions included reloading Windows (quite ridiculous) and mapping the problem drive letter to a dummy folder. In my case, the drive is a network drive, so I tried to disconnect it to see if that would help. When it didn’t, I tried copying the installation folder to drive X and installing it from there, which also failed.

Finally, I went to Corel’s site to find an answer. The describe the problem as being caused by “a registry entry which points to a drive letter that no longer exists. The solution to this problem is to add the drive letter MSI ( Microsoft® Installer ) is looking for.  This can be accomplished by re-mapping your CDROM drive letter or adding an additional drive letter which points to your CDROM.” Well, my drive does exist, and who cares if I’ve ever installed a program from this drive. No other program installation has ever complained.

So now I decided to try my own solution to problems with setup programs – bypass the setup program and go straight to the MSI file. In this case, the MSI file is named psppx2.msi. I ran that program, and, low and behold, I had a successful installation. From this, I would say that Corel should stop blaming problems on registry entries and fix their setup program.

In summary, the solution to error 1327 in Paint Shop Pro Photo X2’s installation is to run the MSI program to install the software. The software works fine for me; it even downloaded and installed an update.

Manually adding Microsoft Mary and Mike voices to Windows XP

Posted by Brad

I had a customer who was trying to add more voices to the Speech control panel module. He was using a program related to ham radio that would make an automated announcement before a broadcast. Following the instructions on a site for the software he was using, he installed the Speech 5.1 SDK software. Then, farther down the instructions he was reading, the page said not to do this if you were running Windows XP (which I didn’t understand since Speech 5.1 SDK says it’s compatible with XP, but maybe not when this other software is installed). IN any event, my customer could see the additional voices in the Speech module, but when he tried to change to a different one and press OK, he would receive the error “An exception occurred while trying to run “shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL
‘C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Speech\sapi.cpl’ .”

My first idea was to uninstall Speech 5.1 SDK. Well that removed the error, but it also removed the extra voices. I searched on the Internet and found other people who wanted the voices, but no good explanation to get them. So I reinstalled Speech 5.1 SDK and found the voice files and their related registry entries. I copied the files and exported the appropriate registry entries, then I uninstalled Speech 5.1 SDK. I then manually installed the voices as follows:

I copied the files mary.sdf, mike.sdf, mary.spd, mike.spd to “C:\Program Files\Common Files\SpeechEngines\Microsoft\TTS\1033” (their original location).

I imported the 2 registry keys referring to these files which are located at:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Speech\Voices\Tokens\MSMike

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Speech\Voices\Tokens\MSMary

After this, the two voices appeared in the Speech CP module. I could select them without error and preview the voices.

Sometimes you just have to do things the hard way.

More dead routers

Posted by Brad

I had two Dlink DFL-700s die on me recently – one a few months ago and one a couple of weeks ago. I had one spare DFL-700 so 1 office was ok, but the other was not. Unfortunately, Dlink does not make the DFL-700 anymore. I setup 2 Dlink DFL-210s for a customer about a year ago, but they were a big pain in the butt to configure – way too complicated. I did not want to spend about $300 and then have to configure one again (I have detailed instructions on what I did here).

Luckily, I found the Dlink DIR-330. It is a VPN router with an 8-port switch. One thing that was always a pain with the DFL-700 was that you could not plug a PC straight into it for configuring it – you had to plug it into a switch. So that’s one problem gone. The DIR-330 was very easy to setup. I downloaded the manual from Dlink before I received it and the manual hadextensive instructions on configuring a PPTP VPN. It was a lot easier even than the DFL-700, which I had some problems with the first time I tried to configure it. I just setup the admin password and Internet conenction like a normal router. For the VPN, I had to create a VPN server and a DHCP range of addresses to use for incoming connections. Then I created the necssary users for connecting and put them in a group which I set the VPN server to use for authentication. That was it. I did not even have to configure any firewall rules. One little thing I think Dlink screwed up on that I changed is they left the WAN side open to respond to pings – big no no. So always check all the settings for little things like this that are major security problems.

Anyway, the DIR-330 router has been working great, and at $90 from buy.com instead of $300+ for a DFL-210, I am a happy camper.