Saturday, April 21, 2012

Manage virtual memory / move pagefile.sys

Windows 7
Computer > Properties
 - or -
Control Panel > System and Security > System

Advanced System Settings > Advanced tab > Settings (under Performance) > Advanced tab > Change (under Virtual memory)

Reboot

Disable hibernation / remove hiberfil.sys

Windows 7
powercfg -H OFF

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Computer games bugs and conflicts

Conflicts
  • Terraria and Mumble (creative sound card bug?)
  • Grand Theft Auto IV and Mumble (same as Terraria?)
  • Grand Theft Auto IV and Process Explorer (securom restriction)
  • Battlefield 3 and Process Explorer (punkbuster bug)

Bugs
  • Singularity has no sound on my Audigy 1. Tried installing OpenAL but didn't help. Works with another sound card.
  • Screen in BattleField Bad Company 2 sometimes flashes black frames. Sometimes screen becomes black for several seconds. This is on my GTX 275. Tried several different NVidia drivers versions (even betas) with no success. Very annoying bug.
  • I couldn't play Battlefield 3 CO-OP mode unless I forward port 3659 from the router to my computer. I can then host the game and invite another player. I didn't have to make a rule in Windows Firewall. It probably already works if UPnP-style NAT traversal is enabled on your router, but I highly discourage its use due to potential security problems.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Terraria vs Mumble Conflict

There is currently a problem starting Terraria when you also have Mumble running.

Apparently that a lot of people have problems starting the game, but no one seems to be sure of the issue. Some say it's because of the .NET or XNA framework and others say it could be a conflict with creative sound cards.

Of course, you should check if you have the latest .NET and XNA framework installed. Be sure to have the latest Creative drivers for your card (mine installed automagically with Windows Update optional updates). You could try verifying Terraria game cache integrity under Steam.

I was getting a "Terraria stopped working" window with the follwing details:
Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name:    APPCRASH
  Application Name:    Terraria.exe
  Application Version:    1.0.4.0
  Application Timestamp:    4eea0a07
  Fault Module Name:    RTSSHooks.dll
  Fault Module Version:    0.0.0.0
  Fault Module Timestamp:    4d4fb7eb
  Exception Code:    c0000005
  Exception Offset:    0000a5f2
  OS Version:    6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48
  Locale ID:    3084
  Additional Information 1:    0a9e
  Additional Information 2:    0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
  Additional Information 3:    0a9e
  Additional Information 4:    0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789

Read our privacy statement online:
  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=104288&clcid=0x0409

If the online privacy statement is not available, please read our privacy statement offline:
  C:\Windows\system32\en-US\erofflps.txt


A workaround is to stop Mumble, start Terraria, then restart Mumble. This conflict could very well happen with something else than Mumble. I have a Creative sound card (good old Audigy 1), but I don't know how to fix this issue so I am unsure if it's related.

What kind of sound card do you have? Did you have the same issue using another sound-related software?

EDIT: Not just Terraria! Grand Theft Auto 4 also crashes on start if Mumble is open.

Friday, August 12, 2011

start programs rapidly

Windows, linux
launchy
enter launches most common item
ctrl-shift-enter launches it elevated
F5 rescans the catalog

linux, BSD and others?
dmenu

Monday, June 6, 2011

hidden scheduled task

When running a batch file or ruby script (even .rbw) or anything that does not have a GUI, a cmd window normally pops up. This is surely unwanted when scheduling a task with those kind of programs. Sadly, I don't see any checkbox to hide the window at runtime in the scheduled task wizard.

The best way I found is posted at http://serverfault.com/questions/9038/run-a-bat-file-in-a-scheduled-task-without-a-window.

Schedule a .vbs script containing something like:
Set WinScriptHost = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
WinScriptHost.Run Chr(34) & "C:\Scheduled Jobs\mybat.bat" & Chr(34), 0
Set WinScriptHost = Nothing

There are other tools like hstart and cmdow that lets you do pretty much the same thing, but I prefer using built-in tools a lot more.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

events/

Debian Squeeze on my new (used) T61.

events/1 take 50% cpu for some time every 2 secondes or so.

Seems to be related to Wicd. Doing a "ifconfig eth0 down" solved the problem, but I still don't know the root cause.

T61 specific problem? Lots of posts on forums about this. Lots of people also "fixed" this by removing the battery for a couple of minutes... Pretty strange.