Oceans Apart: Then you'd better download the latest update manually from their website.

Normally, this shouldn't happen. I still advise a clean reinstallation.

Oceans Apart: No, I currently use 7.5.446 and it most definitely has NOT expired.

Try to uninstall it completely, reboot and download/install it again.

Andersp: Google it or go to www.snapfiles.com, freeware section. All the freeware you can shake a stick at, reviewed and rated.

OK, now I'm completely stuck! I've just tried Virtual PC 2004, installing the ol' MSDOS 6.22 from my original floppies and the necessary CDROM drivers, as well as the mandatory SB16 line in AUTOEXEC.BAT... but the game just installs, happily playing the test guitar riff for sound setup and the intro video for video setup. When I run it, I get the black screen forever...

HEEELP!!! I am seriously considering rearranging my real hard disk partitions so that I have MSDOS bootable just for this game!!!

Now that lost passwords were mentioned, I have been unable to reach ICQ for the last few YEARS regarding the password to my ICQ account. I had probably registered it from an academic address that stopped working and they are now unable to help me. I didn't want to get a new number, as the number I had was pretty nice and short, not like 9494859495 after its popularity shot up!

Any ideas? I mean, I have disowned them ages ago, but if there's a way to get back my account...?

Rose: Well, try 640x480 on an... EGA monitor??? Or a Hercules card?!?!?!

:)

anastasia: That's all well and good - I even have a Yahoo! e-mail address. But when I tried to visit that simple address, that's what I got. I'm afraid that a service such as Yahoo! should work for 100% of the people and not for just 99%. Hence my theory of suction :)

(Off the record, I think it's because I have Greek as my set language for Yahoo! coupled by the fact that I let Yahoo! keep my userid active all the time, so that I only need to enter my password when I sign in - but don't tell anyone!!!)

Nightstorm: When I try to visit their main page:

http://photos.yahoo.com

this is what I get:

RESULT=49 - TCookie invalid
VERSION=2.5

i.e., Yahoo! sucks.

anastasia: I'm afraid Rose did not get your drift, neither did she actually visit Geocities to correctly answer your query :)

That 3GB is in fact the traffic that they allow you to have per month, and they'll be watching dutifully over it every single hour - if your page is too popular, down it goes and noone can see it again until next month!!!

The actual space that Geocities Free gives you is a disappointing 15MB - OK, it's not too bad, but I bet it looks bad compared to 3GB, right? :)

bitwisexor: So it must be a relief that I do NOT expect an answer :) (in this board anyway!!!)

volant: The only question remaining now is:

Is a snail slower than drying paint!?!?

:)

volant: My vote is with the ISP.

ali: Ah, the plot thichens.

You did say that the cd writer worked OK when on its own cable, right? That means there is no problem with the cd writer, but with the way it is connected. However, WHERE you put the IDE cable to connect the cd writer may also be important.

I'm afraid that investigating this takes a few combinations of the relevant hardware pieces, so maybe that's what you have to do to make sure :)

ali: then the dvdrom is too slow and its speed become the cable's speed, including any transfers from the hard disk :( Meaning, disconnect the dvd-rom and try it the other way:

- hard disk and cd writer together
- dvd-rom alone

ali: Power is OK, but make sure they are set up clearly as master (cd writer) and slave (dvd reader). Or try to put the writer on its own cable and take the dvd reader as a slave to the hard disk cable.

Doris: Would you like to elaborate slightly further on this? :)

Pythagoras: Come on, you know well that BECAUSE of the lower heat emission it's the most overclocked CPU brand :)

Doris: An overheating CPU - please make sure you're not over-overclocked and/or your PC's ventilation system is running OK.

Czuch Chuckers: Your installation instructions must mention some way that you can transfer files from the PC to the player via the supplied cable. Either a "removebla drive" is recognised every time you connect the player via the cable to the PC and you power it on, or a special interface program appears. In either case, just go to the appropriate folders for either side of the cable and transfer away :)

bitwisexor: Of course the hardware doesn't matter, but Windows XP has a nice "one-liner" itself - the Network Connection Wizard where very little information is needed by the user and the OS does all the dirty work "rewiring" its internals, resulting in a fully functioning wireless network, in the same way that a true OS user would do, let's say, in Un*x :)

mrloupcity: Unless you have Windows XP on all PCs involved (the "OS for dummies", I suppose, although it's not a disgrace for all others to use as well!) then, yes, it is somewhat cumbersome to set up a nice wireless network... I opted for the peer-to-peer solution in my place, as my main PC is mostly on and online, so ...

For Windows XP users, the built-in firewall should be enough (or prove me otherwise, those who know better?) wheeras for antivirus, spam filtering and spyware protection, I use and recommend AVG Free (free AND auto-updating, every few hours sometimes!) and Spybot-Search & Destroy (free, not-auto-updating, but hey, do something yourself occasionally, eh?)

playBunny: Hyperlinks as well :)

playBunny: Well, if that guy's watching us somehow, how come he ain't changed the "do applets" in the 3rd box?... [looking suspiciously around the corners of the board for spy cams]

playBunny: Well, NOW I notice "LIVE" and "sample" indicators next to the boxes. I certainly cannot recall seeing them the first time - but in any case, what about the 2 boxes reading "run applets" and the third, negative sample reading "do applets"? Q.E.D. even if I was partially blind first time around :)

playBunny, Pythagoras: I'm gonna have to choose my words REEEALLY carefully around you guys!!!

What I was implying with my previously-poor working were the three boxes. The still-poor design of that page makes you think that whatever is IN the boxes reflects the reality that applies to your tested computer. If it says "indeed", it means you're OK. Then the third box is stupidly programmed to say NOT when it actually means INDEED, if only a less poor sentence was chosen to surround the latter...

Pythagoras: Well, that "tester" tells me my Java is OK, but "I can NOT do applets", which is ridiculously wrong :) I mean, how can it say "indeed" in the first 2 tests and "NOT" in the third??? Especially since I also play in Pocket Monkey, where Java applets are the heart of their system :)

So, everyone, please stick with the OFFICIAL tester:

http://www.java.com/en/download/help/testvm.xml

Backoff: Can't be due to lack of information, so you were just lazy, right? :P

Eriisa: As long as Badinage cares about games... ;)

playBunny: [trying to hide ball & chain] Who? Me?

:)

Was this issue discussed in the past? For example, how extremely difficult is to have a dual-boot system for a Windows-loving wife and her wife-loving husband? :)

bitwisexor: Because my wife dislikes any alternative :) Women...

Oops, sorry, political incorrectness alert!

ali: It's about computers, which normally are able to run games, except when a monopoly sceews up their own product and removes backward compatibility for products even less than a decade old :)

furbster: Got all NFS titles up to Porsche 2000 (US: Porsche Unleashed) - after that, the game went another way I didn't wish to follow. But yes, Underground 2 is good otherwise.

playBunny: I have two words for you: Playable Demo ;)

Obviuusly it can still serve some purpose for any, ahem, interested parties out there *wink* *nudge* (Badinage, I'm looking at you!)

Badinage: CD installation, sorry :) I think the final solution will be to create a special boot disk, loading all memory management and sound drivers, so that I can at last run this tough cookie :)

Badinage: Yes, for any pre-Win95 games, it's no problem - it's those "edge" cases where programming was slightly different to make sure compatibility with then-new systems and OSes that causes this unfortunate situation for people like me... All newer NFS games run perfectly on XP, BTW.

Badinage: Obviously. However, for games close to the beginning of the Win95 era, the problem still persists - take my given example, The Need For Speed (plain or Special Edition) - even DOSBOX, the usual emulator for such cases, doesn't play it properly. Only true DOS will do for this, and similarly "edgy" games...

votacommunista: Yes, but that would require creating a partition etc., or using a boot image from a CD for example. Still, how "native" is support for graphic-intensive applications like The Need For Speed?

Hrqls: Good idea. I suppose I wouldn't need this kind of workaround very often, so why bother squeezing a DOS-only partition? :) Thanks!

How about this tricky situation?

One of my favourite games of all time, The Need For Speed, is simply unable to run in Windows XP, as it was created in the olden times of DOS, just after the introduction of Windows 95. No, running it in emilators like DOSBOX won't do - unless you have a better alternative? Anyway, my question is: Being able to manipulate my disks and their partitions any way I like, how can I introduce a DOS partition where I can selectively boot old MSDOS 6.22 and run those oldie goldies?

Hrqls: Doesn't Firefox allow the optional IE behaviour of image placeholders (reading the dimensions of the image and preparing the area before the image is loaded) ?

There are people who prefer the decimal system, due the number of their fingers, and people who prefer other systems, due to their fondness for non-deciman numbers. The union of the sets these two kinds of people create is the people of Earth :)

Fencer: Those 386/486s are PERFECT for Linux experimenting, aren't they? :) I mean, you just CAN'T have all the luxuries of modern GUIs there, so you're forced into some pretty hardcore stuff :)

Fencer: Could be some outdated, but still working 486s that can't go any higher than that :)

Fencer: Thank you, now all three offending pages are happily full of the information they were supposed to have :)

As a software engineer myself (on a sabbatical right now) I'd raise your adrenaline a bit in order to get things fixed, rather than shut up when I am sure there's something obviously wrong outside my control ;) If you wouldn't mind, and just out of sheer curiosity, what was the problem after all? And would the solution to this problem prevent others from having it in the future?

Fencer: Hi Fencer, this is playBunny logged in as WhiteTower. I'm accessing this account from London whereas WhiteTower is in Ireland, so presumably I'm using a different routing infrastructure. Certainly it's a different computer! And I'm on Windows 2000 Pro. I don't know what WhiteTower's OSes at home and work are.

I can confirm that the same pages are giving the same problem. What appears in View Source is [!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"-HTML-HEAD-META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=windows-1250"-/HEAD-BODY-/BODY-/HTML] for Internet Explorer and simply [html-body-/body-/html] for Firefox.

All other pages work fine, as did the dozen games that I challenged myself (ie. playBunny) to and resigned as WhiteTower. Mwaahaahaahaaaaaaa. ;-))

It's a puzzler. :-/

chessmec: In case you didn't read my earlier message, I said that the same problem appears from two COMPLETELY different PCs, setup-wise and connection-wise, therefore it is NOT a problem from MY side, but either an account or a BrainKing problem - unless you can logically find a third alternative...

Fencer: OK, but that means that either I am lying or that you are not willing to investigate this. I am not lying - we could have something like a VNC connection or a NetMeeting session so that I show you. Therefore, you are not willing to investigate. Can you think of other alternatives?

Fencer: I notice the same thing from my work PC (behind a company firewall) as well as from my home PC (standard broadband connection) - so it must be something either in my account data in the database, or with BrainKing itself...

chessmec: Both TU Wien logos OK.