All you have to do is go into the Advanced Multiplayer options and tick the box next to “disable HTML MOTDs”; apparently a combination of the awesomeness of Vista 64-bit and IE7/8 causes the game to occasionally crash when trying to load IE in the background to display a HTML MOTD.

Well, I’ll tell you: I’m someone who detests time wasting. Reinstalling my operating system was a waste of time. Whose fault was it? Well, I can’t be certain, but I’m pretty sure it’s a combination of the following three parties: Asus, Microsoft, Valve.

1. Asus, because their shitty driver package can’t uninstall itself properly. I originally made use of the onboard sound on my Asus motherboard, and I uninstalled it to make way for my new Asus soundcard. Unbeknownst to me, the uninstall feature of the drivers was for diddlysquat. It uninstalled the annoying configuration application, and that’s about it. There were registry entires and dll files strewn all through my system and I had no idea where or how many.
2. Microsoft, because obviously their driver management is too hard for some companies (Asus, but I’m sure there are others: why do so many driver cleaner apps exist?). Really, it’s not very hard. In Linux, many device drivers are a single binary blob, or in the case of open-source drivers, a binary blob with source attached. You load it with one command, and you unload it with one command. When you want to uninstall it (ie, remove it completely), you just delete the file. Bingo! All gone. Upgrade to your hearts content. Not with Windows.
3. Valve, because their software’s configuration options could not be more limiting or vague. Sure, I selected the correct mic input in Steam, but did that have any effect on the games themselves? No. Know why? Because they were ignoring settings from Steam. They tried to be too smart and they messed up, because whatever configuration I tried, the games themselves insisted on trying to grab input from a device which no longer existed (my old onboard sound).

But hey, who am I to criticize? Oh that’s right, I’m a paying customer. Fuck your shitty drivers, Asus. Fuck your shitty driver management, Microsoft. And fuck you, to a lesser extent, Valve, for making your software so damn vague.

Now that my rant’s over, I can talk about the problem I was having: uninstalling my old onboard soundcard software didn’t completely remove all of the hooks it left, well, everywhere. So there were dll files and registry settings and who knows what else ruining a lot of things. This lead to my Source-based games (Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead) not being able to initialise the microphone, with the following printed to the console when trying to configure audio options:

Unable to initialize DirectSoundCapture. You won’t be able to speak to other players.

It also left Unreal Tournament 3 completely unplayable, as it would lock up before even entering the main menu, presumably due to the game trying to make use of an OpenAL audio device which no longer existed. There is a file located in the Windows system directory which you can delete to resolve this issue, but the forum post describing this procedure escapes my Google-fu at this time. I do recall it was related to solving issues with Creative X-Fi audio cards and OpenAL.

So, in the end I finally have a fully working Vista gaming system. And people say Windows is “user friendly”, ha!

Sometimes Windows, for reasons unknown, gets confused about printers. This is a problem in an office environment where people are printing almost non-stop. At my work we have about thirty employees, and in approximately six months, they’ve printed over 100 000 pages. I know this because one of the ink cartridges in the printer was recently replaced, and the printer keeps tabs on these kind of stats.

Anyway, an issue we sometimes encounter is that peoples printers simply don’t work. When they’re selected in the print dialogue of whatever application, the application locks up while the operating system tries to remember where the printer really is. I have no idea what causes this; if you do, please drop me a comment. In an effort to avoid this kind of behaviour, I’ve made an addition to our login script that removes and re-installs all the printers on the system. Hopefully by keeping the printers “fresh” in this way, I can avoid having peoples’ time wasted by silly, preventable printer problems.

The Script

Essentially, what the code does is grab the existing printer connections, delete them, and then re-add them. The in-code comments are enough to satisfy anyone with a web browser capable of looking up Microsoft’s VBScript references. What may not be immediately obvious is the last part — the script will re-add them in the order they existed, but without further input, will make the last added printer the default printer. This isn’t what we’re after at my workplace, therefore we need to fix that. However, I’ve just figured that in my particular instance I could re-add the printers in reverse — problem solved!

Of course, if Microsoft included that option, they might find their market share dented somewhat. Which is exactly why they don’t include it. I’m going to format and put XP on it anyway, but that’s not the point. Non-technical users should be given a choice. 99% of the time they’ll hit “yes” without a second thought (without any thought at all for some), but that other one percent, maybe they’ll wise up…

Frankly, I think they can go and get fucked, but you should read the above article, which is written in a more user-friendly language. ^_^

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This from Microsoft’s security bulletin website, here:

Affected Software:

• Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 – Download the update
• Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 1 and Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 – Download the update
• Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition – Download the update
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 – Download the update
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 for Itanium-based Systems and Microsoft Windows Server 2003 with SP1 for Itanium-based Systems – Download the update
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition – Download the update
• Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition (SE), and Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (ME) – Review the FAQ section of this bulletin for details about these operating systems.

This security problem WILL NOT be fixed in Windows 98, 98SE or ME. Third-party applications such as virus scanners, spyware scanners/blockers and such are technically incapable of preventing harm to your system from this exploit. As a result, you could have your important personal data wiped due to some script kiddie having fun via remote control of your system. Worse yet, there are approximately 50 – 70 million Windows 9x systems in operation today. If even just five per cent of those were infected with botnet software, the target of such a botnet attack would be in dire consequences.

So, are you wondering what your upgrade path is now that, in all likelihood, if you went the XP route, you’d probably have to upgrade some hardware components as well? Well, wonder no further. Your upgrade path is simple; though perhaps not straightforward. More like taking a sidestep onto an escalator, watching XP whizz by below you.

I’m talking about Linux. Not only is an upgrade to Linux free (as in freedom, and free as in without cost), it will more than likely save you any hardware hassles as well. Although XPs hardware support is greatly improved over its predecessors (especially Windows 98 and ME), its the speed and capacity of your hardware that matters. Sure, you can “run” WindowsXP on an old Pentium with EDO RAM — I’ve done it — you can even “run” the XP operating system on an 8Mhz Pentium with 20Mb of RAM, if you’re willing to put up with 30 minute boot times and unpredictable load times for applications; but the point is, to run Windows XP at a pace acceptable for most users, while being able to have several applications open concurrently, you’re going to want at least an 800Mhz CPU, 256Mb or more of memory, and about 5Gb of hard-drive space (when you include Office, Windows’ swapfile, space for suspend-to-disk hibernation, etc).

Obivously, I’m not the only one who’s given thought to this, with a write-up over at ZDNet talking about the very idea. Thankfully, it’s not all bad, with Micahel C. Barnes at DesktopLinux.org producing a nice tutorial-style write up concerning Windows 98 users upgrade path to SimplyMEPIS. Of course, our thoughts are shared by bloggers around the ‘net.

If you’re a tech-headed sort of person and you know someone with a Windows 98 box, tell them you can upgrade their software for free. Tell them their system will be secure and they won’t have to worry about viruses, spyware or malware anymore. Tell them their system will be more stable and have greatly increased functionality and customisability. If they have a slow system, more than likely they aren’t playing any big-name, modern games on it anyway, so there really is no reason for Windows 98 users not to upgrade to some flavour of Linux.

If you’re a Windows 98 user looking to escape the Microsoft tax, then you’re best off going with Ubuntu in my opinion. It’s stormed up the ranks of ‘most popular’ distro in just under a year, and has widespread acclaim from new users and veteran UNIX administrators alike. With that comes widespread support and an excellent community, based around their forums and their wiki.

So, there you have it. Upgrade your operating system to Linux and you won’t have to worry much anymore, as Linux will always be free (free as in freedom, and free as in without cost), will always be supported, and will always be better than Windows 98 or ME.