Windows

[vinylweatherman]

Windows

I have spent the weekend installing a 30Gb hard drive. Naturally, this lead to a fresh installation of the OS on to a virginal drive, and thus my PC should be as good as new, and I should have removed all the "bugs" that build up over time.

You would think so, wouldn't you!

I have installed nothing but my optical mouse and firewall, and updated my OS from Windows update, including Office (which I am considering as part of the OS as it is a pretty standard add-on.
Last night I triggered the installation of All Slots and went to bed. HOURS later, I found that the bloody thing had "hung" on around a dozen games, with the install bar incomplete. This included some of the older games, as well as the new. I also found that the installation had introduced a hung process with NO NAME that refused to allow a proper shut down of my PC without me forcing the shut down of this mystery task.
These are EXACTLY the same errors that crept in over 5 years of use of the old hard drive, and were explained away by casino tech as due to "abuse" of the environment within my PC because of the process of installing, uninstalling, reinstalling etc, viruses, trojans, worms, spyware etc etc.
What a load of horse****
My OS was only a day old!! All Slots was the first time I had installed a casino over the internet on it, and the time when these "errors" started up on my OS again!

I nominate.............


WINDOWS 98SE and Bill Gates for adding to Rogue Status

Perhaps a new area is needed to cater for the rogueing of PC manufacturers, OS versions, and other add-ons/softwares that interfere with our gaming experience, this should include the US Government for browbeating banks into making it difficult to participate without actually making it illegal in law (this affects non US players as well due to the huge size, and ego, of the Bush administration).

MG are also implicated as they still maintain that their software works on Windows 98SE and requires a mere 32Mb of free RAM (they also advise us to use Internet Explorer as the default browser) - this may have been the case before, but they really should do further benchmark testing in more modern PC environments and come up with a more meaningfull environmental requirement for SMOOTH operation of the casino interface, not one where it will just about get by with a few tweaks and continual reboots.

I will undertake more work to see if the problem might lie partly with JAVA, which we are forced to take from SUN now, rather than use the original "Microsoft Virtual Machine", which for "legal reasons" Microsoft are not allowed to distribute (but I have a copy of ). I would like to identify where this "task with no name" came from that first appeared alongside All Slots

[suzecat]

Hi Vinyl -- your post makes me rethink some very recent viruses I removed from my harddrive.

I use a firewall, which I believed was pretty much the "Fort Knox" of computer security, so had no worries about viruses and such being found on my computer.

During a routine check the other day I found that my firewall was disabled but not by me for sure. I enabled it and did some scans for adware (none found), spyware (ditto) and viruses. Found two viruses(cleaned, disinfected, deleted) in my system restore files. I run Windows ME.

The problems I had been having (computer restarts on its own whenever I access internet) (intermittent crashes after restart) have stopped.

Anyway, before I removed the viruses, I had the same "no name" program that would not close for a manual restart.

[soflat]

Windows98? That is so last century.

I got a five minute lecture from the cable internet installer for still using Windows 98.

And if they are going to rogue countries, there are a lot worse than the US.

[spearmaster]

LMAO...

Windows98SE is *not* that bad. My first suggestion, however, would be to go get the latest version of ActiveX if Windows Update didn't fetch it for you.

Furthermore, Microsoft no longer officially supports Win98 as far as I know - and that may be the root cause of the problem - and naturally I suggest Microgaming update their "system requirements" list.

As for WindowsME... commonly known as WindowsFxxxME, I have no comment.

[suzecat]

Pretty true Spear! LOL

As for WindowsME... commonly known as WindowsFxxxME, I have no comment.

I have to make a major purchase soon as XP does not support most of my hardware (scanner, CD burner, DVD drive) ..........hey it was cutting edge stuff five years ago!

[GrandMaster]

I will undertake more work to see if the problem might lie partly with JAVA, which we are forced to take from SUN now, rather than use the original "Microsoft Virtual Machine", which for "legal reasons" Microsoft are not allowed to distribute (but I have a copy of ). I would like to identify where this "task with no name" came from that first appeared alongside All Slots

Using the Microsoft Java VM may not be such a smart idea. MS is not even allowed to fix security holes in the Java VM since January 2004.

[silcnlayc]

As for WindowsME... commonly known as WindowsFxxxME, I have no comment.

Tooo funny..and sadly true!

[NoMouthToScream]

I run on AMD barton 2500, that's approximately 1.83 ghz of CPU, 1gig of RAM dual channel, on Windows XP professional. All MG and crypto games run smoothly on my computer. If you were to buy these specifications today, it would probably cost at most 250 - 350. More for the Windows XP. I suggest you upgrade to something close to this, if you don't want to deal with any computer troubles in the future. Win $500 cash out and buy a new computer, less frustration = more fun.

[vinylweatherman]

I did buy a new PC for "away" use (my Mum's place). This came with XP, and is 5x the speed, however, I was less than impressed with the performance. I still had a few problems with MG casinos, although, once loaded, the games performed better.
I have been looking into upgrades for some time, and certainly prices are falling all the time. There is so much choice though that I can't make my mind up!
I should probably buy something decent, although more expensive, rather than buy cheap and find it out of date by next year.
I am annoyed that a fresh install, although necessary, gave significantly worse performance than my well aged, but well "modded" windows 98. There are several tweaks, not easily found, that can make considerable improvements to Windows 98. Microsoft now have a rather cheeky article encouraging users to play with 98 rather than put XP on an older PC, suggesting that many of the XP features can be inserted into 98.

I had not intended to use only that old MS VM, but it can be useful for testing to see if the new SUN Java is at fault. I have had JAVA errors in the past when we first had to start moving over from the VM - all down to the SUN product not being compatable with some of the less than standard functions in Explorer.
I have installed the Norton Firewall, often complained about, but I don't think this is an issue, other than possibly slowing down some processes due to virus scanning.
I have just got the old Microsoft "Power Toy" for old Windows versions that allow some of the clever tweaks. There are many more I need to put back in though.

One objection I have to XP is that it is so "managed" that you need permission to reconfigure the PC to any extent if you want to be able to access Microsoft updates and certain content on the web. These management tools often interfere with things they are not supposed to.
Vista may be worse, I have not heard any more about this infamous "fritz chip" that was going to end DIY tweaks and piracy forever, and was due with whatever came after XP.

My PC is also "last century", and I must have had my money's worth, but it aint dead yet, and it can still serve a useful purpose as a server to my router when I get (eventually) an upgrade.
I have thought of adding my ATARI 800 to the network also, so I can calculate the expected value of next weeks bonus at Spin Palace while still playing in the All Slots tournament. I expect the answer just before the promotion closes on Tuesday