Where did it all go? :-(

[vinylweatherman]

No, not the 10,000...


MY NEW HARD DRIVE!!!

 

[winbig]

No, not the £10,000...


MY NEW HARD DRIVE!!!

20 Gigs??? Sheesh....

Head on over to newegg. You can get a nice 320 gig for under $100

Of course that doesn't look like XP, so I doubt it would see the full 320...You could always throw another 80 in there

 

[GrandMaster]

I have just looked, and Platinum Play is taking up 720MB on my hard disc, which makes Platinum Play the biggest application on my computer. I think you can still squeeze a whole Linux operating system with graphical interface into 720MB.

 

[EasyRhino]

Some of the microgaming casinos seem to be giant space whores that just download every game possible.

Is there an option somewhere to adjust that? I usually only play a max of 4 different games at any given casino.

 

[Mousey]

Some of the microgaming casinos seem to be giant space whores that just download every game possible.

Yes, they're monsters and growing more bloated each month.

Is there an option somewhere to adjust that? I usually only play a max of 4 different games at any given casino.

No option. We've been crying for one for months and months. Each and every MG casino downloads the full suite of games whether we want them or not.

 

[silkprint]

I know . I am uninstalling ones I haven't deposited at in a few months . I don't understand why they aren't phasing out the games that aren't played as much [ and there must be quite a few] or let us have the option of only loading the ones we want .

 

[vinylweatherman]

Space

I have been doing some more detailed analysis and it looks like Microgaming are the culprits. Not only are they large, but they seem very fragmented with over a thousand folders containing in excess of 15,000 files. Earlier this year I measured them at around 350Mb, up from under 200Mb last year, they seem to be doubling in size each year, BUT not too many new games have been released. I believe they are highly inefficient, repeating data that could be shared over many games, such as card images.
This is the biggest drive my PC can handle, it is actually 40Gb, but only 32Gb can be seen by my PC, I had to use a jumper to lock off the other 8Gb.

I will have to get another PC sooner rather than later, or have a pruning of Microgaming casinos that don't live up to what I expected. I have already pruned a load of MG casinos, so was shocked when I was down to my last 4Gb!

 

[winbig]

What I don't get is why don't they just base the downloadable casino on the flash games? ie: a flash core, even for downloaded games.

That would definitely take care of having thousands of files/directories, half of which aren't even needed.

 

[Simmo!]

I just keep 2 MG's on my drives now. Partly because of space, partly because they are the ones I always play now. I tend to visit the Flash versions of others on the odd occassion I need to go elsewhere.

 

[Peaceful1]

Does MicroGaming have different versions though? I've noticed that upon doing recent downloads on some of the MG casinos the platform (particularly the sign-up) looks a little different. Primary examples would be Big Dollar and Golden Reef Casino. When I look at the programs, these take up over 500 mbs of space, while King Neptune's and Trident Lounge are just over 200 mb.
Just wondered if this made a difference and if the versions have anything to do with it.

 

[amatrine]

Re

What I will do is go into my files and search the words casino, poker, slots etc, and just erase all the files. There can be ALOT. My computer will run so much faster after that.

Ama

 

[winbig]

What I will do is go into my files and search the words casino, poker, slots etc, and just erase all the files. There can be ALOT. My computer will run so much faster after that.

Ama

Actually, that's a misconception.

Erasing the files won't make your computer run faster...

What happens is (I think it was mentioned earlier too), is the files get "fragmented", meaning that they're on different areas of the hard drive, instead of being all in one place, as they should be. This causes the computer to have to look in several different areas for the files it needs, thus slowing it down somewhat. To defragment your hard drive (in XP), click on start > accessories > system tools > disk defragmenter. I strongly suggest you do this at least once a week. If you download alot of stuff, or install alot of new stuff often, I would suggest setting it up to run nightly, or a time when you're not at the computer.

What I don't understand is why MG is so retarded as to have it setup like that. The graphics/gameplay is consistant, no matter what casino you play at. Why they don't stick all the gaming files in a subfolder of "Common files" like other programs do, is beyond me. If they did that, any MG casino you play at would use these files, and the client would be the only thing you needed to download; which would contain the branding.

It seems their programmers are more interested in putting out more games as fast as possible, instead of making their software as effecient as possible; both in size and speed.

 

[amatrine]

re

I do defragment, but admitingly not as often as I should

Ama

 

[winbig]

I do defragment, but admitingly not as often as I should

Ama

You might want to check into this:

Link Removed ( Old/Invalid)

It's on how to schedule tasks in XP....You can set the defragmenter to run nightly at a certain time that you're not at the computer....That way you can just set it, and leave it

Out of sight, out of mind

 

[vinylweatherman]

Fragmented Logic

I would defragment, but this old PC takes forever to do it!
I found a product called Disckeeper or similar, it's on PC Pitstop. It is supposed to run in the background, and will defragment when the processor and drive are not being used. The idea is to always keep on top of things without the need for a big run, with the PC out of action for a while. Sadly, it crashes on my PC, and I don't like the idea of a crash during defragmentation. It is always a good idea to disconnect any "always on" broadband, such as cable, as these tend to occasionally communicate with the internet and disrupt the process.
Once I get my next PC, this will be less of a problem, I am currently researching my choice (No, this is NOT just another excuse for being tight fisted, this time I really intend to go ahead )
Managers of MG casinos should realise that they need to fight to keep the player interested less they select the casino for deinstallation, once uninstalled, a big MG casino is a real chore to put back again!

Fortune Lounge seem well aware of this at present, how about this for sheer desperation and panic!

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi ?????

My name is O??? and I am contacting you on behalf of the VIP desk at the Fortune Lounge Group of Online Casino's.

?????, we have noticed that you have not played with us for the last couple of days and we have been a little bit concerned as we value our VIP players at the Fortune Lounge Group.

Have you perhaps been ill or have you experienced some problems with our casino software perhaps? If you wish us to assist you with any queries you are very welcome to contact us at your earliest convenience via e-mail, live chat or our toll free telephone number.

I hope that you are doing well and that we will see you online shortly.

Have a wonderful day further and we would love to hear from you.

Thank you for gaming at the Fortune Lounge Casino Group, the Better Place to Play.

Regards and best wishes,

O???
VIP Casino Host

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Ill

Not me, it's only been 3 days!!!!!!

My computer, well, a touch of indigestion perhaps

I think it has been overindulging over at the MGS updater banquet of late and has become lazy and slow to the point of insolence and backchat, I am going to have to put it on a stricter diet
Whenever I ask it do do something for me, it gives me some lame excuse, such as an invalid page fault, or, more cheekily, tells me to wait because it is "busy waiting for some window to open"

 

[winbig]

Nice response!

As far as diskeeper, I understand where you're coming from. I have an AMD 3500+, 1G ram, etc., and diskeeper would almost grind my system to a halt! The problem with it is it would just eat and eat away at system resources. If they were available, it would take them.

The last straw was when I checked its usage, and it was eating up 400MB of memory...unreal.

If you ever get a chance, check out Norton Systemworks. The Speeddisk utility is the best I've seen for defragging, IMHO. The Systemworks package also includes many other useful tools, including Norton AV.

 

[vinylweatherman]

Norton

I did have an older copy of Norton installed. The latest will not work on this PC, but i will probably forget about Diskeeper if it kills off an AMD 3500!!

I am looking at Dual Core processors, and want to go fairly high spec, but I don't want to overdo it, as I don't play the games that need the super graphics rendering that gaming PC's offer. I am looking for the fastest processor and most RAM, probably the two most important things to not cut corners on. I can add extra storage later, as needed, and buy extra cards. I also want to avoid on-board graphics, I believe this presents a specific problem with the casino software, and seems to result in lockouts and slowdowns where a running casinos disables all PC functions if it has to wait on something, such as a packet from the server. This has become a particular problem with MGS, even on my 2.5GHz XP machine which happens to be one with on-board graphics.

 

[winbig]

For everyday use, there's no real reason for going with the dual-core processors. Most applications won't even make use of them anyways

But seriously, I haven't had any problems (other than diskeeper, and that was more of a memory hog issue than CPU hog) with this 3500. My suggestion would be a 35/3800+, 1G ram, and definitely go with a SATA 3G/s drive, as well as pciexpress16 card for graphics. I bought the 7300GS 256MB video card for under $80, and it runs great, even with the few games I play.

IMHO, anything over the hardware described above would be overkill for normal everyday use.

edit: If you plan on upgrading to Vista when it comes out, I would suggest at *least* a 4200+, with 2G ram. I heard it's going to be a resource whore.

 

[KasinoKing]

What I don't understand is why MG is so retarded as to have it setup like that. The graphics/gameplay is consistent, no matter what casino you play at. Why they don't stick all the gaming files in a subfolder of "Common files" like other programs do, is beyond me. If they did that, any MG casino you play at would use these files, and the client would be the only thing you needed to download; which would contain the branding.

It seems their programmers are more interested in putting out more games as fast as possible, instead of making their software as efficient as possible; both in size and speed.

MicroGaming - are you LISTENING!!!

 

[AussieDave]

This months MG updates raped 3gig of bandwidth of my 10gig adsl cap & that was by the 5'th.

Like most I too only play certain games. Being forced to accept downloads that I don't want nor use is major pain...

It's obvious that certain files are common to all MG casinos. Why they don't set these up into a shared folder architecture is a BIG mystery to me. Then again past experience has shown me that if it does not affect MG, it's of NO concern to MG.

I'm going to take the lead of Simmo! and only have the casino I play installed, the others are going to get uninstalled after this post.

Some great posts by the way



Cheers

Trezz

 

[dealer wins]

Interesting thread. Ive only got one MG casino and pokeroom which is Ladbrokes. It is by far the biggest program on my pc, 5 times the size of the next biggest in fact(Including other casinos) Talk about bloatware.

Microgaming is not a partner company of Microsoft is it

 

[winbig]

Interesting thread. Ive only got one MG casino and pokeroom which is Ladbrokes. It is by far the biggest program on my pc, 5 times the size of the next biggest in fact(Including other casinos) Talk about bloatware.

Microgaming is not a partner company of Microsoft is it

lol

Pretty soon, MG casinos will have the same system requirements that Vista is going to have

 

[vinylweatherman]

MG may have to listen!

I have a niggling feeling that no MGS casino, in current form, will work under Vista!
I read about an unrelated issue to gaming, but the root of the problem was that Vista requires programes to create files in the user's common area, and will not allow programs to update their own folders (except perhaps when run by the OS Administrator). This may even be an issue with password protected multi-user XP systems.
MG probably think that PC's will develop faster than the needs of their software, but with updates swallowing so much bandwidth, their insistence on sticking to the original minimum specs for use is laughable (3Gig on dial-up per month !)
When I upgraded by hard drive, I thought I could have everything installed, but after only 6 months or so this is no longer so. I have now uninstalled some MG casinos that I may not play this side of Christmas, rather than never again. Despite this, I have tried two new MG casinos recently, to see how they perform on the important aspects, speed and simplicity of cash-ins, no long winded excuses, just one simple request for documentation verified quickly or rejected with good reason quickly.

Ladbrokes has so far performed the best, first ever Neteller cashin within 6 hours of withdrawal without any fuss.
Villento paid in 3 days, no documents needed for the $400.
Grand Monaco - coming up to 3 days, result expected soon.

 

[winbig]

Re: Vista

From what I hear, all programs using DirectX will have to conform to v10 standards...so I seriously doubt that full screen mode would work either.

 

[vinylweatherman]

Vista

I hope MG (and others) are taking advantage of Beta testing, rather than players finding out the hard way when Vista is released.
Currently, new PC's are coming with XP and a free upgrade voucher for Vista, so it will be possible to revert to XP if there are any problems.
If Vista is going to be a resource hog I will have to consider my choice carefully.
I have thought about building from kit form, as a recent Gadget Show program showed this, and they found that it was possible to get a better PC for a given amount of money.
I will wait till our January sales before making a final decision, as there could be bargains on single core fast processors with all this fuss about the Intel Duo around.
I may buy one direct from Dell or Savastore, as they can be customised online from a base model before ordering.