Category Archives: Computing

Crappy Computer: Take 3

Latest update: 12/23/08, 9:39 PM
A couple months ago after finally realizing that it was a BIOS issue that kept me from booting, I installed Windows XP 64-bit because my nice, legal copy of Vista Business 64-bit wouldn’t work. A month later, I had to reformat. I put the same OS on again. That was about a month ago. This weekend, I reformatted again and put Vista Business 64-bit on my PC thanks to Antonio lending me a DVD. It installed without a hitch! Then, I tried to figure out Steam. I ended up just shoving my entire Steam folder in a new directory other than Program Files (x86). I realize that applications can’t save in Program Files now. However, I tried installing Steam in Vista and then observing where it puts stuff before copying my old Steam files into the correct location, but I couldn’t figure it out. Anyways, leaving it in some other folder seemed good enough.
However, World of Warcraft randomly crashes. I haven’t really tried any other games for more than a minute or two. Here’s what’s going on: If I launch Wrath off of my internal HDD, it crashes either right after getting in game or during the loading screen after choosing my character. If I run it off of my external, I can usually play for a few minutes, but it’ll still crash. When it crashes, everything freezes, including my speakers playing the last quarter-second or so of audio repeatedly. I’m using the latest graphic card drviers, 180.48. Vista is completely up to date. I download the latest drivers for my wireless card and motherboard also.
This is my system:

  • MSI P45 Neo-F motherboard with up to date drivers
  • Intel Core 2 Duo Wolfdale 2.53 GHz
  • 4 GB of OCZ Platinum DDR2 1066 RAM
  • PNY GeForce 8800 GT PCI Express 2.0 x16 with 180.48 drivers (latest)
  • Rosewill 802.11b/g PCI card with up to date drivers
  • Vista Business 64-bit,up to date
  • DirectX 10

I found this thread talking about WoW crashing in Vista. I followed the advice of changing my graphics card’s 3D settings from maximum quality to maximum performance. I then ran it from my internal disk, and it crashed while loading my character. I’m reinstalling my graphics drivers now. I’m going to continue to update this post as a personal log so I can keep track of what’s happening.
Update: Reinstalling video card drivers didn’t work. I have a couple options. I can try installing older video card drivers or trying to go to DirectX 9. Using DirectX 9 would kind of annoy me though. DirectX 10 is one of the few things Vista has going for it.
Update at 5:52 PM: Installed the latest nVidia beta drivers, 181.00. Same problem when running World of Warcraft from the internal.
Update at 5:57 PM: Disabling all add-ons does not help!
Update at 6:23 PM: I wanted to try DirectX 9c, but Microsoft’s site won’t let you choose old versions. I found it easily on another site. I downloaded AVG Free because I wanted to scan it first. AVG stopping during install to tell me that my copy of Vista wasn’t up to date. I was missing the KB929547 patch. I checked Windows Update again, but it said I was completely up to date. I clicked check again, and my PC froze. This is the first time it’s frozen outside of a game. Here’s the description of the patch according to Microsoft: “Install this update to resolve an issue where after installing the Windows Filtering Platform (WFP) driver, applications and services appear to stop responding for approximately 15 seconds.” That doesn’t really sound like my problem because my computer stays frozen. I’ll try getting it anyways.
Update at 10:44 PM: I went back to Windows Update, but it still said I had everything completely up to date. I told to check again, and after it checked a couple times, it found more updates. Weird. I updated a whole bunch. Same problem.
Update at 11:52 PM: I found out that DirectX 9 won’t work in Vista, so there’s no need for me to worry about trying that. I tried running WoW as an administrator, but it still crashed. My account is an administrator already, but I think in Vista you have to run applications as administrator to use those privileges. I’m not positive though. I also tried running it in XP SP 2 compatibility mode. That didn’t work either. I still need to try both together, but I doubt that’ll yield better results. Also, I need to turn UAC off to see if that helps. Another thing to consider is that I changed the compatibility of and tried running as administrator Launcher.exe, which launches wow.exe. I don’t know if the compatibility option or “run as administrator” settings carry over to an .exe launched by the original .exe. I guess I need to look into that too! At least I have this log to keep my thoughts coherent.
Update at 12/23/08, 9:39 PM: I realized that I hadn’t tried any games other than World of Warcraft yet. I didn’t really think that mattered since I froze outside of WoW while checking for updates with Windows Update. I ran Left 4 Dead and played a full level with everything on high settings. It ran really well! Then I tried WoW again. I ran the copy stored on my internal drive, and for the first time ever, I got into the game! I noticed that my add-ons were all off and wondered if that’s what was causing the problems before. However, I was pretty sure they were off because the last thing I tried last night was turning them off. Anyways, I logged out, turned my add-ons back on, and tried to log in again. It froze! I found the problem, right? Wrong! I rebooted, turned them all off, and it froze again trying to login. I’m not really sure what’s wrong! It makes me want to play more Xbox!

New Computer

I bought a new computer. The parts came in Monday, but it’s not working yet. Whenever I install the video drivers and reboot, Windows hangs while loading. I have to use Last Known Good Configuration to get it to boot again. I’ve tried a bunch of different drivers, and none works. I think the video card could be bad. Sometimes when I boot, I don’t get any video output. I have to unplug the power from the video card and reseat it. Nine times out of ten that doesn’t fix it though. At this point I can’t tell if it really does fix it the other time or if it’s just me trying repeatedly. I get beep codes on boot too but haven’t looked into them too much.
I was also wondering if it was an issue with everything being 64-bit. Despite everything supposedly being compatible, I know 64-bit is relatively new. On top of that, Vista 64-bit is more supported than XP 64-bit. The drivers are for XP x64, but I thought I’d try XP 32-bit or Vista 64-bit.
My only XP CD was old and bad so I asked Collin to burn my legitimate XP Pro with SP2. He said it asked him if he wanted to correct the size of the burn because the disc size was unequal to the image size. He apparently said no to this. The disc didn’t work. It couldn’t find a file on the disc. I burned the same image on gem’s computer and got the same error when I attempted to use it, but the burn also failed verification. Some people on forums had the same error because their discs or drives were dirty, but my drive is brand new and seems to work otherwise (it installed XP x64) and the discs look good.
Next I downloaded Vista Business 64-bit and burned it. It didn’t pass verification either and won’t work at all. No computer can even recognize it.
Eventually, I’ll get another OS on there with which to test the card. If it works, then I know it’s a software issue. If it doesn’t work, it’s most likely a hardware issue and I’ll try the card in another computer. My hardware is after the break.
MSI P45 Neo-F motherboard for LGA 775 Quad-core / Core 2 Extreme / Core 2 Duo / Pentium CPUs. FSB 1600/1333 MHz. Intel P45 north bridge and Intel ICH10 south bridge. 4x240pin DDR2 1066 slots (max 16 GB). 1 PCI Express 2.0×16 slot, 2 PCI Express x1 slots, 3 PCI slots. 6 3 Gb/s SATA connections. 8 channel Realtek ALC888 audio. Gigabit LAN. 2 PS/2, 1 COM, 1 LPT, 4 USB 2 rear ports. 4 onboard USB.
Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 Wolfdale CPU Dual-Core at 2.53 GHz and 1066 MHz FSM. 3 MB L2 cache, 64 bit support.
4 GB (2x2GB sticks) OCZ Platinum 240pin DDR2 1066 memory. 5-5-5-18 timing.
PNY GeForce 8800 GT at 600 MHz. PCI Express 2.0×16. 512 MB of video memory at 1800 MHz. DirectX 10 compatible. 2 DVI ports and s-video out. Max res 2560×1600.
750 GB Samsung SATA 3.0 GB/s HDD (7200 rpm)
550 watt Antec power supply
Rosewill 802.11b/g wifi card.
DVD-burner
Windows XP Professional x64 installed.

C# Attributes, Using statement, and Properties

More adventures in C#!
There are a few new concepts I learned recently while working. As the title of this entry suggests, they are attributes, the using statement, and properties. While all three were new to me, they’re very logical (as one would expect with anything dealing with programming).
Attributes allow you to assign metadata to your code. An attribute goes directly before the data it describes. It’s encased in square brackets and is of the form Key(Value). For instance, if I want to describe who wrote a particular class and when, I could put // Peter Anargirou, 7/9/2008. However, that isn’t very structured. Instead I could put [Author(“Peter Anargirou”),Date(“7/9/2008”)] directly preceding the class declarations. Attributes can be programmatically referenced by the program in which they exist, making them very useful for code reflection.
The using statement is also very interesting. It’s of the format using ( object declarations here ) { …code…}. Anything declared in the using declaration is deallocated at the end of the using block. For example, you can open a file in the using declaration and not have to worry about closing it. When execution leaves the using block, the file is closed automatically. It’s similar to a try/catch/finally.
Lastly, properties are something new I recently discovered. They’re similar to accessor methods in other languages. Normally, if I have an int that I want to be able to access from outside the class it’s in, MyClass, I make it public. If I do that, then I might accidentally overwrite it when I that’s not what I intend to do. Also, there’s no way to check what I’m doing with it. For instance, I might not want it to store a value of 0, but with a public int, I have no way of enforcing that. Instead, I could make a private int and have accessor methods. I might have private int count, public int getCount(), and public void updateCount(int newCount). This is definitely the preferred way of doing things, but now when I want to retrieve the count from outside, I always have to say MyClass myClass = new MyClass(); int x = myClass.getCount();. To update the count, I have to use myClass.updateCount(42);. With properties, you can create accessor methods that invoke automatically while you treat the property like a public variable. For example, I now write

private int myCount;
public int count
{
get { return myCount; }
set { if ( value != 0) myCount = value; }
}

Now from outside I can simply write x = myClass.count to retrieve the value and myClass.count = 42 to update the value. Of course, it’s also checking that I’m not updating with 0. If I try to update with 0, it won’t actually update myCount. It’s clean and simple yet still provides the more complex checking that can be done with accessor methods. Very handy!

HTML Form Combo Box

I found an interesting article on how to create a Combo Box in DHTML. Form controls are definitely in need of the combo box, but I’m not so sure this does the job all that well.
http://www.tgreer.com/comboArticle.html.
A combo box is a drop down select list that can also allow the user to input his or her own strings. The author of the article builds one in DHTML by first placing a select list on the page and then placing a textbox on top of it using CSS. He then causes the dropdown list to make a Javascript function call, causing the textbox to update with the value of the list’s selection. It’s interesting in concept, but you can tell something strange is happening. Looking at the page, you can tell there’s a rendering error (in this case not an error) and that there are controls stacked on top of each other.