I recently purchased the Ubisoft classic pack via Steam. Mostly for one game, Beyond Good and Evil. Getting it to run on Vista 64 was a bit of a chore. First I needed a registry fix, which is different than the registry fix posted for XP/Vista 32bit.  The file contains the following:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Ubisoft] 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Ubisoft\Beyond Good & Evil] 

"Install Path"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Steam\\steamapps\\common\\beyond good and evil" 

You will need to  change this if you installed the game somewhere else, the path listed above is the default.

After that, I had to run SettingsApplication.exe, located in:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\beyond good and evil

Go to the advance settings tab, check “Manual compatibility settings.” I unchecked “HW Vertex Processing”

I had to do this because the 2D elements of the game, like the game’s user interface were flickering often. Others in various forums seem to uncheck other options depending on issues they are having. So your luck may vary. If you are still having issues check out Steam’s Beyond Good and Evil forums.

I love OpenDNS but really dislike the page it redirects to when you enter a keyword into the URL/address field while using Firefox. Here is how one would fix that:

Enter about:config into your address/URL field.

Enter keyword.URL into the filter field.

Double click the value section of the keyword.URL line. A dialog window should pop up and enter one of the following depending on search engine preference.

http://www.google.com/search?q=

http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=

The first boot of the systems takes me to the BIOS. I disable the following: Legacy Diskette A:, HDD SMART monitoring (doesn’t work for this configuration). I then find the two menus I’m not totally familiar with. Under advance there is a menu JumperFree Configuration and CPU Configuration. They both mostly listed things as enabled or auto. I’ll get back to those two later.

I save changes and exit, booting in Vista 64 Ultimate now. Within a few minutes BSOD! The BSOD mentions STOP 0×0000000A, IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL, and something about updating my bios. After some searching I found the following on Microsoft’s support page: Error message when you try to install Windows Vista on a computer that uses more than 3 GB of RAM: “STOP 0×0000000A”

Annoyed, I removed two sticks of ram.  I now have 2 GB and I am able to boot into Windows. I apply the update, along with a few others. Shut down, reinstall ram, boot up. No more blue screens since then.

I start installing drivers and included software now. The most notable of the bunch here is the ASUS software, ASUS AI Suite. It is an interface to the various power saving functions of the motherboard. You can also “easily” over clock and monitor your system temperatures. I did not like the UI for this software at all.

You get this gear shifter and you shift it high or low depending on your needs. High being performance and low being maximum power savings. I didn’t want or need this functionality. I wanted my clock speed to stay constant. No option at all to do this. As far as the easy over clocking, I did over clock using it to 20%. It booted and worked but I didn’t like how it made the changes. I ended up uninstalling all the ASUS software.

I thought that would stop my clock speed from changing on it’s own but it didn’t. I had to go back into the BIOS, into the advance menu. I set JumperFree Configuration to “Standard” and everything under CPU configuration was disabled. 

After that everything I almost had everything running how I wanted it to. The last issue was the way Vista was detecting my SATA hard drive. It was showing up as a removable SCSI drive. Apparently there are/were a lot of issues with the Nvidia chipset drivers. I downloaded the latest 750i nForce driver for Vista 64 and it solved my problems. I would later read I should never use the nforce drivers…but so far they’ve been fine.

I recently built a new desktop PC. I was looking to build one as a budget gaming machine. I also wanted to move into more recent technologies. I was still using a five year old single core P4 with hyper-threading, AGP graphics card, DDR 400 ram, IDE hard drives, etc.

Parts:

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E7200

Motherboard: ASUS P5N-D

RAM: Corsair XMS2 (1GB x 4)

Power Supply (PSU): Corsair vx550

Hard Drive: Seagate 7200.11 500GB 32MB Cache (SATA)

CD / DVD Burner: LITE-ON iHAS220 (SATA)

Video Card: EVGA 8800 GT 512MB

Case: COOLER MASTER Centurion

CPU Fan: Golden Orb II

A lot of these choices were based on prices, reviews, and features. The e7200 seemed very over clock friendly. The motherboard was a hard choice. There are cheaper boards and I couldn’t decide if I wanted a 750i or P45 board. I ended up with the 750i just incase I wanted to do SLi in the near future. But honestly, still unsure if I made the right choice.

I bought an aftermarket CPU fan because I really don’t like the stock Intel coolers. I’ve had bad luck with them in the past. The particular cooler I purchased doesn’t cool much more than stock but is very quite.

Installation:

Nothing substantial to note here. Was all pretty straight forward and simple. Even the CPU fan wasn’t that hard. Although if you were to put this fan on an already built computer it would be a pain. It would require you to take out the entire motherboard.

I ended up with plenty of space for all my components. The side air duct cone fit perfectly over the CPU fan. 

The side panel on this case is more annoying to remove and put back on than more expensive cases though.

Next time I’ll cover the first boot, bios, and some of the *fun* I had installing Windows Vista 64.

I’ve been getting a lot of IM spam recently. Especially from my Yahoo and AIM accounts. The easiest way to eliminate instant message spam is to go to Tools>Privacy in Pidgin. Then select “Allow only users on my buddy list.”

This doesn’t work very well for me since I give out my IM name(s) a lot. I don’t always remember to add people too. I will also often remove people from my contact list who I no longer remember or recognize.

We’ll I’ve found the perfect Pidgin plugin for this situation, Bot Sentry. I first heard about it on Makeuseof.com and it just took me a bit to try out. Bot Sentry will ask a verification question to whomever tries to send you message, unless they are on your buddy listed or have been approved by you previously. Here is what it will look like on the Spammer’s end.

Spammer: hi i want to spam you
YourNameHere: Bot Sentry engaged: you are now being ignored! Your message will be delivered if you can correctly answer the following question within 10 minutes: How do you spell the number 10?

So far it’s working great. It does have some small issues with at least two other plugins I know. Psychic mode needs to be changed to only display for users on your buddy list. Bot sentry will actually modify this setting and notify you upon first run. Guifications will display typing notifications for the spammer if you have it enabled. There doesn’t seem to be a way to disable it for just those on your buddy list. You can however disable the notification completely.

ProfessorTomoe posted some nice Arch wallpapers in the forums a few days ago.

I’m trying out with Mac4Lin, a very complete theme that attempts to mimic OS X. It includes themes, skins, and icons for compiz, metacity, pidgin, audacious, etc. While it isn’t original art the package is very impressive and I appreciate the effort.

The documentation seems to be a bit dated but it is easy enough to install if you are already into themes.

While not necessarily a part of Mac4Lin, I decided to try out Mac menu bar Gnome panel applet. I was very surprised how well it work. I was disappointed that XUL apps don’t work with it. Basically all non GTK2 applications will not work with it.

I highly doubt I will stick to this setup but I do wish there were more Linux themes that were this complete. Unfortunately the ones that are tend to mimic OS X or Vista.

I don’t currently dual boot but I have in the past. I’ve always wondered if a Linux swap partition could be used by Windows for it’s virtual memory/swap file. I never wondered enough to look for a solution though.

Apparently it is possible and has been for some time. How? With an open source driver called SwapFS, which works with NT, 2000, and XP.

The SwapFS page also contains links to similar drivers. One of them which I used while I did dual boot, EXT2 IFS. It made my EXT3 partitions visible to Windows. I was able to read and write to the partitions too. I did have issues deleting some files that were created under Linux though.  This may have been fixed since I last used it.

Due to very strange Windows XP errors my uncle ended up installing Linux. He installed Ubuntu Ultimate Edition. He was able to do that fine but called me when his Sprint Aircard didn’t work.

For some background, my uncle is in his early 40s, has been using computers for about 8 years, and English is not his native language. He uses his computer(s) for web browsing, mp3s, movies, digital photos and instant messaging. He is fairly comfortable doing all these things but by no means a “geek.” He has learned a lot mostly by trial and error. He solves any hard problems with a restore disc or a Windows reinstall. If he needs more help he has an older friend who is a hardware geek and myself.

He has tried Ubuntu before, about a year ago and didn’t like it because it didn’t play mp3s out of the box. He didn’t feel comfortable with any of the methods provided to enable this and other features.

Now that Windows was refusing to install he went back to the alternatives. I guess remembering his past Ubuntu issues he looked for something “better.” He bought a DVD containing Ubuntu Ultimate from OSDisc.com. He was even impressed how little he had to pay when the list price was “19.95″. ::sigh::

My uncle didn’t ask for help until he couldn’t get his Sprint Aircard 595U working. I dropped by and tried a few things without researching the card and failed. I went back home and hit up Google. Surprisingly enough the guide I used was from Sprint itself! On the Sprint software download page, select Linux and you get a link to a pdf file titled: Sprint Mobile Broadband Setup Guide for Linux. The guide explains quickly that this guide is for informational purposes only and to not bother calling customer service for Linux support.

Following the guide the only step that couldn’t be done was “sudo modprobe -r usbserial.” That command returned an error stating usbserial was in use. Skipping that step seemed to have no consequence, everything ended up working.

As for Ubuntu Ulimate, my Uncle was very impressed with it. Especially with Compiz and that all his media worked right away. I personally didn’t like the default theme. It is a black theme and doesn’t even work well with all the included software. The aMSN client for instance, you couldn’t read anything because it used white text on a beige background. Aside from this and all the additional software, it seemed pretty much like any other Ubuntu desktop.

After getting him back on the internet I didn’t have much time to help him with other things. He still wants to get his Zune to work. When it is plugged in, Rhythmbox pops up and thats it. I tried Amarok’s autodetect but no luck. I did some quick searching and found nothing that I could do quickly. I may just end up installing some kind of virtual machine when I get a chance.

B-Con posted a thread on the Arch Linux forums asking which Arch packages users rebuild. Firefox comes up a few times because users rebuild it for official branding. Allan then posted a link to a nifty script to automatically rebuild Firefox with official branding. I’ll post it here as well and hope that WordPress won’t mess it up.

#!/bin/bash
sudo absif [[ ! -d /var/abs/local/firefox ]]
then
mkdir /var/abs/local/firefox
fi

cd /var/abs/local/firefox
rm -rf *
cp /var/abs/extra/network/firefox/* .

OLDMD5=`md5sum mozconfig | cut -d' ' -f1`
echo ac_add_options --enable-official-branding >> mozconfig
NEWMD5=`md5sum mozconfig | cut -d' ' -f1`
sed -i "s#$OLDMD5#$NEWMD5#" PKGBUILD
sed -i "s#browser/app#dist/branding#g" PKGBUILD

makepkg

PKGVER=`grep "pkgver=" PKGBUILD | cut -d'=' -f 2`
PKGREL=`grep "pkgrel=" PKGBUILD | cut -d'=' -f 2`
sudo pacman -U firefox-$PKGVER-$PKGREL-i686.pkg.tar.gz