Category: gaming

I will Never use gfwl Again

Posted onAuthorComputer Tweaker1 Comment

After tweaking my computer, formatting my computer, upgrading my computer, reinstalling windows, and then reinstalling Grand Theft Auto IV at least 20 times or more this year, I got an error while installing GTAIV. The error said that I have used my cd key to many times. So I posted a message in the GTAFORUMS.com pc help message boards.

I seem to have formatted without revoking to many times.
Is there a phone number I can call to get this straightened out?
I have full disk and booklets and all that.
but can not find where it offers that help.

I just don’t get it, same i.p. same email, same cd key and live does that ???? WTF is with M$ ?

neat spalsh screen

GTAIV Pc

After about an hour of searching I called Rockstar/Take Two interactive. Some guy with like an English accent answered. The tone in his voice sounded pretty sucky. He told me to go to games for windows live website and find their contact information. So I called it thinking ‘ Heck I’m an Adult I can handle this’

Nope.

I had to run back to GTAFORUMS and post another message.

Ok, well I called games for windows live.
The chump laughed at me because I said I didn’t have a 1 year old Receipt.
I asked “why can’t you just revoke all the ones assigned to my email account?”
“I’m sorry it don’t work like that”
Really? You mean to tell me that this cd key is registered repeatedly from the exact same address, exact same email account
every time I upgraded my Dang pc and this clown treats me like a teen age pirate?

He is just to big of an idiot and lazy PR*ck to try anything.

Clown.

Well as it seems they will not be clearing out all of my registrations prior to today. On the phone he told me it would be 24 hours. How in the blue hell does he expect to get my receipt within 24 hours, unless I faxed it to him or emailed it to him. In that case I could create a fake one. I won’t do that, but I could. I will never buy another game that has a microsoft logo on it, ever again.

After a year I have not had a chance to finish the dang game yet. I have been dealing with a crappy operating system with a pisspoor driver  process this whole time. Why do you think I keep having to format my pc?

I have had enough, I will be using Xliveless from here on out. I will do my next install on my Linux drive and run Wine. I hate to do this to Rockstar Games but I have to downloaded a cracked executable for GTAIV to make this happen. I have done it with previous GTA games I have purchased, I have to do it to GTAIV. And to send a big fat SCREW YOU to m$, I will place a how to online. I will of course not link to the crack. I may just crack it myself. For myself.

Or , I can just go back to Walmart and buy it again. Who knows.  oh and fyi, the GTAIV on linux, kinda just happened right now before your  eyes in this rant. i just will never call them and sit and get ridiculed by an angry little boy  again.

Dang straight I will not capitalize their name, they do that enough.

Get GTAIV Patch 1.0.6.0 Working

Posted onAuthorComputer Tweaker

On my original install I had the game running using live to download and install the game.
During the install I got an error
user posted image
but after I closed the error window, I saw that the install was still going on.

Well later I uninstalled the game and then just installed patch 1.0.4.0. (alternatively you can do this Roll back patch without uninstall )
Played for a while.
found a link in GTAForums.COM linking to the XBOX website that allows you direct download of the 1.0.6.0 patch.
download.xbox.com/content/5454083b/tu10000083_10000b83.cab?n=F1F2863FCD63C802
Use winrar.
and I tried it wondering if there would be any issues that it would resolve by getting it this way… I have no idea what I was thinking.
but.
In actuality something good did happen. I got the full install without an error. why? because the game was not running (I guess). No errors in the install.
so now I try the game and see a marginal increase in frame rates. but now I want to see more. Call me greedy.
I go to video settings for video card (nvidia control panel,ati has it under 3d setting [sorry work pc but sure they are similar throughout])

Nvidia Control Panel

Nvidia Control Panel

anistrop ati settings

and I go to the 3d settings and manually select GTAIV and turn off Anisotropic filtering.

LaunchGTAIV.exe

CODE
“C:\Program Files\Rockstar Games\Grand Theft Auto IV\LaunchGTAIV.exe” -availablevidmem=.8    


run the game from the Launch
Go to the Video settings and select “automatic”
Then go to aspect ratio and pick the size that fits.
turn texture filter to tri-linear

Setting for gtaiv defaultish

Now don’t change anything. Just save at this point and give it a try.
I would assume it will not work as well for others but it should for some
and should show a nice change for many.
The shadows look wonderful.
It will not stop the ped cars from dropping, but who cares. right? Just get the game flowing better.
It looks better than it did before the patch and plays about as good as patch 1.0.4.0 maybe a lil shakier.
I have no desire to crank the settings hire, heck it looks better already.

GTAIV issues, what works for me.

Posted onAuthorTech News

Playing Grand Theft Auto IV I was having the issue of images vanishing after just minutes of gameplay. The more the stuff I had going on, the worse it got. I looked online for the capacities of my motherboard. I found that the native memory I was using, What the manufacture says on the box that my motherboard came with is 667mhz. No where on the box did it signify that I could go any further. So I Googled my motherboard. What I found was lots of people like myself did what I did. We all bough what we thought was the max memory for the board. 2 Gigs of 667mhz ddr2. but others experimented and found that it can handle greater than 800 mhz ddr. So I headed to the electronics store and bought 4 gigs of pc 6400 800 mhz ddr2 memory. Then when I got home, I tried to find teh forums that I saw earlier. By that time I found a handfull sites selling the same motherboard, the specs they had on those sites showed greater than 800 mhz..Dang. but I did the install.
You would not believe the speed increase I gained from this. The game has no lag issues. I stay at 30 fps min, and never have any stutter, never have any vanishing items. just that small step up and doubling my memory, the game plays like a gem.
The canned air in the heatsinks didn’t hurt me . So I think I am well on my way. See you online. I will be at gtaclans.com when I am not actually in game.

Will Your Computer Handle GTA IV?

Posted onAuthorTruXter

The current estimated specs for optimal running Grand Theft Auto IV Is 2 gigs ddr ram,7200 nvidia with 128 megs ram, 3 gig processor/cpu . Direct x 9, but ten will give you more,so you might want a dx10 video card. All resource hogging junk in vista turned off. Basically you are better off with XP and heading to black viper’s site and use his method of turning off themes and everything else you do not use when you are a gamer. 800mhz fsb . Broadband internet.

Be sure and run the best cooling on your machine. Pretty much all of what is out now, is going to get hot as hell when you are playing the game (GTA IV) on your computer.

The water detail is amazing, with trash floating in the water, not on the water, but really swirls around in the water as you walk or drive in it.

There is no official announcement of grand theft auto IV being out for pc gamers as of yet, but there is no opposing info. So let’s not completely rule this out. So yeah, I have hope.

I have a spot where you can vote for a pc version at iworkwithtech.com/gtaiv It’s better than a stupid petition.

What to do if your computer is running slow

Posted onAuthorTruXter

[tags]computer,internet,cooling,speed,processor,gaming,resources,dust,malware,virus,faster computer,speed up computer,nvidia,radeon,drivers[/tags]

“There are a few things to look at when your computer is running slow. some can be hardware and some can be software, and some can be the person who is sitting at your desk right now. Let’s go ahead and check a few things. I find it easier to start with the cheapest and most simple checks, so we are not doing a bunch of useless work and not paying bundles for something that could have really been inexpensive.
Go to pc pitstop and create a free account and do a full benchmark for later references.

Let’s start with checking your “add and remove” in your control panel. When you are looking in here just check how much stuff you have installed and check for anything that looks like something you did not install, or stuff that you may have installed but forgotten about because you do not use any longer. If you really have no idea what the program is. Let’s leave it be for now, or you can just type the name of the file/program in google and see what you get in topics related to it and see if it either scares you or reminds you.

adparams.getadspec(‘c_billboard1’);

Go to pc pitstop and benchmark again and compair to last results.

Partially taken from my year old post on helium

Ok sorry for sending you off to another site, but man, I put alot of work into that thing, it needs to be read.

Crysis SP Demo Review – Video Game

Posted onAuthorTruXter4 Comments

To kick this off , let me explain, I am not paid to like or dislike the game, So I have a human’s opinion, I like some stuff I dislike others. If they where paying me it would all be 100% like. If I was paid to dislike , it would be 100% dislike.

I am not a fanboy who has been chewing on his blanket since he first saw the previews drooling on his keyboard waiting the demo. I just heard of the game less than two days before I got the demo. I gave the game an honest try and an honest feel . for those of you who know what color the main guy’s shoe laces are and why they are that color because you read the entire pamplet and news article and website front to back and upside down awaiting a clue to some imaginary riddle, Good for you, The sales pitches worked fine for you. Anything more than a sentence or two in response to this, really is overboard and you may want to ditch the yoda mouse and lunchbox.
Well I gave the game a play, or two. The demo is found here

The machine I am using is:

Direct x 9 c

AMD 2800+ Sempron 87*F

NVIDIA BFG 7600 512MB agp 110*F

2 Gigs 3200 RAM

Loading the demo the first time is a little bit drawn long, images are excellent and look very fun,Game ran fine at full settings on windows xp pro, just the dark setting and colors with some weird blue trim in the parachute scene. While looking in on the “suit tools” or options or what ever you see a circular list of stuff, you have no idea what any of it is, because it is unlabeled and it does nothing to assure you that you are on the right thing except for the cloaking,inviz.PNG or what ever that ten second thing is. there seems to be a strength,armor and cloaking that happens with the suit.

The fights where pretty great but it seemed very “grand theft auto” ish, it seemed like the bad guy just kept spawning up everywhere, and if you wanted one to just go away, turn your back and he will disappear when you turn your back. The narrator or guide or as the game called him something like prophet or what ever, he was a bit of a nag, so speakers went down just long enough for me to get killed by a guy that was not there a second ago. bad guys always know where you are , unless you are cloaked, then they just flip out and run in circles. The instant you re-spawn they know exactly where you are and are shooting at you within in a blink of time.

The water. Not so good. It just did not have that water look that you would expect from this new of a game. I mean there where bubbles and some sounds that let you know you are in water, but it just does not look like water other than your guy is now waving his hands in front of himself as if he is swimming, unsure if that run button helped any, could not tell. bullets hit you when you are under, and you can not pop up secretly , at all if you are being chased .Yes you can run out of breath. and yes he can outlast most of you, but does not live for ever underwater. sorry I did not see a timer nor a meter that let’s you know how much air is left, you just got wait till you hear him grunt or panic or make a painful sound. beach.PNG

You can pick up guns for spare bullets, and to carry or swap more guns . You can pick up numerous objects and chunk them , at people or just for the hell of it. I never found a med pack. No idea. You can enter vehicles , but it seems I haven’t figured how to man the guns on them, and or how to drive the vehicles. Maybe you can , maybe you can’t. I am not so certain that you can. I have no idea why all the bad guys looked the same, why they glow red or many things, not much to tell me why or how, I just assume it’s the pants the main guy is wearing.gunfire.PNG

Overall I give the game demo a rating of 6.5 . I will not be buying this one for myself . I might get it for my son, he will not take interest in it for more than a day, but just in case one of his friends have the game, it might be fun to lan party it. I can’t see it being very fun online. delta force 2 meets doom meets half life2.

[tags]games, gaming, crysis,video game,fps,first person shooter[/tags]

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