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05/06/2010

Splinter Cell: Conviction Blank Screen on Loading

Had an annoying issue with Splinter Cell: Conviction on the PC in that when I started the game I could hear the audio playing, but my monitor came up with an 'Out of Range' message as though the resolution was set too high, or the resolution was set to an obscure setting which my monitor didn't support.

After trawling through a few posts I can safely say the best way to get this working is as follows:

Go to ATI or Nvidia web site and download the lastest drivers (in my case I have an ATI HD5770 so I wouold advise you to use driver version 10.5 if you have similar hardware as this has some performance fixes for Conviction anyway)
Ensure you have the February 2010 DirectX update for your OS, as again this has numerous fixes and performance benefits for Conviction
If the above fails and you are still having problems (and you have ATI graphics hardware) go into Catalyst Control Center > Graphics > 3D and ensure AA, and AF are using application setting
Finally if you are still having problems, go into the Splinter Cell: Conviction install directory and edit the ConvictionUserPC.ini file (if you are using Vista or Windows 7 you may have to open Program Data > Ubisoft > ConvictionUserPC.ini instead of the Program Files version). In this file you should have some options listed FullScreenViewPortX/Y – this is where you specify te resolution of your monitor (the defaults in my file where set to 1920 and 1080 – way above what my monitor would support). In my case i set mine to:
FullScreenViewPortX=1440
FullScreenViewPortY=900

After making the above changes my copy of Splinter Cell: Conviction works perfectly.

Posted at 15:30 by Chris Jackson | Category: Other | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

12/02/2010

Copying Files across a Network from Vista is Very Slow & Causes High CPU Usage

I first came across this problem when trying to connect my Windows 7 32bit laptop to my Vista x64 PC running MediaPortal 1.0.2.0.

The symptoms of the problem where very strange – my MediaPortal client on the laptop refused to connect, even using the Vista machines (fixed) IP, with the windows and anti-virus firewall disabled, and PING command returning positive results. Mapping file shares from my Vista machine on my laptop worked fine, and I could browse content, if a bit slowly, however when playing back Recorded TV files (encoded in raw TS format) on my laptop using VLC Player resulted in skipping and terrible quality, and very high CPU usage on my Vista machine. This then caused TV playing on my Vista MediaPortal to jump and skip as the machine became overwhelmed trying to serve my laptop!!!

The problems even occurred when accessing my SharePoint Services web server running in VMware on the Vista machine, either through RDP or via its web address (which funnily enough serves this blog!!!) which in theory shouldn't even touch my Vista machine at all...

As you can imagine not what the doctor ordered from a home media centre!!!

Initially when googling the problem, most people pointed to this being an issue with Vista and some of its features, but most of these seemed to be pre service pack 1 issues. As my Vista machine was Service Pack 1 and updated to the most recent updates as of 10/02/2010, I assumed most of these fixes where not relevant.

In the spirit of thoroughness (and desperation to fix the problem) I thought I'd try them out and see what worked. So very briefly here's what I tried and what worked:

Turn UAC off – no effect.

Disable Aero Desktop – still the problem occurred.

Disable Indexing Options – slight improvement but don't get excited yet.

Update NIC drivers – nope.

Disable IPv6 – again slight improvement

Disable Windows Remote Differential Compression – Did help initially, but after a few seconds (no more than a minute) of streaming/copying files across the network, the problem was back.

So back to the drawing board I went...

And then I had one of those rare occasions when you actually catch a process, or service causing the problem!!! When I had checked before it was the System process which was consuming all the processor time, and therefore not much I could do about it, but on this occurrence it was the AVG Network Scanner Service which was hogging the CPU resources.

In desperation I ended the process...

BANG!!! CPU resources dropped through the floor to 1-2% per core (dual core processor), then the service restarted automatically and the problem started again!!!

GOTCHA!!!! Went on Google and searched for the process causing this very problem and it seems to be a (reasonably) common problem since AVG 8.5-9.0. So I removed AVG, and installed Avast Anti-Virus and the problem went away!!!

I can now copy files (really) quickly between laptop and Vista PC, and vice versa, connect to the MediaPortal TV Server on my Vista machine from my laptop, and stream media files without it even registering on my Vista PC!!!

So I fixed my problem, however I would urge all readers to exercise caution when reading this if you are assuming this is the be all and end all for fixing this problem, because it isn't. I had a very particular problem which occurred in a certain set of circumstances. This isn't to say nothing can be learned from this, quite the contrary in fact.

I would advise anyone having similar issues to:

Patch Vista to its latest service pack and additional updates (you do this anyway... right...?).
Make sure you have the most up to date drivers for your hardware (motherboard, network card, sound card, graphics, storage controller, etc...).
Monitor your running processes and resource utilisation when the problem occurs (both CPU and Memory) to try and pin down the offending process.
Finally if you are going to try these or any other fixes out there on the web, you investigate then thoroughly first and you are comfortable making the changes otherwise you could do more harm than good.

Happy hunting...

Posted at 21:08 by Chris Jackson | Category: HTPC / Media Centers | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

31/12/2009

New SharePoint Web Applications Display 3 Authentication Prompts and White Screen on Server 2008 R2

Came across this really frustrating problem when using SharePoint on a 64bit Windows Server 2008 R2 machine.

Essentially when you create a new web application on a machine with Windows Server 2008 (doesn't have to be 64bit, but it does seem to be Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 related), you may come across a problem where by everything is created normally without errors, including the accompanying content database and site collection, but when you try and access this from the local machine, you are prompted for credentials three times only to be presented with a white screen and no error.

The usual fixes for this, such as ensuring the host header or alternate access mapping were present in the hosts file, lmhosts.sam, and in the DNS of your network (in my case DNS is running on the same box, which is by no means ideal but fine in my situation), did not work.

After some googling around I eventually found this little pearl of wisdom from Ishai Sagi at SharePoint-Tips.com which referenced a KB from Microsoft.

http://www.sharepoint-tips.com/2009/04/access-denied-in-win2008-with-custom.html

As Ishai explains the article does refer to Windows XP and Server 2003, but don't be put off – it worked for me!!!

I won't spoil the surprise as to why this problem occurs, but needless to say it's a 'security feature' which is supposed to help against reflection attacks on your server.

'nough said...

Posted at 20:35 by Chris Jackson | Category: MOSS 2007 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

23/11/2009

Call of Duty – World at War: Nothing Happens After Selecting New Game

Had a small problem when launching CoD: World at War for the first time in that when you select New Game, and the difficulty level is displayed nothing happens. As it turns out it's a profile bug. You need to do the followingto get the game to workas this worked for me.

(From the Call of Duty Forums)

For those who cannot start the Solo campaign after choosing the difficulty, this is the solution:

1: For Windows Vista, go to C:\Users\yourname\AppData\Local\Activision\CoDWaW
(Vista c:/user/yourusername/appdata/local/activision/Codwaw/players/profiles)

For Windows XP, you can find it in Documents and Settings

2: Delete __CoDWaWmp (if you have it)

3: Go to players\profiles and delete all the player profiles there (if no folders are present, move to next step)

4: Create a new folder with the name you want for your profile

5: Create a text file named "active" alongside your profile folder (do not put it in the profile folder you just created; the profile folder and text file are in the same folder--the profiles folder)

6: In the text file type your profile name and save it (make sure your profile folder and name in the text file match)

7: Run game and play!

The reason it does not start is because you do not have a profile to save your progress. To verify this 'fix' has worked, your profile name should appear in the main menu under "offline: name-of-your-profile" at the top right corner of the screen."

Just another good example of the type of bug that seems to be more and more prevelant in todays games...

Posted at 00:27 by Chris Jackson | Category: Other | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

03/01/2008

Unable to Use Console View for a Powered On Virtual Machine

I came across this issue when I tried to access the console view for a VM running on my XP box. For the most part this VM runs without problem, until recently when I found the VM was running OK, but VMware workstation 6 was reporting it as Powered Off and it came up with an error "cannot find a valid peer process to connect to".

This isn't immediately a problem as my VM runs my Exchange and SharePoint web server which still chugged away happily in the background (as evidenced by the processes still running in Task Manager, and my being able to access it through the web and RDP). I also have it setup for RDP access, so I can get to it from any PC or Laptop around the house, should I need it.

The problems start to occur when you use the PC it is hosted on as your main PC, and you need the console to access the VM from an admin point of view such as snapshots, restarting, and cloning etc...

So after some digging I managed to find the answer, and typically with any problem of this kind in windows, a service had failed to start (probably due to permissions on the local machine). The service in mind was the 'VMware Authorization Service' which I restarted and KAPOW!!!! The VM was accessible from the console again.

I have not officially tracked down why the service failed to start, but I have set the service actions to restart the service if it fails, and then on the third failed attempt, set a batch file to run along the lines of...

REM The VMware Authorization Service failed to restart...
Pause

This should run the batch file if the service fails and leave the message on the screen so I can remedy the next time I look at the desktop. Crude solution but at least I'll know when it has failed and hopefully track down the cause.

Posted at 00:57 by Chris Jackson | Category: VMware | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

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