Posts by Stuart Clark

Perform a clean install with Windows 7 Upgrade

Oct28
2009 Leave a Comment Written by Stuart Clark

Paul Thurott and friend have worked out how to do a clean Windows 7 installation whilst only using the Windows 7 upgrade disc.

The instructions are as follows:

  • Perform a clean installation using the Upgrade disc.
  • Install all pending Windows Updates.
  • Open regedit.exe from the Start Menu.
  • Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE/
  • Change MediaBootInstall from ’1′ to ’0′.
  • Open the Start Menu again and type ‘cmd’ — use ctrl+shift+enter to run it as an elevated-permissions user.
  • Finally, type slmgr /rearm — and press enter.

You can now reboot and activate Windows 7 by running the Activate Windows utility, type in your product key and it should now work.

Posted in Windows - Tagged

Grand Theft Auto IV save game location

Oct26
2009 Leave a Comment Written by Stuart Clark

In order to backup your save games for Grand Theft Auto IV on the PC you will need to backup two different folders, this is due to the game using the Games for Windows Live system.

Windows XP

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Rockstar Games

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\MicrosoftXLive

Windows Vista/7

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Rockstar Games

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\MicrosoftXLive

NB: These are the default folder locations, if you have a different location it can be found by typing %LOCALAPPDATA% into Windows Explorer.

Posted in Video Games - Tagged , , ,

Grand Theft Auto IV

Oct24
2009 Leave a Comment Written by Stuart Clark
Grand Theft Auto IV is the latest instalment in the long running Grand Theft Auto series, and uses a brand new game engine to transport you to Liberty City the Grand Theft Auto universe’s version of New York complete with an Statue of Liberty knockoff.

You play as Niko Bellic, a war veteran from a Eastern European country who is trying to track down the person responsible for crossing him during the war. As with most Grand Theft Auto games the story is good but is mainly an excuse to hang a series of missions from. I found the missions to be a lot simpler then when compared to previous entries in the series but it took just as long to complete.

The PC version is a very demanding game on your machine, since release a series of patches have helped solve some of the problems, but you will still need a beast of a PC to see it at its best, especially when running under Vista where 3GB plus of RAM is recommended.
Posted in Video Games - Tagged

Assassin’s Creed save game location

Oct23
2009 Leave a Comment Written by Stuart Clark

The Assassin’s Creed save games can be found in the following locations:

Windows XP

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Ubisoft\Assassin's Creed\Saved Games

Windows Vista/7

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Ubisoft\Assassin's Creed\Saved Games

These are the default locations, if they are not in the respective location you can try searching for assassin.ini as they should be in the same folder.

Posted in Video Games - Tagged , , ,

Hanging at 62% when you upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7

Oct22
2009 Leave a Comment Written by Stuart Clark

If when attempting to upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7 your installation hangs at 62% this could be due to the iphlpsvc service and Microsoft offers the following fix:

  1. Reboot the computer; this will cause a rollback to Windows Vista.
  2. Click Start, and right-click Computer.
  3. Click Properties, and then click Advanced System Settings.
  4. Click Environment Variables.
  5. Under System Variables, click New, and then press ENTER
  6. Type in the following variable information:
    Variable Name: MIG_UPGRADE_IGNORE_PLUGINS 
    Variable value: IphlpsvcMigPlugin.dll
  7. Then Restart Setup.

Note This workaround only applies to the iphlpsvc service hangs

Microsoft Support article

Posted in Windows - Tagged ,

Liquid 0.2.0 released

Oct21
2009 Leave a Comment Written by Stuart Clark

I’ve just released version 0.2.0 of Liquid, an alternative podcast downloader, there are no major changes just a few usability tweaks and bug fixes. You can find the changes detailed on the Liquid Changelog page. As before you can find the latest version at the Liquid Download page.

Posted in Liquid

Windows 7 disk defragmenter

Oct20
2009 Leave a Comment Written by Stuart Clark

Windows 7 has a new updated disk defragmenter when compared to Windows Vista. The disk defragmenter utility in Vista was rightly criticised for not giving enough user feedback, this has been fixed slightly in that now the user can see how fragmented the individual disks on the computer are.

Windows 7 disk defragmenter

Posted in Windows - Tagged

Google listing pages excluded by robots.txt

Oct14
2009 Leave a Comment Written by Stuart Clark

Matt Cutts has recently released has recently explained whilst Google still indexes pages which have been specified as excluded via the robots.txt file.

It turns out that Google will link to the pages but will not actually crawl the content of the page and as such they will display without a title and/or snippet.

With title and snippet

Without title and snippet

To remove a page from Google’s index completely you can do one of two things, you can either add a noindex meta tag to the page itself or you can use Google’s removal request tool. If you use the removal request tool you must be certain that you want it to be removed as it can be tricky to get it put back into the index at a later time.

 

Posted in Internet - Tagged

Map a network drive in Windows 7

Oct10
2009 Leave a Comment Written by Stuart Clark

Mapping a network drive in Windows 7 is similar to Windows Vista, firstly you need to navigate to the Computer window in Windows Explorer, this should display a list of your hard disks and removable drives in a similar style than below. You then need to click on the ‘Map network drive’ button to start the wizard.

Map network drive button in Windows 7

Here you then select the drive you want it to appear as and the folder to share it as, you can also configure options regarding reconnecting to the drive at logon and/or to connect using different network credentials. Completing the wizard will add the drive in your Computer window in Windows Explorer.

Map network drive wizard in Windows 7

Posted in Windows - Tagged

Eurogamer’s PSP Minis review

Oct09
2009 Leave a Comment Written by Stuart Clark

Eurogamer has released a round up of the PSP Minis released so far, below are their review scores:

Alien Havoc 5/10
Bloons 6/10
Brainpipe 5/10
Breakquest 7/10
Fieldrunners 8/10
Fortix 6/10
Funky Punch 3/10
Hero of Sparta 4/10
Kahoots 8/10
Pinball Fantasies 9/10
Tetris 9/10
Vempire 6/10
Posted in PSP
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