Pc | Pugnacious Priest's Warcraft Blog

Posts Tagged 'Pc'

Bug meets Power Supply

Published December 21, 2009 Gaming , MMORPG 2 Comments
Tags: bug, Pc

My Pc exploded with all the gusto of a fireworks spectactular this weekend. Bright lights, loads of noises. Took out the power in my flat.

So a call to a friend to let him know I wasn’t comming back online, and after being told how naughty I was for not putting my pc through a surge protector of any kind. ( I know.. and would you believe it I have two basic surge protectors in my desk draw – ) we determined that it looks like I had killed the powerpoint, and killed my PC’s power supply. My lights were back on once I flipped the circuit breaker back.

I was fine to start with – then I got a little anxious – thinking of the consequences of not having a pc – running through my brain – how long could I survive? – When could I get it fixed / replaced – it was only a new PC – I had paid a bit of money for it – its close to christmas – and that I would need to ask someone for help – and no wow – no music, or dvds ( I don’t have a TV because I wouldn” watch it. – and I was frantically thinking what writing have not backed up.

So with the help of my friend to keep me sane – and give me hope that It would be ok, I talked to my brother the next morning, after trying to sleep with knots in my stomach – my brother came over, and pulled my pc power supply apart to see the above.

Killed by a bug. Death by cockroach.

My brother tested to see if his spare ps would power up the pc, ( using a different power point) and and then we went and bought a new Power supply for me and a surge protector board. Even though the board wouldn’t have saved the PC because it came from internally and not my power.

But it works – it’s all good now – apparently incredidibly lucky it didn’t fry anything else. We run it through a 3d mark test to flex it’s muscles a little, and performace was fine.

So I am thanking the tech gods for allowing minimal interrupted pc time.

The lesson – I have no idea how that bug managed to fit in there – . Am extremely glad it doesn’t have any friends.

Playing In fear.

Published September 28, 2009 Gaming , Guild 3 Comments
Tags: Pc, raid

I got a new pc. ( see below for a pic of its innards.) I’m happy and excited can’t you tell? I don’t normally open my pc case unnecessarily but It had blue shipping foam in it that needed to be removed, and the case has some cool screws to take off the side panel easily ( no void warranty stickers on there either ) so I was taking pictures of my beast Aka Bigfoot and took a pic of the inside.

pc2

Larissa from the Pink Pigtailed Inn back in July wrote in her post “How my fps issues were solved and I was born once again” about her experiences seeing Dalaran clearly for the first time after getting a Pc issue fixed, and how it was another world. I can totally relate to that because upgrading my Pc has not only allowed me to see the detail in things, but I don’t have to be afraid to go places for fear of crashing. My first experience in recent Dalaran was noticing the bubbles coming off the Brewfest signage in the city. Posters with bubbles.. I love it!

Fixing my Norton problem on my old Pc was step one to rediscovering the world, upgrading to a bigger and better beast – step 2.

I don’t have to hang out in the Graveyard near TOC anymore before raid. Hop on my bike and ride as fast as I can with my camera angle looking at the ground, and hope that I will make it into the instance before crashing.

I can use my dual screen again, without fear that too many active programs would overload my pc and increase the crash chances.

I can see the floor!

I don’t need to fear having to go through Dalaran to get to a capital city. I used to fly all the way to the Tundra and catch a boat to stormwind, rather then just use the Dalaran portal.

I can do cooking and fishing dailys

I rode around Dalaran on my bike laughing on vent. This was amazing! The sights, the sounds, sure I’ve seen it all before, but only in snatches daringly stolen and hopeful I wouldn’t crash.

Oh, the people – Had to stop my bike a couple of times to say hello to a few people, that I never used to see because I was never able to hang out in Dalaran like the cool kids

I copied my wow folders onto a portable hard drive, and then copied it to my Pc. I am running Vista on the new PC, and I discovered there had been a new patch since my last log in, ( the fix for 3.2.2) and I was getting the error message that it couldn’t find the wow.exe and I was still calm, I googled the error message and apparently I need to “run as administrator” a lot of my programs because of the pains of Vista. Even my vent. My push to talk wouldn’t work unless I had the vent application selected, but Running as administrator worked.

So minor hic ups, but it is fully functional, and it has really been amazing to be able to play without fear of crashing.

Been there – Done that.

Published September 25, 2009 Gaming , MMORPG , Shadow Priest , World Of Warcraft Closed
Tags: Achievements, Guild, Pc, raid

It doesn’t seem like we are disbanding – and we moved forward in a leap, getting “I Could say that this cache was Rare” last night, the Hodir hard mode speed kill.

We were off it by 1 sec last week, but this week on our 3rd attempt for the night, minutes before yet another shutdown we got it. I was getting about 9k Dps on the kill and the 2nd attempt. On the first attempt, we didn’t get as many stormclouds on the casters so dps was too low. My dots and flays seem to scale pretty well with Stormcloud, so as long as I am running around chasing anyone who has the stormcloud – trying to get it rubbed off onto me I do well. Its been extremely helpful now that I have no screen freezes.

We also did Onyixia 10 and 25, and even managed to get the kill in less then 5 min achieve, and the no deepbreath one too on 10 without trying. It takes longer to get to her lair, then it does to do the fight.

Cache

I have decided I am not pursuing the 4 set bonus for Tier 9. Its crap. So I have orbs for my badges and I will get the crafted Bejeweled Wizard’s Bracers , and at this point try and keep the 2 set bonus’s from T8 and T9. Besides the new bracers and a 620+ spellpower weapon I am just after new trinkets, I think I have every caster trinket except the ones I ‘need’. I will post a pic at some point of my small collection.

I am still trying to participate in as many ‘off the books’ 10 mans as possible because thats where I am getting half my upgrades, and it doesn’t count towards raid loot.

My new Pc is ready to be picked up, but I will have the pc power if all goes well to be able to run around Dalaran without crashing. To take better screen shots, and enjoy the game at higher settings.

Technical Problems: Part 2.

Published September 22, 2009 Gaming Closed
Tags: Gaming, Pc, technical problems

Well the good news is. They are gone. ( or seem to be) Not one loss of texture or graphic glitch last nite, not one freeze. I apprehensively did Freya, waiting for the crash that happened 3 weeks in a row in a particular spot on a trash pull.

Nothing, and the only thing I changed was the settings on my Norton.

I am almost crying for joy here.

I would crash 10 secs into a 25 man faction champions pull, and also on that Freya pull, I would get screen freezes that went anywhere from 3- 10 sec intervals on any boss fight. Which seems to be alleviated by a game restart – sometimes. Sometimes not. I could not stay in Dalaran. I used to crash once, and then be ok. The other night I got booted or frozen 15 times just trying to swap badges for an heirloom item. I would lose floors. like this below. Yes thats Mim’s room. Basically it has been a pain, and I have only survived because I was waiting for the right time, money and time wise to organise my new pc.

No Floor.

Well its fixed. The only thing I changed was on Sunday night was run the Norton update that had been bugging me for 2 months. My subscription had been updated without my permission months ago ( oh yeah the auto renewal box was not ticked by me. I was testing it for 12 months and at no time when all the warnings for renewal popped up on my pc did they tell me they set me up for auto renewal anyway.) It was something that they did with a lot of customers credit card details that they had kept on file. Which they are not supposed to keep!

“Antivirus vendors Symantec and McAfee have agreed to pay the New York Attorney General’s office US$375,000 in fines to settle charges that they automatically charged customers software subscription renewal fees without their permission” ( the most reliable source of this information I can find presently is Pc World’s Article here back in June, I think I read an Aussie equivalent but can’t find the link)

So I upgraded Sunday night before bed, restarted, It didn’t load, restarted again. Fine, opened up Wow to make sure it hadn’t stuffed it up, and it opened ok but didn’t do anything too strenuous with wow. Shut it down and went to bed. I logged into Wow Monday night after work and straight up I got lag and screen freezes – ‘frack this’ I said and opened up the Norton control centre to discover several more options for computer security, including a bad file checker that was running constantly, and a live update that seemed to be running every 10 mins.

I am not a pc guru, but I know that stuff running in the background like that is going to cause issues, so I started disabling and tweaking some things that were beyond what I would expect a virus checker to do, and not already covered by my Spybot . I also then got onto vent and ran a few things past some guildys to see if what I was doing was dangerous to my pc security. My guildys proclaimed. Norton *spit *spit “Remove it at once”

Once I got the settings as I liked, I restarted wow. It was smooth. It was fine. It was almost raid time, so I headed to Ulduar. Chatting away on vent, answered a friend on Msn and started gathering inside for raid, Msn conversation still going on my 2nd screen ( at this point to reduce system issues I would normally exit out of anything but the bare minimum.) but there were no glitches. Thorim, Freya, Mim, General, Yogg, Razer, and Ignis. All done no freezes, with a browser, and vent and Msn running /cry for happiness.

Summary: Norton caused my graphics glitches, possibly by slowing down my Pc, to the point where nothing would load correctly hence why my Net and my Vent ping were fine ( 22 – on a Sydney vent server) and my graphics card did not die a horrible death. My poor graphics card, that copped all the blame for being so old. Has managed to struggle through the torture I have put it through and has come through. ❤ my graphics card. I am so giddily happy. My tech friend when I explained my issues only grumbled and said could be 50 reasons, and you need a new graphics card. It all pointed to my card, and it wasn’t, it was Norton!

I am still getting a new pc, I’ve paid the deposit, and I am hoping that it will be built by this weekend, but it’s no longer a desperate need. As long as norton doesn’t stuff up the patch.