Alert EVE-Online players: don't reboot if you installed preimum upgrade from classic

[Captain Kidd]

This only affects Windows computers running pre-Vista (XP and 2000 basically).

If you upgraded to Trinity classic and then applied the premium upgrade (like I did), then boot.ini is gone and you're going to have . . . problems booting back up.

EVE-Online warning (http://www.eve.is/news/newsOfEve.asp?newsID=500)
Support forum on what to do (http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=651679) if you're one of the affected.

And now I'm off to the desktop to do some fixin'.

ETA: The kicker to all this. Originally I only installed Trinity classic because I didn't meet the system requirements for premium. Then I decided what the heck, I'll install premium to see what my FPS hit was only to be told in the menus that it was disabled because it auto-detected I couldn't support it anyway.

[NEOWatcher]

ETA: The kicker to all this....
I think the real kicker is that they have no solution suggestions, summaries or anything of the like. They just point you to read through the ramblings of 50 pages of user posts.

Ok; every situation is different, but you think they can have some pointers?

Translation: Ooops, sorry we [explatived] you, good look, you're on your own.

[Moose]

Egh. I hate it when they get cute with their installers. Bethseda got cute with their DLC (official mod) installers that phone home. After a while, they stopped working outright. They'll phone home, they'll validate the install with the install code, they'll update the registry with it, then lock up before actually installing the content. Apparently the "fault" was a bugfix update to some Microsoft utility that'll likely never get touched again.

You say Microsoft's at fault? No. The fault is ultimately with your DLC installers. They're doing something they're not supposed to be doing. Fix them, stop being naughty, and stop taking liberties with our systems. But they won't. It, apparently, is going to remain our problem.

So I ended up solving the problem in my own way. (The admin would probably prefer I not describe what I did in any sort of detail, but Canadian "fair-use" still permits reasonable doctoring to make a product work when it doesn't but should.)

[Doodler]

You think they could come up with names OTHER than those identical to frickin' Windows system files...

Right now I'm dreading a restart, but I've already printed the instructions to rebuild my boot.ini file.

Also, DO NOT CLONE JUMP!! Jumps have been eating implants on the arrival clone bodies.

Jump towers are currently bugged, only usable by the placing corp, not the alliance or designated allies.

[HenrikOlsen]

You say Microsoft's at fault? No. The fault is ultimately with your DLC installers. They're doing something they're not supposed to be doing. Fix them, stop being naughty, and stop taking liberties with our systems. But they won't. It, apparently, is going to remain our problem.
Part of the reason for this problem is that you can write a program that works, that only uses official documented API's in the way the official documentation say you should, and Microsoft will still put out a "security fix" that makes your program stop working by changing how things work.

Windows is a moving target when it comes to programming.

On the other hand, game installers that mess with boot.ini is a sign that someone, probably an exec, should have had a hole drilled in his head so the madness could fly out.

And that the chief of QA should be fired for signing off on it without noticing the problem.

[Captain Kidd]

I'm reading the slashdot comments and I'm unsure exactly what they did. Either they used the boot.ini, and overrode the read-only and system file locks, or they used their own file which they named "boot.ini" and screwed up the path thus overwriting the boot.ini file.

I haven't tried reading through all 60 (at the moment I type this) pages of the thread to see if CCP says what they did.

[Doodler]

I'm reading the slashdot comments and I'm unsure exactly what they did. Either they used the boot.ini, and overrode the read-only and system file locks, or they used their own file which they named "boot.ini" and screwed up the path thus overwriting the boot.ini file.

I haven't tried reading through all 60 (at the moment I type this) pages of the thread to see if CCP says what they did.

As some research in my new corp determined, it was the bolded part. EVE Online has a separate boot.ini file, someone botched the pathing.

[Captain Kidd]

Yeah that's what I'm gather too now that I've read some more. Some of their criteria didn't fit me though and I still had to replace the boot.ini file.

There are some really hacked off people. Of course, people being people there'd be some really hacked off people if everything went perfect.

I'm just glad I don't shut down every night as I quit playing last night before discovery. I probably would be in the "hacked off" crowd if I had to get inventive getting the file back on my system. I have no clue where the desktop's discs are. My laptop is one of those HP "we're going to save $2 by making the recovery discs a partition" computers and it won't let me burn them off.

[Moose]

Part of the reason for this problem is that you can write a program that works, that only uses official documented API's in the way the official documentation say you should, and Microsoft will still put out a "security fix" that makes your program stop working by changing how things work.

Yes, Henrik, you're not wrong. Still, if any of my software fails because someone changed the underlying environment, I still have to fix it. I can't pass the buck like Bethesda did.

I paid Bethesda to install those packages. Not Microsoft. Their own DLC copy-protection broke their installs. The CD-based installers for these packages did not exhibit this problem.

As a customer, with disposable income that I suspect Bethesda would like to see in the future, I'm not thrilled about their presumption that I am necessarily going to violate their copyrights. I'm far less than amused about being ripped off by them. The sheer hypocrisy of this double-standard definitely harshes my mellow. And I'm by far not the only gamer to be annoyed by this.

[HenrikOlsen]

If you read the previous posts, in this case it wasn't attempted copy protection, but instead a matter of a badly named file that accidentally got written the wrong place.
This I don't blame Microsoft for at all, unless someone shows it to be caused by one of their horrible horrible ideas, such as that system paths should be locale dependent.

[Moose]

If you read the previous posts, in this case it wasn't attempted copy protection, but instead a matter of a badly named file that accidentally got written the wrong place.

Yes, I read the previous posts. It's why I gave a similar example of a misbehaving installer the offending company was slow/reluctant/unwilling to manage. The technical fault was different, but in both cases, the company's reaction was underwhelming.

Here's the thing: gamers gripe about any and all bugs, but tend to forgive and forget so long as the company responds in a reasonable way. Ask Egosoft about their decision to use the horribly broken StarForce protection scheme sometime.

A fourth example is Sierra's uninstaller back in the late 90s which (IIRC) would damage 9x installations but irretrievably wreck NT. It took a while for Sierra to acknowledge that one, too.

This I don't blame Microsoft for at all, unless someone shows it to be caused by one of their horrible horrible ideas, such as that system paths should be locale dependent.

[HenrikOlsen]

Here's the thing: gamers gripe about any and all bugs, but tend to forgive and forget so long as the company responds in a reasonable way. Ask Egosoft about their decision to use the horribly broken StarForce protection scheme sometime.
I don't have to ask, I know already, I bought X3 through Steam exactly because that version wasn't StarForce protected.
And I've noted that they stopped using StarForce after enough complaints.

And I agree that how the company reacts to bug reports influences how people look at their product.

[Moose]

And I've noted that they stopped using StarForce after enough complaints.

Yup. I ended up holding out until the StarForceless CD re-release. I've never been comfortable with what Steam does to a system, so I never really considered it an acceptable alternative.

And I agree that how the company reacts to bug reports influences how people look at their product.

Case in point. The uproar when Steam went down for a few days last month, locking all players out of their games for the duration. I'm a bit far from the FPS communities, though, so I don't know how much of the fallout has persisted.