Stuwy
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The past current days drod was acting verrrrrry slow, so I cleaned out the old holds and other stuff I don't use on my comp, also I tries restarting the comp several times. So I un-installed it and when I tried re-installing drod an error message came up saying

An I/0 error occured while installing the file. This is normally caused by bad installation media or a corrupt installation file.

is this missing an .dll file or do I need to get another installation program?

ErikH2000
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How is your disk space?

-Erik


____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

Stuwy
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ErikH2000 wrote:
How is your disk space?

-Erik

Lots (1.11 GB used out of a total 9.75 GB)

But the game ran so laggy for some odd reason... and now I can't install it anymore

ErikH2000
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I would download a fresh installer and try it again on your computer. If it still doesn't work, there's other things to look into, but they seem like long shots to me, so I guess try that first.

-Erik

____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

Stuwy
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nope... same message...

Oneiromancer
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It seems obvious that something else has changed on your system then. Is anything else running slow, or just DROD? Have you installed any hardware recently? Have you installed any other programs recently? Have you done a virus check recently? Any of those things could make some small change that could affect DROD, although some are more likely than others.

Also, when you install, are you installing to the same location? If there's some weird Registry problem installing to a different folder might help.

That's all I can think of, I guess Erik had some other ideas too.

Game on,

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

The_Red_Hawk
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Usually what makes your computer run slow is temp files. Make a search for "Temp", go in, and delete all files with ending .tmp - just a few years can cause maybe 20 000 temp files to appear. Deleting them will not hurt your computer - this should be done regularly.

____________________________
Slashing, whirling, diving, twirling,
Snapping, turning, rising, swirling,
Screeching, flipping, gliding, sliding,
The red hawk's dance of death.

.....the king of the skies.....

Stuwy
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The last thing I did download was a game about a week ago. It went fine until a couple days ago when somehow Drod got very laggy while playing in-game. So I deleted the game for 2 reasons: one in hope for the game to stop lagging, and also I was finished with it/ no use for it. It had some .dll files included in the folder thus I deleted. I don't know what the .dll files were named, could this be the problem corrupting my installation?

I have tried to install it in several different folders but all has failed

ErikH2000
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Stuwy, maybe try running a defragger on your hard drive when you go to sleep or work. Not saying this is definitely the problem, but it won't hurt, and it should improve the performance of your system in general. The other thing that I wonder about is that error message, which points to a low-level disk IO problem. A defrag is going to hit a lot of points on your hard drive, so if there is a problem with your drive, the defrag might crash or hang, and then you'll know to look into that or just get a new hard drive.

Before you run the defrag or do much else, I would back up all your important data. Your drive **might** be on it's last legs.

-Erik

____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

Stuwy
Level: Master Delver

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Well erik I got good news and bad news:

Good news: I got drod up and running... still extremely choppy but it works

Bad news: All my holds have been deleted because I thought your player file would also the holds you have created yourself would be stored there, which also ruined an entire mini-series of holds that made up a story......

So anyways.. I'm going to try deleting all .tmp files The_Red_Hawk has suggested and see if will run perfecto!]

[Edit: It somehow worked even though the error message came up on the installation. Man my computer is messed up]

I deleted alot of the temp files but I cant delete this one file thats a bloody 409kb! Says some "access denied" message so Im finding a way to beat it

[Edited by Stuwy on 12-07-2003 at 02:48 AM GMT]

ErikH2000
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Stuwy wrote:
Well erik I got good news and bad news:

Good news: I got drod up and running... still extremely choppy but it works

But how? If it just magically started working, in some ways that is much worse than it not working at all. Think about viruses and hard drives going out. Well, just a friendly caution from me anyhow.

Bad news: All my holds have been deleted because I thought your player file would also the holds you have created yourself would be stored there, which also ruined an entire mini-series of holds that made up a story......

Sorry to hear that. Hopefully you will rebuild anew, and surpass your first effort!

So anyways.. I'm going to try deleting all .tmp files The_Red_Hawk has suggested and see if will run perfecto!]

That sounded like a good idea.

[Edit: It somehow worked even though the error message came up on the installation. Man my computer is messed up]

I deleted alot of the temp files but I cant delete this one file thats a bloody 409kb! Says some "access denied" message so Im finding a way to beat it

That's probably not a big deal. Try deleting it after a reboot if you haven't already. Just knowing what I've heard from you, I would be doing the following: 1. backup important data, 2. run a virus scanner (There is a nice trial version of a program called "Trojan Remover" I can recommend. Go to download.com for that.), 3. run a defrag. If it hangs or crashes, your drive is probably unreliable. If not, you get a faster computer.

-Erik

____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

Stuwy
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 212
Registered: 04-10-2003
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But how? If it just magically started working, in some ways that is much worse than it not working at all. Think about viruses and hard drives going out. Well, just a friendly caution from me anyhow.

Well my comp is well known for doing strange and abstract things.. You wouldn't know how many times this baby was sent to get repaired. If this thing was human, it would look like a robot. I dont know why we just throw this out and get a new one but my dad wants to keep it for god knows what..

anyways I'll try and defrag and hopefully this mystery will be put to an end. Thanks Erik, Red Hawk and Oneiro for your help


[Edited by Stuwy on 12-07-2003 at 05:53 AM GMT]

Scott
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I would do more than just defrag it. If its in such a bad state backup everything to cds and reformat then reinstall. Its probably the only way to get the machine back to a really working state.

ErikH2000
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Scott wrote:
I would do more than just defrag it. If its in such a bad state backup everything to cds and reformat then reinstall. Its probably the only way to get the machine back to a really working state.

You might be right--it could take that to fix things. My thinking is that a defrag doesn't require much work to run, and it might point out problems with his drive. If there is something like intermittent write errors with the drive, you might solve that with a reformat/reinstall, but I think it is much better to get a new drive if you can spend $50 or so, rather than having risks and headaches from hardware that probably is generating errors.

-Erik

____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

DiMono
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File: ebook-Word-txt-The Information Microsoft Hides on Your Computer.rtf (32.5 KB)
Downloaded 49 times.
License: Other
From: Unspecified

There are a few directories and registry entries that you can just delete piecemeal. I've attached a file that details many of the places Windows hides information that might slow you down.

____________________________
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Schik
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Whoa!

Okay, first off, a warning to youngsters - there's some naughty language in the document (i.e. the very first line), so if you don't want to see swear words, don't look at the doc.

Second, don't do anything in that document if you're unsure exactly what you're doing. You could break things if you don't know what you're doing.

Third, I'm going to guess that the person writing the document also wears a hat made out of tinfoil.

The guy rants about IE having "records Microsoft had stored about you," which turns out to be IE's CACHE. Apparently every single other web browser is out to get you as well.

He goes on to tell you to delete Windows' swap file!!?! Mmmkay...

Then cookies. Sure, there was a short kick of everyone thinking cookies were evil, but if you disable them, then you're certainly not logged into this forum. While I agree that not all cookies are desirable, most of the bad ones can be kept out with a spyware program.

Also deleting your IE history - again, pretty much every other web browser is "guilty" of remembering where you've been as well.

Now the big bomb he drops on us - OUTLOOK KEEPS EMAILS YOU HAVE SENT AND RECIEVED.

Were you listening? Did you hear what I said? Aren't you outraged? Not only does it keep them, but Microsoft is actually so evil that they encrypt these emails, and their attachments. I'm stunned, to say the least.

If you're using Windows, I recommend you go take a shower. Immediately. And don't forget the tinfoil hat.


____________________________
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals.
--Mahatma Gandhi

DiMono
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I was thinking more about findfast and the registry keys, but to each his own.

On the other hand, the swap file does make your computer run more slowly, because Windows prefers to use it over real memory. I removed 200 meg of the supposedly 5 meg cache directory, and my computer runs much faster now.

So there

____________________________
Deploy the... I think it's a yellow button... it's usually flashing... it makes the engines go... WHOOSH!

Stuwy
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Rank Points: 212
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I found a program called EasyCleaner and it cleaned all of the un-neccisary files.. it sped up drod to a state it's playable, but still rather laggy.. other then that when my comp gets a little too screwy i'll try defragging it and backing up all the files. It's no use to do all of this hassle for one game. But i'm getting use to playing drod with a little lag on it, it gives me a good wrist workout too

Thanks for your help again guys

DiMono
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I'm sure this is a dumb question, but you have increased the key repeat rate in the settings menu, right?

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Schik
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I keep my computers on all the time. Right now I count about 4 or 5 things I've got open that I haven't touched in several days. I'm glad they're swapped out right now, leaving my precious RAM for things I actually am using right now. Windows also takes a chunk of your RAM to use for a cache, so that it doesn't have to access your hard drive as much. If it speeds up everything 90% of the time at the cost of a couple seconds of swapping on rare occasions, I'm all for it.

As for cache - I just checked, and my browser's set up to use 250 MB of hard drive space for a cache. It's using 250 MB. I clear the cache occasionally, and then it's slower for a while as it re-loads every image on every page I visit. It also puts a lot more strain on every site I visit, as they're serving me lots more files than usual. You're realling saying that just deleting your IE cache speeds up your computer in general?

Okay, registry stuff - let's see. The first one tells you to get rid of the typed URLs that IE saves for you. Again, another feature I enjoy. I never type in http://www.drod.net/forum, I type in "dr" and it gives me a list of pages on drod.net I've viewed, with the forum right at the top. To me, it's a nice feature. And it's easily turned off without hacking through your registry (IIRC).

And let me quote something this doc says about find fast:

1) Drop to DOS
2) CD\\
3) DIR FF*.* /AH (This will bring up a listing of ffast-related files.)
4) edit /75 %ff% (insert %ff% with any of the names that were listed.)

Notice the incredible amount of disk accesses to your "really hidden" "Temporary Internet Files" folder? What is the obsession that Find Fast has with these hidden folders, anyway?

Here's an educated guess: Whenever a file is created/modified, find fast parses it to update its index. Most people cause many more cache files to be created than, say, the number of Word documents they edit. A browse through our site could easily cause hundreds of cache files to be created. Thus the "obsession" that find fast has.

This guy comes off sounding paranoid and uneducated about the issues he's advising people about. I don't have a problem with people giving Microsoft a hard time as long as they know what they're talking about.

I also like to play the 's advocate.

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The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals.
--Mahatma Gandhi

DiMono
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I guess it all depends how much RAM you've got. I'm running with 512, and I never even get close to using it up, so having a swap file just isn't productive in my case. Everything is on a basis of "this would be good for my computer"

Edit: Heh, if you don't close a tag it applies to your .sig... I wonder if it applies to the next post too...

[Edited by DiMono on 12-08-2003 at 04:53 AM GMT]

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Mattcrampy
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Schik wrote:

Okay, registry stuff - let's see. The first one tells you to get rid of the typed URLs that IE saves for you. Again, another feature I enjoy. I never type in http://www.drod.net/forum, I type in "dr" and it gives me a list of pages on drod.net I've viewed, with the forum right at the top. To me, it's a nice feature. And it's easily turned off without hacking through your registry (IIRC).

Being a Firebird user, I can type 'dr' and have that automatically take me to the forum (and 'word %x' takes me to dictionary.com's entry for %x). A little nicety they felt fit to include.

But I agree with Schik's sentiments. There's such a thing as being too paranoid. Of course, if we're talking about DRM, then maybe not.

Matt

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DiMono
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Mattcrampy wrote:
if we're talking about DRM, then maybe not.

DRM? Devil Runs Microsoft?

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Schik
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DiMono wrote:
I guess it all depends how much RAM you've got. I'm running with 512, and I never even get close to using it up, so having a swap file just isn't productive in my case. Everything is on a basis of "this would be good for my computer"

I have a 1.5 Gig, and use enough memory to swap quite often. Guess it depends what you use the computer for.


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The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals.
--Mahatma Gandhi

Mattcrampy
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Digital Rights Management. It's not hard to find out info on it, so I don't need to go on about it here. Plus this is not the place, so if people feel the need take it to the Anything or Development board.

Matt

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trick
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Setting a constant size for the swap file (or at least a high minimum, so Windows don't have to worry about extending it too much), placing it on the fastest hd, and defragging it (ie. the swap file) can really help. Also try using a registry cleaner, to remove unused information from the registry.

(Note that I haven't used Windows actively n a couple of years, so follow this advice at your own risk )