Tag: windows xp

King’s Quest for PS4

On By Michel McDonaldIn Games, PS4Leave a comment

King's Quest

I am SOOOOO excited right now. I saw a post on Facebook earlier this year that King’s Quest is coming back to life. The person who posted it was one of the people who was working on the game who works for The Odd Gentlemen. They said it would be out later this year, but couldn’t give me a date. I was under the assumption it would be late in the year, like around Christmas time, but I’m excited that it’s going to be THIS MONTH in July instead.

For those who have no clue what King’s Quest is, I urge you to buy the original PC collection which can be found on Amazon. The original PC collection works with XP, but I’m sure it will work in Windows 8, but I don’t know that for a fact. I have the earlier version that only worked on Windows 95/98 and wouldn’t work on XP at all. I had to find a program which I blogged about that has Sierra installers to allow the games to install and run. So if you have trouble installing the XP version, try the installers. If not then awesome, but you should really play the old versions. My first King’s Quest game was King’s Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella.

Anyway, the game is going to be out in 26 days and I will count the days like it’s my birthday lol.

Windows 10 for FREE

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

windows-10-phone-features-970-80

It took me 15 years to decide to upgrade from Windows XP, and I only made the decision because I was forced by Microsoft to buy the latest operating system, or allow my computer to be infected with thousands of parasitic viruses that would probably eat away at every microscopic section of my motherboard and all my other hardware which would then force me to have to buy a new computer. I decided I was due for a new operating system anyway, so I figured what the hell, I’ll buy Windows 8.1 full install. I didn’t buy the upgrade because I didn’t want to have to install Windows XP then upgrade to 8.1 every time I reformatted or had to buy a new hard drive.  I figure if I’m going to install an operating system, I’d rather install the one I’m going to use immediately and for a long time instead of having to go through 2 installations, which could take an hour each.

The start window for 8.1 looks awesome to me. Everyone said I would hate it, because they assumed I refused to upgrade because I hated the 8.1 start window, but that simply isn’t true. I’m cheap as hell. No seriously, I’m living on a low income disabled budget, which has absolutely no budget for a new $100 operating system. It just so happened that I had a bulk sale for tassels, and that was what helped me buy Windows. See, that’s why I have a Etsy shop. If I need to buy something, I can count on people to buy keychains or earrings if I beg them to lol. My sales are usually nothing every month, so those occasional sales are awesome.

The Start window for Windows 10 looks a lot smaller, to say the least lol. I quite enjoy the 8.1 Start window because when I’m watching TV, it is a dark enough screen that it doesn’t bother me when I’m watching my shows. If the screen is bright from Facebook or if I have a bright desktop image, then it hurts my eyes to look at the TV and have the bright computer screen in the corner of my eye. I hope they have given us an option to choose this smaller window, or a full screen start window. If the image above is our only option, well, then I guess I’ll have to just deal with it.

As with all new operating systems you want to give it a few months before installing just because you may have to live without your printer or your webcam or any other external hardware you might have if they were sitting on their thumbs when they should’ve been making new drivers. There is also a chance that your favorite MMORPG isn’t compatible. You might have to miss raiding for quite a while. Of course I would find out if they have support for Windows 10 before installing it because they may have a version specifically for Windows 10 all ready to go.

I love new things only because I get bored easily, but I’m quite content with what I have for now. I say I will wait to make sure everything works, but I’m sure there won’t be too many issues. I have a Microsoft webcam and a Kodak Printer, which I’m sure will be ready long before Windows 10 is downloaded. I’m sure my keyboard and mouse work since I trust Logitec will have it ready to go. I don’t usually have to worry since they are plug and play.

So if you are one of those people who panic at the thought of something new, take a chill pill and give it time, but don’t miss out on reserving your FREE copy of Windows 10. They are giving you something for free, so take advantage of it while you can. You don’t have to install it immediately, I’m sure you can burn the installation files onto a cd or dvd and install it when you are ready. If you have panic attacks at the thought of issues, then just check to see how other people are dealing with them before you take the leap.

I actually look forward to the new Windows 10 that I just may buy a bigger hard drive and start over from scratch so I have a FAST new experience. We will see in another 7 weeks.

Oh boy, my hard drive crashed

On By Michel McDonaldIn ComputerLeave a comment

hard drive crashed

Well this is unexpected, then again when is a crashed hard drive expected?

I have, or well I had a 320GB hard drive that once upon a time was my actual computers hard drive.  When I upgraded my computer a few years ago, my hard drive would not boot into Windows so I had to buy a new hard drive. My 320GB hard drive was installed as a slave drive on the same IDE ribbon and I was able to use it to hold all of my data. I only had 1 IDE ribbon. I could have bought a second one, but I never did. Oh well.

When I recently upgraded my operating system to Windows 8, it wouldn’t install because of that hard drive. After finally figuring out that that was what was causing my installation problems, I unplugged the drive, but once I had Windows 8 installed, I plugged it back in and Windows loaded fine. It loaded slow, but at least it loaded. I managed to copy all of my most important files, and some not so important, but there were still some very important files that I did not copy. Copying was tedious and was taking hours, so I just figured I would give myself and that hard drive a break by not copying the rest. I never imagined the drive would fail.

I have 2 external drive cases, but I didn’t think either of them worked. Since I had to remove the drive, I figured I would give the external cases a try. First I used the bigger external case, which I knew had problems loading hard drives. I forgot that I had a smaller external case. I found it and plugged the hard drive into it and it still did not load. The computer recognizes that something was plugged into the USB drive because it makes a sound when I turn the drive on and off, but it doesn’t show me anything. I plugged it into my Chromebook and it recognizes that something is plugged in, but nothing happens. Just out of curiosity, I put another hard drive into the external case and it immediately showed me all of the files on the Chromebook. That is actually what confirmed that my hard drive crashed and it wasn’t just the external case that was malfunctioning.

I’m not too broken up over this crashed hard drive, but I am thankful that I managed to copy 75% of it to my new hard drive before it crashed. I did lose a lot of files, but luckily I backed about 80% of those pictures onto social media websites like Facebook and Google+.

So now my task is to download all of those pictures, and upload them to the Microsoft Sky Drive. I can add pictures to Facebook and Twitter from the Sky Drive, so that’s what I will do.

What sucks is that there were a lot of files that I did not back up onto the internet, but what good are they anyway? Who cares, right? It’s just a picture, it’s just data. What good is data anyway? I mean, it’s not like it is a part of me, it’s stuff. Stuff can be replaced by more stuff, but what good is stuff in the grand scheme of things? It doesn’t matter because I have lived my entire life without it, so why should it matter if I still have it? There are pictures of me as a child that I will never see because they are being held hostage by people who are mad at me, but I manage to live my life without seeing them. I am perfectly okay with this loss because it doesn’t matter to me. Life is too short to hang on to things that don’t matter, so life goes on and I will be just fine. It is time to start making new memories, so off to the future I go.

Windows 8.1 Installed

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

Windows 8.1

My new Windows 8.1 Full Installation DVD’s came yesterday via UPS. I didn’t exactly have the easiest time installing it, and it literally took me 4 or more hours to figure out why. It turns out Windows 8.1 hates my storage hard drive, so the only way for me to install it is to unplug it. I’m sure that now that Windows is installed, I shouldn’t have any issues plugging it back in, but just in case, I will use a second IDE cable to plug it into the IDE 2 slot in my motherboard instead of using the same cable.

This is the error message I kept getting.

windows 8 install problems

But… here’s the thing, I was able to install the 64bit version of Windows 8.1 on the first try, but when it finished installing, it gave me an orange screen with thin white lines and a blinking underscore in the top left of the screen. I Googled that and found that it was a hardware error, but I figured it was because I didn’t have enough ram. I have 4GB of ram, but I figured maybe I needed to install the 32bit version, so I did and that was the first time I got the error message in the image above.

I asked on Facebook and a friend named James Benstine helped walk me through it on my Nook HD+ with Facebook messaging. I took several pictures with my phone so he could see what I was seeing. That is a huge help for anyone who is trying to help someone. I know I’ve tried helping people and they don’t think to take a picture with their phone to let me know what they are seeing, which makes it difficult to help, especially if they don’t give you details of what they are seeing. I took pictures of the BIOS menus every time he asked me to show it to him.

storage configuration bios menuI kept telling James that my hard drive was SATA and he couldn’t figure out why it kept showing up as IDE in my BIOS menu. I knew I had a SATA drive, but I forgot that it was my DVD burner that was the SATA drive. I mean duh, it says it right there in the BIOS menu as clear as day.

So I wrote myself a note and put it in the Windows 8.1 box that tells me to unplug the storage drive before installing Windows. I know that I will eventually have to reinstall Windows, I’ve had to reinstall XP more than a dozen times over the years.

The reason there is an issue with that storage hard drive is because when I built this computer, I tried using that hard drive, but it wouldn’t run Windows XP, it wouldn’t even turn the screen on. I had to buy a new hard drive and install Windows XP onto it to be able to use my computer again. I knew that I couldn’t load an operating system onto it which is why it is a slave drive and not a master drive. I didn’t have any issue installing XP on the master drive, so I don’t know why I had an issue installing 8.1 with it installed as a slave.

My next question will be this, will it cause an issue loading Windows 8.1 when I plug it back in? Tune in to find out. Same bat time, same bat channel.

Update: I bought a can of compressed air from Walgreen’s and managed to blow out all the dust from my tower, including all the dust in the heat sink and the fans in the back, as well as the dust at the bottom and laying on top of the video card. There was dust EVERYWHERE! I was still sneezing hours later. Should’ve wore a mask first. Lesson learned!

It took a little longer to load Windows, but it did eventually load. It has taken me most of the day copying and pasting my files from the storage drive. I decided that I should probably check for redundancy and unwanted files, so I was deleting unwanted and unneeded files, copying the wanted files and then deleting them from the storage drive. Once I have everything that I want on the drive that runs my operating system, then I will format the storage drive.

It would be nice to have a storage drive to keep all my files on, but if it’s just going to slow things down then it just isn’t worth it. I will see if it still slows my computer down after I format it. If it doesn’t slow it down then I will keep it, if it does then I will have no choice but to unplug and remove it. I could always install it onto a external hard drive case and plug it in with the USB cable and just plug it in as needed.

Oh would you look at the time, it’s 2 a.m. I will finish my copies tomorrow.

Windows 8

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

image

Well I bit the bullet and bought Windows 8. I couldn’t really afford to pay the full price of $119.99 +$9.00 tax, but I was able to buy it from sales on my Etsy shop. I can’t say I’m happy that I was forced to upgrade to an operating system that I hate, but Microsoft ended support for XP, so my options are limited.

I’m backing up my files onto my spare hard drive so I won’t lose everything. I’ve already done the compatibility test and it is compatible, so all I have to do is wait for the DVD to come in the mail. In the meantime, I will have to use my Nook HD+ to do all my web stuff because I wouldn’t want to catch a virus before 8 comes.

I also had to cancel Netflix and EverQuest for the month because I didn’t have the entire amount from Etsy. I had to take some of my grocery money for the balance which was $30 and I had to pay my Etsy seller fees for the month which was $17. I should have just enough money to feed us, although, it would be nice if I could get some of that grocery money back with a few more sales on Etsy.

I dread having to learn how to use my computer all over again, but I’m actually sort of excited and curious at the same time. I’ve used a Windows 8 computer a couple of times because people are always asking for my help. I’m a computer nerd, so people think that I automatically know how to use an operating system even if I’ve never looked at it before. Well, now is my chance to go in balls deep.

Today is Saturday, so I’m sure they won’t get the order until Monday. Who knows how long that will take to get to me. It will give me just enough time to back everything up though. Now it’s a waiting game, which is the worst game ever!

Quest for Glory Collection

On By Michel McDonaldIn GamesLeave a comment

quest_for_glory_collection

I bought the Quest for Glory collection some time in the late 90’s and I never got to play it because by the time I finally got to it, I had already upgraded to Windows XP and it wasn’t compatible.  I was frustrated to say the least, but I kept the CD’s just in case one day I might be able to play it.  Well, that day has finally arrived.

A few days ago I was flipping through my CD book looking for a CD with a backup file and I saw all of my Sierra games, mind you, I see them all the time and I usually just ignore them and keep looking for what I was searching for.  But this time was different for some reason because I was still in website refurbishing mode.  I figured, the Sierra games were such a huge thing in my life, I might as well add them to my website, and that got me really thinking about playing them again.  I actually tried installing it, but when the installation program was running the tests to see if my computer was fast enough, it ended up crashing.  I guess it was too fast.

I went to Google and typed “Sierra installers” and I found a website which I blogged about and I found and installed the Quest for Glory collection, but there were still problems with it.  There are 4 games in the collection and the first game has 2 versions; EGA and VGA.  I immediately ran the VGA version because that is obviously a better quality, but it crashed when it got to the character selection screen.  I ran the EGA version and that ran fine, but the quality was really horrible, like 1985 horrible lol.  I checked the rest of the games and the 2nd one was fine, the 3rd one wouldn’t even let me see the Sierra logo, it just crashed upon loading the game, and the 4th one loaded without a hitch.

After a few days, I had the realization that if I did decide to play these games, I would have to play the crappy graphics version that was similar to the original King’s Quest games, and there’s nothing wrong with that, I played those crappy graphic versions lol.  But I feel that if I have a good version, why waste time on a crappy one right?  I also had the realization that I would miss out on the third game.  Yesterday I did realize that I could fix the problem.  These installers have a program that allows you to configure the games before you play them since they use DOSBox.  I did that last night by changing a setting, and the 2 that didn’t run, finally run.

Here is the solution if anyone else has an issue with the Sierra installers.  If you go into the start menu and go to Sierra then mouse over to the Quest for Glory collection (or any collection for that matter) then click “Configure Quest for Glory Games.”  It runs sort of like an installation, but it doesn’t install anything.  It asks you which games you want to configure and you check the ones you want and uncheck the ones you don’t want to fix.  The next screen has the options, output is automatically on Overlay, so change it to the next one down which is OpenGL.  That’s it.  If that’s not good enough, change it to the next thing down.  OpenGL works for me, so I’m going with that.  I didn’t change that on all of the games, just those two that crashed on me.  Although, if the other ones run fine, but then crash at one point, then I will probably end up having to change their settings too.

So yeah, here are 2 images which show the EGA and the VGA version of the 1st Quest for Glory game.  The differences are night and day.  You tell me, which would you prefer to play?

QfG1 QfG1vga