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EVE-Online Patch Makes XP Unbootable
Nobo writes "CCP's latest major patch to the EVE-Online client, Trinity, comes with an optional DX9-enhanced graphics patch that dramatically improves the visual quality of the in-game graphics through remade models, textures, and HDR. It also has an unfortunate bug: the incredibly stupid choice of boot.ini as a game configuration file, coupled with an errant extra backslash in the installer configuration. The result is that anyone who installs the enhanced graphics patch overwrites the windows XP c:\boot.ini file with the EVE client configuration file, bricking the machine on the next boot. Discussion in a couple of forums threads is becoming understandably heated."
Wow... if this story isn't a wild exaggeration, then this is about as unfortunate as a game-bug can possibly get. Of course, a reasonably savvy user could probably have an affected system working again fairly quickly without any data-loss, but my own experience suggests that such users will be in the minority.
The only gaming-related parallel I can think of relates to the uninstall programme bug for the 2001 version of Pool of Radiance. In that instance, attempting to uninstall the game (something many users would do not long after installing it, given the tedious and half-baked nature of the game) had a good chance of wiping the user's hard disk. I actually deliberately triggered this bug for fun myself when I decided it was time to wipe my old machine after I bought a new system. If anybody can think of any other examples on this kind of scale, please do share them.
I wonder if this is going to cause any unpleasant and potentially expensive legal repercussions for CCP, from users who have lost data while trying to fix the issue?
What are the chances of this? I mean, it seems almost so unlikely as to be impossible. Perhaps someone did it deliberatly or perhaps an unhappy employee that was leaving or something...
So Skulldilocks threw acid on the schoolchildrens' faces, cause somebody from the bible told her to do it!
The parent is a Lemon Party link - ingenious.
Isn't this something should have been found in, oh, I dunno....beta testing?
My blog
What sort of test plan fails to catch BRICKING THE PC?
Dominant Meme
I suppose both the producers of Eve Online and MS are to blame here. Eve Online for naming a configuration file the same as a Windows system file. And of course MS, for letting any application overwrite such an important system file.
It's a good thing users just have to opt to boot from the last known good configuration. ;)
Hope they're smart enough to remember about that.
Hardly "bricking" IMHO.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Everything the newsstory says is correct, but the issue have been fixed and anyone updating now wont get hit by it.
It is still a momumental fuckup though and the one responsible needs to be kicked in the balls for that kind of stupidity.
(Insert Generic and Obvious "This was the plot all along" Joke here)
EVE programmer1: Let's delete boot.ini EVE Programmer2: Great idea, man, should speed things up. Do it. Duh.
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
One man's misery is another's chance to quote Nelson from The Simpsons so I'll just get this out of the way...
Ha! Ha!
I don't know EVE's demographics but repairing this by hand is beyond most users abilities.
All browsers' default homepage should read: Don't Panic...
How could such a bug not pass QA?
Or don't the testers ever reboot their machines?
...if the developers are as thick-skinned as the IE developers they might get away with saying it's a feature that teaches people how to re-install their Windows.
Then they will promise this and that and people will continue spending their money.
Business as usual.
Dammit! When did "bricking" expand it's meaning from "unbootable under any conditions due to firmware (such as the BIOS) being improperly overwritten" to "Oops, have to pull out the rescue CD"?
Best Slashdot Co
Lucky for me I gave Eve Online about 6 months ago ^.^ I one of those people has recently got a new PC and 'downgrade' to XP. Linden Labs (creators of Second Life), I thank you so much.....
Yet another reason to keep games off the mission-critical system. I wonder who's getting fired... and I don't mean just the guys working on Eve. >=D
On another note, I played Eve for a while until I temporarily left the subscription. Now I'm not sure I'll pick the game back up.
Although EVE's userbase is what I would consider more technically inclined than most games, I somehow doubt 90% of them will know what to do when the friendly 'boot.ini not found' pops up. A visit to your friendly nerd, or overcharging chain store will be in order.
Another great QA job from CCP.
The sad thing is, the graphics upgrade (touted as speeding up eve) makes it lag even more on a high end pc.
Dammit! When did "bricking" expand its meaning from "unbootable under any conditions due to CPU burning up" to "Oops, have to pull out the EEPROM programmer and flash my BIOS"?
In Parlimentary Republican Iceland, game breaks Windows!
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Things like this can easily happen when your patch doesn't have any CHANGE CONTROL. Imagine this - the patch is ready to go, everyone agrees on it, and then a small group of developers (or maybe even a single developer) decides to make a modification...and implements it badly. It doesn't even go through QA because QA isn't invoked ("oh, that would just delay the release, I'm sure I have it right anyway"). And now you have this.
I know it drives us crazy, I know not every organization implements change control that's sane and logical. But there's a reason it exists!
---don't make me break out my red pen.
Mildly amusing, but one of my developers went home early as she was up all last night fixing her machine after it was affected by this little problem. Never struck me as the sort of person who plays those things. There again, what is the sort of person who plays those things anyway?
threadeds blog
How did these guys test the update? Did they test it at all?
The update shouldn't work at all, unless the game is trying to read the configuration from "C:\boot.ini" and I strongly doubt that.
But eve developers are not the only ones to blame, I think the main blame goes to Microsoft for letting users and apps run with administrator privileges (about 80% of the users run with admin privileges on XP, because most apps simply don't work as standard user). If Microsoft made it mandatory (and easy) for developers to write apps that work with non-admin privileges, we wouldn't have such stupid situations, in which a backslash kills the whole system.
Nothing like posting a story to Slashdot to help cool off a thread that is becoming very heated.
Why is boot.ini accessible to the user anyway?
I got a temporary account lasting one month from Dreamhack in Sweden and I was really disappointed by the buggy software constantly segfaulting. Didn't get me as a customer because of that. Why? Why, do they release awful code?
Its really a shame, this was otherwise a smooth update. We spent last night drooling over our new ships, the new HDR and shadows. Then the warning came, "Do not reboot!!".
Its also the kind of screwup that can really hurt a game's future. The patch was supposed to bring in a lot of new players but with headlines like this, that buzz may be dead.
I have XP, I installed the patch and I DID NOT get this problem. People claiming it "bricks" their machine are just trying to spread the FUD as its VERY easy to fix with your xp cd (and with zero data loss) - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/330184 will show how.
As for why this didnt get caught by QA, they don't reboot their machines. I rarely do either. Plus I expect they have permissions in place to prevent the overwrite. Plus this is the only patch in the thousands of patches they make for the test server which had this problem. Anyone will tell you the odds of a mistake are bigger the longer you go without making one.
The boot.ini for Eve itself contains information about whether you have the "Classic" version or not. The patch that was released for the Classic version did not contain this problem.
The patch released for the "Premium" version does contain this installer error. The change made to the boot.ini is the line that contains this definition, and is changed from Classic to Premium.
It's a very logical problem, easy to fix if you know it, but also incredibly stupid...
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
If you don't install your games to C: you're fine.
If you've got a 'basic' OS install, e.g. C:\WINDOWS and one partition, you're fine - the boostrap loader guesses, flashes up an error, and boots anyway.
It's a bit of a fubar, but hardly the next apocalypse.
1. Make buggy patch
2. Convince people that their computers are bricked because of damaged boot.ini
3. Buy "bricked" computers from ebay for the price of a brick
4. Input rescue disc into said "bricks"
5. Sell unbricked computers
6. Profit!
Hey! That's my sig you're smoking there!
And here I was feeling like an idiot for accidentally making the Common Authentication Service server at my job unavailable for thousands of coworkers and students for a few seconds yesterday. I really feel for the programmer who messed this up.
:D
Still; plenty of joke fodder here. WoW has epic mounts, Eve has EPIC FAIL!!!
It is amazing that all throught the developement no warning bells went off. Who would have came up with the file name? "Mabye we should use boot.ini there can't be anything important with tht name in the c: drive." Shows you how many of the developers actually tested the patch to the fullest. Not only did they drop the ball but they grabbed a knife and punctured it.
Windows on a mac is Windows under Supervision. - Frank Soltis(Chief Scientist/Designer of AS400)
Reminds me of what happened that killed the Gurren Laggann MMORPG:
An online video game was developed by Konami called Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann Chouzetsu Hakkutsu ONLINE ( ONLINE, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann Chouzetsu Hakkutsu ONLINE?). Beta testing had ended on April 16, 2007. The player takes up the role of a driller and drills for treasures in first person view. There is a shop to purchase drills -- the shopkeeper is an original character named Asaki. The player can also collect digital trading cards. The game was canceled at the closed beta stage, as installing the game crashed Windows indefinitely. Konami even had to send out 500GB external hard drives to beta users so that they could back up files while reinstalling their broken operating systems. (source: Wikipedia)
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
Why is "bricking" suddenly a computer word in recent times. I remember a time when "Bricking" had to do with poop.
Good question. While I doubt that this patch was not tested at all, it's possible (but unlikely) that none of their testers used XP. I'd rather say that while the new version was somewhat tested, some minor last-moment changes were made into the final version without being retested.
And it hosed my machine.
:)
but at least i can take solace from the fact that somewhere in Iceland is a developer who's currently getting the snot kicked out of him.
You couldn't make it up. I stopped playing Eve about a year ago because unless it got a bit tedious, the developers were shown to be corrupt (in game). Recently I was thinking about reactivating and trying Trinity out. Good job I haven't. I could probably work out how to fix my boot.ini with my XP disk. I have absolutely NO DOUBT WHATSOEVER that the majority of Eve players won't know what, how, where, when to fix this problem. Note that the ones who know how to fix it are the ones posting about it on the forums. The innumerable players who don't know how to fix it, no longer have internet access. I'm getting one of those "lawsuit pending" feelings.
In soviet Russia, game bricks YOU
Imagine a beowolf cluster of bricks
Natalie Portman and hot bricks
goatse... or even worse, my slashdot journal
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
iBrick
How did this slip by quality control? Given that it was a major release, I would hope that there was at least some testing. So, either all the test machines were running Vista and weren't effected, or they just don't reboot their machines that often.
/. commentators know this isn't "bricking." So, what should you call it for a summary? Unbootable?
And yes, most of the
It doesn't over-write the system boot.ini, it merely deletes it.
If you have XP SP2 and have it installed to the first partition of your primary drive, it should boot without it.
The people who are affected the most seem to be people with vendor-built pcs where the first partition is for system restore, and the SECOND is Windows itself.
Please, in addition to the misuse of SKU, can we stop referring to breaking an OS or boot as "Bricking a PC". No, it doesn't, it takes a simple venture of booting your install disk and performing a little bit of system recovery/maintenance you're back in business.
I think the complaint rests more with the fact that a game patch is "breaking" people's computers. Most game patch mistakes break the games sure, but this kind of mistake seems few and far between. So, you have to expect when it happens for people to point and laugh, as I did when I read this. Just have to ignore that bit of sensationalism about the bricking. Typical "news" tactic for getting attention. Also, Eve is so scandal-tastic right now, that any ills that befall them just add to the humor of their pains.
For anyone that did hose their boot.ini file and needs the info, here is a copy of mine:
[boot loader] /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional"
As you can see, an XP Pro install with one HDD; adjust according to your needs.
This story reminds me of a similar bug. When I worked at Cryo, one of our game DEMOS, which was released in a french game magazine, overwrote the harddisk bootsector (I don't have more details). It was quite an unfortunate bug.
I doubt Virtualization on the home desktop will come into play, I'm pretty sure TCPA wouldn't get in the way of running any application as a user, and I can't imagine how the possibility of fine-grained access control would lead to a situation where a game is suddenly denied access to what they need by default.
For virtualization, there is no benefit for a home desktop user (just a lot of overhead for the multiple OS instances). It would be hard to manage (single system image is hard enough for a lot of common users today, and measures to make it look like a single image defeats the whole point) and commercial operating systems would price it prohibitively high. Virtualization makes tons of sense in a server environment where you are trying to provide for totally distinct customers, or where you have IT staff and server applications to run and isolate for security reasons, but the usage patterns do not map to the desktop (Virtualization is used on the desktop by a small share of people, for development on multiple platforms, for using incompatible apps with their preferred OS, evaluation, and for education, but not by many and the resultant complexities of file management across the systems is frustrating).
Now, even assuming a hypothetical virtualization with video card moving capabilities, TCPA, and fine-grained access, I still don't see how administrative privileges in the OS instance of the game come into place. If trying to get the video card while another OS instance was using it, administrative privileges on the not currently entitled OS instance wouldn't help, whatever magic to be done would be done with the current video card owner. TCPA wouldn't care (maybe it would if you wanted to overwrite boot.ini, oh wait....), and fine-grained access control is presumably set to allow this by default, and if not and every application is designed to override that protection, what was the point? Exact same argument applies to the sound card, input (how did you launch the game if you hadn't already switched inputs, btw?), and processor. To the memory question, you don't even have much of a choice short of suspending/shutting down completely the other OS instances of claiming most of the physical memory (a running OS has to be resident somewhere, and if we still care about RAM's speed to run a game, it's guaranteed an OS would run horribly if almost entirely swapped to disk).
If you're argument is the ability to deny everyone else these resources once claimed, how would additional capability make the situation *worse* than the status quo? Today games don't block sound device for exclusivity generally (under Linux some still do the wrong thing), they fullscreen without taking measures to preclude others from doing that, and they take the input as it comes, which the OS should handle gracefully.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I was lucky, I had seen people in jabber freaking out about this before I rebooted. Fix was quick but boy, I can only imagine what some users are going to do when their PC isn't bootable. This has a very real cost for non-technical people.
I wonder how many calls Geek Squad and clones will get today from this. I would expect hundreds at least.
Wouldn't a more modern operating system support filenames that didn't collide?
All browsers' default homepage should read: Don't Panic...
Wow, someone suggested that all browsers' default home pages should lead to an old blog posting of mine from two years ago! Cool!
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Is this intended to possible eliminate those who so willing to jump to Vista? ;-)
I'm sure lots of people are going to get some unexpected exposure to Knoppix.
CommentBot 0.7a running with args "-module irritate,disagree -target random"
I would argue that a Windows machine missing its boot.ini file is actually more useful as a result. At least then, there's a chance that the user will finally install Linux. ;-)
I agree. The correct term for destroying the operating system or file system is "hose"
This would be a mild hosing, considering one only needs to boot from CD and replace a text file.
But still.
More music, fewer hits
(1) boot.ini isn't being monitored and replaced by the same code that watches files in %systemroot%
(2) Windows XP service pack 2 is STILL using the same moronic NTLDR that seemingly hasn't been updated since 1995 or so, and isn't even as smart as FreeBSD's Booteasy. How hard is it for it to list the partitions on C: and let the user select from them if it can't find a good boot.ini?
I recently had a similar experience. My system disk on my Wintendo died and when I restored my backup onto a new disk I had an extra 50 gigabytes at the end of the disk. Being a conservative soul, rather than risking further hilarity and mayhem by resizing the partition, I created a new partition. I'd done this the last time this happened, so I already had two partitions on the disk... the original boot partition from when it was a 40GB drive, and the rest of the recently deceased 80GB drive. So now I had an 150GB drive containing C:, D:, and F:.
And my system wouldn't boot. Why?
Well, it turned out that while the partitions on my 80GB drive had been physically laid out as C: and D:, the partition table looked like this:
Partition 1 - D:, Active/Boot, at end of disk, contains NTLDR, boot.ini, etc...
Partition 4 - C:, System, contains WINNT, Program Files, etc...
Why it was like this, you'll have to ask Microsoft. I had no idea... I'd partitioned the disk originally using their disk manager in Windows 2000 on the original 40GB drive that's been pushing up daisies for years.
The boot.ini on D: looked like this: Notice that "partition(2)". Not "partition(4)" (actual partition in partition table) or "partition(1)" (physical partition on disk). It seems that NTLDR counts non-empty partitions only, but goes by the order in the partition table.
After adding partition F:, the partition table on the new drive had 3 partitions, with partition 1 still D: and partition 4 still C:, so F: ended up in the middle.
So now the "partition(2)" that NTLDR saw was "F:". Which was empty.
Cue mayhem and hilarity.
From way back in 1999 with good ol' Myth II;
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1999/01/06
I remember when we used to use this strip in our training materials for new Testers to impress upon them how badly they did NOT want to have a comic like this made about a bug THEY missed.
"Verbing weirds language."
for a class action lawsuit. Sue them and put the boilerplate EULA to the test.
This is completely unacceptable, and the software industry needs to be held accountable for bad and defective software.
Can anyone explain to me how this could have gotten past the simplest of QA tests?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Once and for all, a software issue is NOT a bloody bricking, as pointed out over and over by many people in the last few weeks, predominantly due to the same mistake made by the Jesus phone fans. A brick is a device that has lost its firmware with no hope of recovery through known methods. For example, those Conexant ADSL routers when their firmware disappears? Not bricked as there's a jumper inside that starts the factory firmware load procedure, the presence of which is well known. An old-school Icom 2m rig that the backup battery has failed in may quite accurately be called a brick, I suppose, even though Icom can revive them (for a price). This, however, is about as far away from a brick as one can get. It's just one more Wintel box rendered temporarily confused by another load of crap software, something we should all be used to.
Christ on a sodding bike, get a clue. Boot.ini is a flat text file. A bootable CD/pen drive and a decent editor will fix this in seconds.
Resistance is futile. Reactance buggers it up.
During testing (that is, player testing "beta"), this bug was posted on the beta forum. This just goes to show how much attention the person responsible was actually paying to player testing bug reports.
Somebody mod this damn link down
*When a piece of electronics is really bricked, that means that the ROM is in such an unrecoverable state, that it can't even be flashed with a new working ROM, and needs to be either thrown away, or sent to a factory for repair.*
I first heard the term 'bricked' in relation to hard drives, back when Apple was still producing the Newton. It makes sense - a drive with severe platter damage that won't spin up resembles a brick because of its shape and weight.The modern term 'bricking' is usually used in relation to a firmware of OS patch that renders a device unusable. Your use of the term is misleading and overly narrow, since you can't 'flash' a ROM(what people refer to as flash memory is usually a variation of EEPROM). A device can also become 'bricked' because of corrupt user data stored on a drive or battery-backed RAM.
Fortunately, there are also other people around to correct anyone who tells you that.
Bad software loves Root.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
As someone hwo has been a nerd for pretty much all of my 42 years, I have made some observations.
For example:
Trying to fight a use change of a word is as effective and screaming at the wind.
cracker/hacker/criminal
science fiction/sci-fi
are just a few of the hot topics where this has occurred. I understand your frustration, but it will not change anything.
At this point I just read that and sighed.
oh, and device that are designed to be used online, but are banned are also called 'bricked'. which is correct when you think about it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
MODS! WAKE UP! IT'S A TROLLING GOOGLE-YOU-FEEL-LUCKY LINK!
Just mouse-over it before you mod, FFS.
Filler. Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Problem solved. Can you do that with a brick? Then STFU. :-)
Also, it's not bricking. A repair via install disc will fix it. Booting a linux Live CD (Ubuntu etc) will allow you to re-create your boot.ini.
Bricking == hardware permanently reduced to non-functional status. I.E. only, ever, useful in the future as a brick/paperweight.
Other uses of the term "bricked" or "bricking" are wrong and not supported.
Question everything
They probably test installers on VM snapshots like every other sane developer these days.
Firstly, I'm not even sure that VMs *use* boot.ini. Secondly, even if they do, they probably test the installer, say "yup, that works" and then trash the snapshot.
"Everquest Recommends Microsoft Vista!"
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Biggest Question: Is it fixed yet?
Like if I download the 14-day trial, will I need to back up my boot.ini before installing?
.... or so it seems so far to me... about three weeks in.
> The concern that I have is how did this get past the QA testers at CCP and into a production build?
And that's the rub. Not that the game isn't good and concept, and not that the working bits aren't pretty awesome. But there are so many issues that should never have made it through QA testing, much less beta and onto a release.
Haha though.... And *I* was a bit miffed when I found out that they had left Mac users in the lurch entirely, with no enhanced graphics at all. Better that, I guess, than bricking the computer!
But seriously.... WTF. As much as the EVE community will go into hysterics when you mention "those *pther* MMOs, we don't see these things happening when Blizzard patches, expands, or upgrades World of Warcraft. All of the new WoW content is available for BOTH windows AND Macintosh on patch/expansion day.... none of this "We'll give you the new game logic, but not the new content" business. And I NEVER had as many problems with a Blizzard online game, even when I bought Diablo II and WoW fresh out of the stores at version 1.0, as the EVE client gives me. There's a laundry list of so-far-unaddressed bugs (even in Trinity), that goes right down to the keyboard mapping being broken!!! (Seriously... EVE swaps the function of the command and control keys on me WTFH!?!?!?)
As much as I actually dislike the WoW experience, and think EVE is a better game.... in concept.... Blizzard sure appears to be a much better company, with a much Much MUCH better engineering and QA department.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
So you're trying to tell me that they thought boot.ini a jolly good name and then also mess up on several erroneous backslashes and you're now trying to tell me that it was an accident? But we all call our config files boot.ini and misplace at least 2 backslashes in a install file, right? I am sure it could have happened to anyone.
Its not just mods who should get this down.
The original version of this was so long that the goatse link was well off the end of the status bar making it impossible to tell at a glance.
I feel google should prevent I'm Feeling Lucky from operating unless its a follup to a search page.
I use a small greasemonkey function to replace all IFL links on a page with cleaner simple google results and once again don't worry about such things.
see here for the code and my initial thoughts:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=373765&cid=21513421
liqbase
Boot to repair console, type "bootcfg /renew". End of story.
Look on the bright side...figuring out how to boot your computer again is more fun than actually playing Eve (I kid, I kid).
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Oh, THAT'S why I don't run as root. The real problem comes from Redmond, not Reykjavik! An EVE installer should not be able to overwrite such a critical system file... tsk, tsk! *shakes head*
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ... ouch ... ha ha ha ha
How the hell did this sneak by QA?
Insert Sig Here
This could be the kick in the butt some people need to try linux, They're computer is already bricked right? what have they got to lose. Except that they would have had to download it first. and YES i know that xp could be easily recovered, but do they know that?
Oh Crap, I'm an optimist.....
1. boot latest Linux LiveCD (my preference is Knoppix 5.1.1 DVD) 2. mount Windows system partition as read/write 3. write known good boot.ini 4. eject CD, restart NEXT! :)
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Here's how its done. The btnI parameter redirects to the first link in search results. It seems to be using a hacked website to redirect to the actual target.
Really, google needs to wise up and disable that btnI parameter for GET requests.
It wouldn't hurt for the lameness filter to remove it from anonymous posts either.
Whenever I install Creative x-FI drivers on a machine at work, NTLDR decides to take a nap and the boot partition is no longer recognized as having an FS. we decided to remove the x-FI card
1) Install patch
2) Play game
3) Shutdown, go to sleep
4) Power on system, boot.ini not found
Now we have a system that is basically useless. Other concerns: We can't assume the user has anything other than an XP installation, because thats (presumably) all the game required. (booting to another OS, or from a USB key/CD is therefore out of the question as a large-scale solution) In addition, since the system failure didnt occur until well after (in my example, the following day), there is really no good feedback to the user which might let them know the patch actually caused this problem. (remember, they've probably patched their game before many times without issue)
So now the user is sitting at a blank screen. Lets give him the benefit of the doubt and assume they realize a boot.ini message is a clue as to whats causing the problem. This file is way beyond the scope of what we'd expect the EVE to be touching, so no help there. If I didn't have access to the internet to research the issue, I might even have mis-diagnosed this as failing sectors on a hard drive and moved on. This got kind of long, but the point is: we can't assume the user has any troubleshooting tools or knowledge of whats going on inside the computer. We can assume they know how to use Windows XP, since that is what the game runs on and (presumably) requires. But unfortunately the patch just hosed the only systems we could count on the user to operate - the user's OS, and the game itself.
as such, i'm comfortable saying the systems were bricked
Who really cares about this it only affects Windows users and is trivial to fix. Im much more disappointed in CCP saying they now support Linux but they don't provide a Linux version of the new premium client. They also don't give a date for its deployment(they say something like possibly if we feel like it and Cedega cooperates possibly next year)
https://www.fsf.org/associate/support_freedom
Lacking a more exacting term, 'brick' seems to fit the bill. Yes, it is not the exact usage you might be used to, but so what? Did you ever stop to consider that for most people a PC that won't boot an OS is a brick? It may be easier for you to fix than a device with a bad ROM BIOS, but even a device with a bad ROM BIOS can have the ROM BIOS replaced by the manufacturer.
Many programmers never think beyond their own tiny matrix construct.
:-p
If it WorksForMe, it doesn't matter that the source is code.cpp, the binary is runme.exe, and the download archive is currentversion.zip. The fact there are ten-thousand others exactly the same shouldn't cause an issue in the fifteen seconds the user gives something their attention. Right? Right?
Yeah, this is why I work in Information Management for a living. Freakin' math majors.
[ironic captcha image of the day: "mistake"]
Or, to be even less invading personal choices,
honnor the "Viewing of inappropriate content" cookie-setting when in "I'm feeling lucky" mode, just like with a regular search.
- Preference cookies set to "View everything" : Go to the site anyway, the user doesn't seem to be shockable.
- Default or cookies set to "Block inappropriate image" : Block sites whose image are flagged inappropriate, just like Google-Image does with this setting.
- Cookies set to "Block all inappropriate content" : Even block text pages flagged inapproriate, just like Google-Text does with this setting.
That won't stop all the reactive use people do with this function, but that will prevent people exposed to content they don't wish.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
A bricked device either to be sent in to the vendor for repairs, or ,as an alternative, can only be revived via special debugging hardware by people with god-like skills in a certain areas.
A blown OS is not, and never ever will be a brick. Get your terminology straight for once. Wikipedia explains rather nicely the nature of real "brick".
I fail to see the problem in the loss of a Windows machine.
Whether you like the game or not any developers would deserve a little backlash for releasing something like this.
Quack, quack.
"Hacker" used to be a cool term indicating someone who was exploring the world around them, probing the limits of their environment. Then Hollywood got hold of the term and now it just means "A person who does things on a computer that's either illegal, or I think SHOULD be illegal."
Soon, "Bricked" won't mean a machine damaged beyond repair but anything that makes it annoying to use the machine. Spyware will be referred to as "Bricking" your computer because it makes it run slower. Soon, most people will use the term with no knowledge of it's origin. Some will go so far as to openly mock "Those nerds" for making up random, over the top phrases for a computer that's just running poorly.
I think C. S. Lewis gave the most eloquent discussion of the phenomenon when talking about how the term "Gentleman" was "Ruined for anything useful" in the first section of "Mere Christianity."
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
At a new job, my first assignment was to find and fix a "minor" uninstall bug on an older product. It was triggered when building a path to recursively delete the install directory. It started with a string c:\ and then looked at an included .ini file to get the path of the product, which it would append to the mentioned prefix.
If it didn't find the .ini file it would - well, you can guess the rest.
This is an MMO. The customers are the beta test group. ;)
Spell cheek you've failed me four the last thyme!
alot of computers come preloaded with XP and many users don't pay extra for xp disks. for them this is bad news!
:P
fortunatly for all problems theres knoppix
...to run as root/administrator just to install an effing game!
would you prefer if I made the url look cleaner? I'm always looking to optimize the trolling experience, and your comments are appreciated.
I imagine this is how it happened: Random Installer Line: "delete /boot.ini" //Deletes C:/boot.ini
CORRECT Installer Line: "delete boot.ini" //Deletes (Eve Directory)/boot.ini
Whoops!
Apparantly it only affects users if they have Windows running on their C drive. It's entirely possible that the testers were using EVE on a different hard drive.
For the love of god, please go learn what it means to brick something. I am getting sick of this wide misuse of the term.
on the other hand, the Trinity update worked fine on my Mac (even after reboot ;). Glad CCP finally released a Mac version.
back in my day, we would simply trace the circuit board with a logic probe, change out a few TTLs, and be back up and running. then you young whippersnappers started calling anything that required you to open the case and change more than a jumper or two 'being bricked'. you young people are just a generation of nincompoops who dont know how anything works.
Someone once had a slashdot sig that read "C:\ is the root of all evil" a few years ago
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Second, the official CCP responses are out. First, we have the company's release:
Pretty standard PR speak, however the dev responsible, T20, posted a response which in many ways is downright scary in its hubris. For those who don't know, this is the same dev that was caught cheating and set off the huge scandal a couple months ago.
In Microsoft Vista, Windows bricks game!
> The result is that anyone who installs the enhanced graphics patch overwrites the windows
> XP c:\boot.ini file with the EVE client configuration file, bricking the machine on the next boot
So you're saying redesigning my unconscionably ugly-ass Caldari Moa cruiser isn't the first thing on their priority list?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Winderz is the only OS I know... That can be broken by simply using it.
I've been hit by this, and my system is pretty screwed at the moment.
I've got a Dell 9200, and it doesn't boot, and more problematically it crashes booting from a windows XP recovery disk (though that is probably not CCP's fault).
I'll have to brave the NTFS write support from a linux boot-disk or find another machine to plug the HD into.
I'm probably going to cancel my EVE account over this.
it's nice to hear a success story now and again, the world is so filled with miserable failure
We should point out that this installer/patcher executable was *signed* too, so it runs nicely without warnings about unsigned software (applies more, perhaps, to Vista, where death doesn't follow swiftly after the patch). Another point to Microsoft's "must use code signing" stuff - it's only as safe as your trust of the person supplying it. Now, granted, a lot of people trusted CCP here, but the point is that people really don't have much control over what their computer runs, from anyone. Really, even geeks don't to a point - they may be able to GET the source code for everything, if it's OSS, but they trust that Someone(tm) has looked through it for them, and that it's ok/not evil.
Realistically, there's no other way, unfortunately. We can't all look at all the code for all the stuff our machines do, even if we can get it all.
Windows bricks YOU!!!
Thanks to the braindead and careless editorial of this site, most of the following discussion is merely arguing the meaning of the word "brick".
Nice work kdawson.
Well I say you get what's coming to you if you run an OS that allows data to be written over essential system files.
:S
Oh wait, I guess that 'sudo make install' could do that too, given a dodgy installer
Which is why all software should be installable by user accounts into user folders like "~home/apps" for example. Installing for all users isn't required often for most home computer uses, and could be an option for advanced users only in the installer.
That's not a flaw, it's a feature.
Here's the email that CCP sent out to fix the problem. Talk about ugly! They can't even get the details of the email correct and they expect the general users to know how to follow these steps?
.backup from the filename so that the filename is boot.ini
/rebuild and press
Dear customer
Some users may have been inadvertently affected by an error in the install scripts for the Premium Graphics Upgrade process for the new Trinity Expansion.
Only those who meet ALL of the following criteria need to take further steps:
* You started downloading the upgrade from Trinity Classic Graphics Content to Premium Graphics Content BEFORE 04:00 GMT on Dec 6
* You must be using a version of Windows other than Vista.
* You must have Windows installed not on the primary partition.
or
You must have at least 2 hard disks and the OS must be installed NOT on the primary, but the secondary hard disk
If all these apply, you MAY be affected by a known problem with the Graphics Update system. All other users are unaffected by this issue. The Trinity update (including Premium Graphics Content) is now available for all users and this error has been corrected.
If you think you MAY be affected by this issue, please take the following steps (information also available here:
http://www.eve-online.com/updates/bootinifix.asp):
Step 1: Verify if you are missing your boot.ini
* Click the "Start" button
* Click "Run..."
* In the input box next to Open: type CMD (click OK)
* At the C: type bootcfg If you are missing your boot.ini you will see the following error: ERROR: ACCESS DENIED. Proceed to the options below.
* If you receive something with Boot Loader Settings with information under it, you are not affected.
Option A: Checking for existing backup files
* Click "Start"
* Select the "Run" option
* Enter "c:\windows\pss" and click "OK"
* If you receive an error file the directory does not exist and you should attempt one of the two other options.
* If the directory opens, you should have a backup copy of the boot.ini file.
* Copy it to the root directory (usually c:\ ) and remove the
* Then retry Step 1
Option B: You have NOT rebooted your system and you have System Restore active (default)
* Click Start
* Click All Programs
* Click Accessories
* Click System Tools
* Click System Restore
* Click the option Restore my computer to an earlier time and click Next
* Choose an available date prior to the install date of the program. (you will not loose any documents you have created)
* Click Next
* Click Next again when it confirms you restore date
* Windows will then log you off and the System Restore Window Box will come up.
* The system will then reboot itself once or twice and then Windows will then restart Once Windows starts up ok, then the system restore screen will appear. Verify this and click OK Windows will finish starting up. Please go back to Step 1 and verify that your boot.ini is OK
Option C: You have a Windows OS CD available
* Place the Windows CD into the CD drive and turn on or reboot the machine
* When you get the message Press any key to boot from cd.... (press any key)
* Windows Setup screen will start and it will start to load needed files
* Once the Welcome to Setup screen appears, choose R to Repair a Windows XP installation using Recovery Console
* On the Recovery console you will be prompted with the Windows installation you would like to use. Use the correct number for your install and press
* Under Type the Administrator password enter the password and press
* You will then be at a command prompt C:\Windows> type bootcfg
* You will then be prompted for some information by the machine
TheTiminator
Who uses .ini files anymore anyways? The EVE guys should get current, maybe use an App.config or any other xml solution.
God this story is over blown
1. The patch did not replace boot.ini it simply deleted it.
2. The only systems that would not boot are those with a custom install location, ie not installed to first partition or using the windows boot loader to boot multiple OS. Systems where windows was installed to c:\windows would get a simple error saying invalid boot.ini then continue booting just fine (i really must get around to replacing the boot.ini sometime on mine).
3. If it does affect someone system all you need is the windows install cd (you do have a legal copy right?) and about 5mins time, no data lose just an inconvenience.
I'm me. I think.
That's kinda amusing. However, BOOT.INI is invariable read-only, unless you have specifically un-done that yourself, and if you've un-done it, you probably know how to fix it.
Worst case scenario, you go and put your Windows disk in, and tell it to do a Repair Install.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
if you brick the boot.ini in xp it will still boot in most cases. its normally used in xp to boot more then 1 windows os. however if your pc is rendered unbootable you simply insert the xp install cd go to the recovery console and type fixboot c: or whatever drive xp is on. it will then restore the boot.ini to system defaults.
IT'S A TRAP!!!
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
Hey it's EVE, corruption is the norm. Corrupt company, corrupt admins, corrupt developers, corrupt game and now...
:).
EVE Online: "We don't just corrupt space sectors"...
OK it's not quite the boot sector but close enough for me
...or in my work account either, for that matter. I dedicate a separate standard account to untrusted software like games. Not that other apps don't have bugs, but the nature of games is such that I trust them even less than other software.
:)
It requires a little extra work fiddling with things sometimes.
Vista's auto-redirect functions for apps trying to write to files/registry entries they don't have permission to helps a lot (once you turn off Vista's heuristics for auto-requesting admin privs on what it considers to be installers), but sometimes using the Application Compatibility Toolkit (especially shims to tell the installer it has admin privs when it doesn't, and RunAsInvoker shim to override permission request manifests in Vista) or running the installer in a virtual machine and moving files/settings to the real machine is necessary.
Naturally, I don't run the games themselves as admin either, but that goes without saying. Heck, if we're talking about a 2D game, sometimes it's simplest to just play it inside a virtual machine in the first place.
Of course it's all moot the day software I implicitly trust contains a similar bug.
(hardware drivers, OS patches, etc.)
(Insightful)
ISO certified == THX certified
If a game doesn't run without Administrator access, copy protection is more likely to be the culprit than any other bad practice. Administrator access is required to issue arbitrary SCSI commands to CD-ROM drives, or to load kernel drivers used to make debugging difficult
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
Um, yes, there is plenty that Microsoft could have done about this. In the general case, installing an application or a driver should only require the privilege to add stuff to the system, not to delete or overwrite stuff in the system. All that the installer should need to do is: (a) put the app's files in an area designated for that app, and (b) request the OS to add a driver. Only the second of these requires escalated privileges, strictly speaking, if users are allowed to install programs in their own home directories.
The problems are:
These are of course intimately related; if you provide a built-in installer framework that's good for everybody to use, you can make that framework request permissions in a granular way.
As for the rest, it simply had to be said - once. In future, I'll just sigh along with you.
Resistance is futile. Reactance buggers it up.
So much bickering about the term brick. I'm rarely one to say stop staring at pixels and go get layed...but jc. It is not like someone called an apple and orange here. The term brick is a funny term that has been associated with a device that is pretty much dead...but repairable. A computer virus is not a virus at all....it only somewhat resembles one. A brick of hardware is not clay, it simply is an analogy.
:)
What do you call a device that is absolutely not repairable?... garbage...or a collection of atoms.
Lastly I saw a post that said users can't call a harddrive memory...like it or not a harddrive is memory. Persistant memory versus RAM which is volatile. A user is not wrong to call a harddrive memory...it is just against general methodology...but not wrong. Language is a funny thing..no
Dont' worry, but happy now.
I just tested an update today (Friday 7 Dec). Eve's appallingly named boot.ini is still there, but it's going into the Eve install directory (in my case C:\Program Files\CCP\Eve). That's harmless enough .. if I followed standard install procedures.
Shame on the damned fool who installed his Eve in C:\ root though. He's still munged.
This happens during the Premium update, by the way; the update that's available _after_ the main update. I didn't test to see what installed during the main update (which didn't bother my C:\boot.ini either).
Consumer software, especially cutting edge stuff (which includes many game titles) is always buggy. They don't have to be, but its a trade-off. Fast, stable, cheap: choose two. ;)
Spell cheek you've failed me four the last thyme!
My friend had this problem, so burnt him a linux live cd and gave him my boot.ini - he used a linux boot-cd to fix an XP boot problem. Kindof ironic.
been playing eve for more than a year now and also do a little testing on their public test server. it was clear a week before release that the new upgrade (trinity) was not ready. there were several posts in the development forums that it was not ready and should be worked on and tested more. it comes as no surprise that this came up as well as the many, many ingame bugs they have now, even to the point that whole portions of the player base are unable to work on and use the things that have taken them months to build.
ahhh
But should such an operation (deleting/changing/overwriting) a system critical file such as (boot.ini) attempt to happen on a Vista machine, all those annoying popups we bit** and moan about all the time would ACTUALLY prevent this from occurring, or at least give the developers an indication that thier installer/uninstaller was broken.
I imagine however, the vista installer/uninstaller was written differently and did not contain such a fatal bug, and thus: passed the test.
I'm no VistaHumper, but I thought I'd point it out.