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EVE-Online Patch Makes XP Unbootable

Posted by kdawson on from the boot-hill dept.

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."

13 of 572 comments (clear)

  1. Ppffftt! by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Isn't this something should have been found in, oh, I dunno....beta testing?

    --
    My blog
    1. Re:Ppffftt! by kv9 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Consumers==Unpaid Beta Testers paying beta testers
      --
      Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
  2. How is this possible? by Jennifer+York · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Someone in their QA department needs to be fired. This type of mistake is simply unacceptable, and truly very difficult to believe.

    What sort of test plan fails to catch BRICKING THE PC?

    --
    Dominant Meme
    1. Re:How is this possible? by MBGMorden · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think it became annoying to me at the end of November. What's bad is it's usually not the geeks who fall in love with buzzwords.

      --
      "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
    2. Re:How is this possible? by garbletext · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I have mod points to give you but you're already at +5. Thank you for giving voice to my frustration over this usage. Imprecise language helps no one. A device is called a brick because it is no more useful than one. If you can fix it, it's just 'broken.'

    3. Re:How is this possible? by garbletext · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No. Bricking doesn't refer to the user's ability to operate a given technology, otherwise my grandma could call her new microwave "bricked," which isn't the case. Just because you are too incompetent to use something doesn't mean it isn't useful. A brick is a device that is irreparably broken.

    4. Re:How is this possible? by rfunches · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, the term "brick" does not change based on your technical experience and "considering" something to be bricked does not make the use of the term correct. Joe Average may refer to his hard drive as "memory" but his use of the term is still inaccurate. If the flash chip on an iPhone is FUBAR'd to the state where you can't even reflash it by any means, it's bricked, whether it's in Joe Average's hands, Steve Job's hands, or Sally Tech's hands. Anything less than rendering a piece of hardware completely inoperable (hardware with the usefulness of a physical brick) is *not* bricked. Now, if the boot.ini removal rendered a hard drive inoperable...

  3. Re:Insanely sloppy... but not without precedent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The deletion of the Boot.ini file will not cause any data loss. If you format your system to fix the issue then you will lose data. Anyone with the Windows XP CD can boot off of it and repair the OS. It is a simple procedure for the tech savvy folks and for those that are not tech savvy, most of them have friends that are.

    This issue is going to leave CCP with a lot of egg on their face but realistically extended downtime would have been worse since the player base would have been screaming a 100x louder. This issue will peak higher in the media since it is a highly unusual problem but will die quicker then if the servers were down for 2-5 days.

    The concern that I have is how did this get past the QA testers at CCP and into a production build?

  4. Re:They both made errors. by Goobermunch · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sad that so many games require Administrator access to run.

    --AC

  5. Not sure this is a QA problem... by E.+Edward+Grey · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  6. Re:They both made errors. by 00lmz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It certainly is sad that some apps and games need admin privs to run, but this is an installation bug. Of course people are going to install programs as administrator...

  7. Re:Bricking? by geminidomino · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As I mentioned in my previous post:

    People with one machine and w/o a Linux live CD (probably 90% of windows users) would have a bricked machine barring any outside assistance. No, they wouldn't. The term "bricked" has very specific connotations. Specifically, that it is not repairable without professional intervention which will probably cost more than the unit itself, thus turning it into a "very expensive brick."

    A crashed OS is not a bricking, unless that OS is on firmware or something. If popping in a CD can fix your computer, whether or not you are too stupid to do it yourself, then it's not bricked.
  8. Re:Insanely sloppy... but not without precedent by TheThiefMaster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's not, because the summary is wrong.

    The patch actually deleted the system boot.ini, it doesn't over-write it or replace it with a game config file.

    I don't know where that "fact" came from.

    Trust me, I was one of the people who had their boot.ini deleted by the patch, followed by (on next boot) my machine displaying some warning about boot.ini being missing, and then proceeding to boot anyway.