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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."

22 of 572 comments (clear)

  1. Insanely sloppy... but not without precedent by RogueyWon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

    1. 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?

    2. Re:Insanely sloppy... but not without precedent by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 5, Funny

      At one point trying to uninstall Final Fantasy XI Online would remove hal32.dll.

      That wouldn't be a smart thing to do, now would it, Dave?

      --
      This guy's the limit!
    3. Re:Insanely sloppy... but not without precedent by Fozzyuw · · Score: 5, Funny

      I still can't figure out how this missed even basic testing where CCP should have caught this bug pretty easily.

      The testers would have caught it but their computers didn't start when they tried to turn them on the next day so they could never identify it. =P

      --
      "The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
    4. Re:Insanely sloppy... but not without precedent by TheThiefMaster · · Score: 5, Informative

      Uninstallers and patches are rarely tested fully. For patches, normally problems stem from the company having only ever tested the clean game at the latest build, or having only tested patching from a clean install of the original retail copy.

      Also, this EVE patch wouldn't "brick" an XP SP2 machine that had Windows installed to the primary partition of the primary drive (i.e. most pcs), because Windows XP SP2 will automatically try to boot that if it fails to find boot.ini. Assuming they did test the patch, this would explain why they didn't notice.

  2. 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 Phisbut · · Score: 5, Funny

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

      Oh, but it was found, by several beta testers. However, since none of those beta testers had a functioning computer after the test, they were all unable to send a bug report. Not having received any bug reports, the developers simply assumed that there were no bugs.

      --
      After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
      - The Tao of Programming
    2. Re:Ppffftt! by kv9 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Consumers==Unpaid Beta Testers paying beta testers
      --
      Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
  3. Bricking? by interactive_civilian · · Score: 5, Informative
    Why does the summary say "bricking the machine"? Does the machine become a doorstop that cannot be fixed? Can you not (and this might even be more complicated than necessary, but as a rather inexperienced Windows user, this came to mind first) use a Linux Live CD to boot and edit the necessary files? I DNRTFA, but if it is just an errant backslash, it should be a piece of cake to fix.

    Hardly "bricking" IMHO.

    --
    "Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
    1. 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.
    2. Re:Bricking? by gazbo · · Score: 5, Funny

      Man, that's serious then. One would have thought that MS would make the Windows CD bootable so that users could gain access to some form of "recovery console".

  4. Partially correct story by NATIK · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  5. Re:How is this possible? by vranash · · Score: 5, Funny

    Obviously one with a really high uptime for Windows :)

  6. It's not bricked! by wiredog · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
  7. Re:How is this possible? by sayfawa · · Score: 5, Funny

    Say John, there's a funny thing with our new patch; after the dialogue telling the user that the install was successful and that they should reboot the machine, the machine doesn't actually reboot, it just shuts off and then hangs. What should we do?

    Don't tell them to reboot the machine. Problem solved.

    --
    Free the Quark 3 from asymptotic confinement! Bring your charm! Don't get down! All colours and flavours welcome!
  8. Re:They both made errors. by Goobermunch · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sad that so many games require Administrator access to run.

    --AC

  9. 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...

  10. Re:How is this possible? by illumin8 · · Score: 5, Informative

    BRICKING THE PC?
    WTF is with you people? Ever since the Apple made iPhones "bricks", this erroneous use of the term has seeped into our technical vocabulary. People, it's not a brick if it's still usable. 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.

    Now, the term bricking is being applied to any piece of electronics or computer equipment that won't boot an OS.

    It's not bricked if you can just reinstall or repair Windows and have it work again. It's bricked if you flash a bad ROM BIOS image and now you can't even turn the thing on.
    --
    "When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
  11. Re:(catchy subject) by Krinsath · · Score: 5, Interesting

    More likely cause: The patch was tested but the patcher was not.

    Don't forget that this is an issue with the the *patcher* that was not present in the full premium install from scratch, only the upgrade (which is probably the route most people would've taken, in fairness). It basically boils down to a simple typo in one version of the installer and rebooting to test the installer might not be part of their QA tests for the patcher.

    Really what they should catch flak for is not a bad typo, but as the summary points out having a game file with the same name as a critical OS file. Boot.ini isn't a new thing, in fact it is on its way out with Vista, so there's really no excuse to claim you didn't know that Windows had such a file. It's been there since 1995 or so.

  12. 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.'

  13. 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...

  14. Not a brick, dammit! by CoreDump01 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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".