Updates and Crashes
I usually like updating programs. Bugs get fixed, new features get added, sounds pretty good. Completely new versions, however, often tend to be more trouble than they’re worth. I have previously written about changes that are not worth adapting to, so I won’t go into that again. I only want to write about a few recent updates I’ve performed and crashes I’ve experienced. Only venting, perhaps.
I’ve been using BitDefender since version 7. It was shortly before the launch of version 8, so I didn’t use BitDefender 7 for long, but it seemed nice enough. Then I got along so well with BitDefender 8 that I intended to actually buy BitDefender 9 when it launched. I couldn’t do that because it was around the time Andra left, so there was nobody to actually purchase it and I just used a pirated version of it. Later, after I got thrown back here, I had other things on my mind than to start using a piece of software legally, so I delayed it until the start of 2007, when I finally bought BitDefender 10. That was a bad choice, as they had removed some functionality that I liked and it generally kept crashing and causing all sorts of problems, culminating with blue screens when I was on DC++ and in the middle of fast transfers each way. The talks with their technical support people didn’t solve anything, but it did seem that my reports were used for the next version, as installing BitDefender 2008 as soon as it launched did solve my problems. It still had some minor issues, but those were mainly caused by the fact that my computer was too slow at the time.
Then I built this new computer and installed Vista on it. BitDefender 2008 didn’t seem to like that too much, since it was crashing regularly. Actually, it was crashing after almost 25 hours of running each time. So there were some new e-mail messages exchanged, but once again there was no solution until BitDefender 2009 was launched. Installing it solved the crashes, but created some other rather annoying problems. It kept stealing the focus 30 minutes after an update, and it did it twice each time, a few seconds apart. I asked what’s going on, they said they know of the problem and it will be fixed in the first major update, but it’s still happening even now, though less often. Another annoying issue is that sometimes the advanced settings screen simply becomes inaccessible, which means you can’t access anything if you have it set to go directly to that screen when you click the taskbar icon. The only solution is still to reboot and hope it works again after that.
Still, they’ve outdone themselves yesterday, when a BitDefender update which required a reboot managed to crash Vista. It’s the first blue screen I see since I have this computer, and it’ll be a year old three weeks from now. BitDefender 2009 usually causes issues when there are updates which require a reboot, but the issues used to be limited to itself, crashing instead of turning itself off nicely and giving some errors about being unable to read some temporary files, sometimes even on the “shutting down” screen. This time, however, I imagine they must be “proud” of themselves. As for me… I’m trying to work with them and find a solution one more time, which might be the last time. My license expires three and a half months from now, and if things will stay like this I’ll start looking for other products to replace it with. I don’t like the idea, I’ve gotten used to it, but I’m also fed up with all the issues it keeps having lately.
On the other hand, it seems that some programs don’t exactly play nice with Gigabyte‘s Dynamic Energy Saver software. None actually “says” anything about it, but I did experience a couple of “hard” reboots, as in the computer turning itself off and then back on a moment later, as if the reset button had been pressed. They happened when another program was trying to access certain more sensitive areas, so I assume there was some conflict between it and DESA and that caused the CPU to be left without power for a moment. (I said DESA because I have upgraded to the “advanced” version some time ago, after updating the BIOS as well.)
Moving on, since I have just went back to playing it these days, I want to yell at the “helpful” people on the BioWare forums, who know that Neverwinter Nights keeps causing Vista to reset the video card and therefore crash the game, but basically say that “if the game crashes under Vista, get rid of Vista”. Why thank you kindly, you ass!
I have narrowed down the cause to some weird thing the OpenGL driver, which Neverwinter Nights uses, does when there are transparent characters on the screen, such as when the player is under the effect of some sort of concealment, but I can’t do anything about it. Thankfully, considering the amount of time I spend concealed in one way or another, it doesn’t always happen. But it’s still very annoying when it does, especially when loading a saved game where the character is concealed causes the video card to be reset immediately, making that saved game unusable. It only happened with one saved game so far, and I have saved in that situation many times, but it’s still a problem.
Finally, I have just installed Internet Explorer 8 and I’m not happy with it. Yes, it does seem to have some nice features and the smoother look is appreciated, but my contact with the bad parts of it came only a few minutes after installation, when I tried testing some pages and noticed that it treats CSS as illogically as Firefox does. That might be because it conforms to certain “web standards”, but when the standards are wrong you fight to change them, not change yourself to suit them. Also, there seem to be a few other problems, one of which I’m noticing just now because each autosave causes the edit box to scroll up many lines.
