Giveaway of the Day Forums

1. 

   Dragonlair
   Member

   A friend of mine has noticed that the download from MyPlayCity acts differently whether she downloads/installs to her Vista Desktop or to her W7 Laptop. We're not sure what setting in the Laptop is causing the problem because I don't see the same effect on my W7 desktop.

   If she downloads/installs to her Vista Desktop, she sees the normal checkmarks for hijacking her homepage and the search engine. If she unchecks those boxes, the kitten pouts but nothing else happens and she just clicks install (no choice of installation parameters).

   If she download/installs to her W7 laptop, the install page is not the 2 checks and the install but is the 2 checks and "Next". If she unchecks the two boxes, the "Next" is grayed out and won't allow installation. This is the form from some months ago (didn't last long).

   I believe she said if she copies the downloaded install program from her desktop to her laptop (via flashdrive), the install is the same as on Vista.

   Somehow, MyPlayCity is seeing something on her laptop (when it should not) and changes what installation program it is giving her.

   This is very disturbing. I have encouraged her to email MyPlayCity, despite their dismal record of support, to complain about this issue.

   Does anybody know what she might have set that is causing the different behavior? My W7 machine doesn't do it and behaves just as my older Vista machine did.

   Posted 11 years ago #
2. 

   Anonymous
   Unregistered

   is the download the same size ? MD5 Checksum need a tool try spybot S & D free tool

   Posted 11 years ago #
3. 

   Dragonlair
   Member

   My friend does not have checksum ability -- I'm not sure how to do it myself and she does not have spybot. I do not have access to her files.

   Today's new addition by MyPlayCity (Criminal Minds) is the first since I posted that we both wanted.

   We found that the file she downloads on her Windows 7 laptop is LARGER by 372.78 KB than what she downloads to her Vista desktop (and I download to my Windows 7 Desktop).

   On her Vista machine (and my Windows 7 machine), the file size was 233,029,704 bytes with a allocated size of 233,033,728 bytes.

   On her Windows 7 machine, the file size was 233,411,432 bytes with an allocated size of 233,414,656 bytes.

   That is a difference of 381,728 bytes or 372.78 KB.

   MyPlayCity is definitely offering different downloads without telling you and trying to trap people into using their homepage and search engine. This stinks!

   Edit ---- My friend and I have determined that if she downloads using IE, she gets the same file that she gets from Vista (using Firefox) so at least she has a circumvention to the problem. Does anybody have any idea what setting in Firefox would be causing the problem? Could it be an add-on that I have that she doesn't have.

   Posted 11 years ago #
4. 

   mikiem2
   Moderator

   Confirmed

   Used my default F/Fox in win7 64 & got the larger file -- used ie8 in the win7 XP Mode VM, got the smaller one. And as you've posted, both boxes have to be checked to proceed with install in the larger file.

   Don't know why they'd target FireFox users -- perhaps so few FireFox users leave the boxes checked they felt they have to force the issue? At any rate thanks for the heads up.

   Posted 11 years ago #
5. 

   Dragonlair
   Member

   The problem is not in the "normal" options for Firefox. My friend got the versions on the two machines to match. It appears to be something that has changed overtime in the about:config settings. She has never changed them but it's the only thing I can think of that might be changed.

   I THINK I have found the right file and now I need to have her send me copies of her versions from both machines so I can compare them. She doesn't have the tools, experience or confidence to do this herself.

   If I can figure out what's doing it, it will help a lot of people. The current circumvention is to use IE!

   Posted 11 years ago #
6. 

   Dragonlair
   Member

   I tried comparing my friends two computer's versions of the prefs.js file (what about:config uses) and adjusted one and had her place it in use (renaming her existing prefs.js file). There were just too many differences between the two files to recommend any given change. The files were quite different in size and even after I stripped out the printer and such (her new computer has no printer defined), there were still 40 blocks of changes!

   It seemed to work for one game but only that one (the latest one). It does not work for any previous games.

   I am totally confused. The fact that it did work once indicates it is something in about:config.

   If anybody has any idea what that might be, please let me know.

   Posted 11 years ago #
7. 

   Littlemaggit
   Member

   I've just read this and am fascinated by it. I have had a major computing problem, in that my old and trusted Windows XP machine finally gave up working irreparably three weeks ago and I've now replaced it with a new Windows 7 Home Edition 64-bit desktop (which I'm delighted with).

   As I was keen to get some games again (although I'd got plenty of data backups, I hadn't bothered with free games), I went onto MyPlayCity to see what the latest were. I found Criminal Minds, downloaded it with no problem using Firefox (I was able to uncheck the boxes for hijacking the home page etc) and have now looked at the size in view of Dragonlair's friend's experience. It's 244,846,592 bytes which is different again!

   Because I was starting with a completely new computer, I've had to download the latest version of everything (Firefox etc), so I wonder if that may have anything to do with this? Certainly I had no problem with it, although there's the usual automatic link to the MPC website on exiting the game. I do hope MPC aren't going to force that automatic hijack again, as it took me ages to undo it when it happened before and I'm only just starting to learn about Windows 7 as opposed to XP.

   Posted 11 years ago #
8. 

   mikiem2
   Moderator

   Just a quick off-topic comment Littlemaggit... making the transition to win7, if it looks like there's stuff you'll miss from your old XP install, or just XP itself [not all software & things like USB hardware is win7 compatible], you *might* want to consider using your old XP license to put XP alongside win7 on your new desktop, either as a dual-boot or in a VM.

   Otherwise don't want to hijaak this thread -- thanks for your info on MPC.

   Posted 11 years ago #
9. 

   Dragonlair
   Member

   My fried tried the newest HOG and our attempt with a change in the prefs.js file failed. We don't know what it is in side a raw Firefox that causes the different download. For now, she's just downloading from IE.

   Posted 11 years ago #
10. 

    Littlemaggit
    Member

    For info, my version of Firefox is 18.0.2 and the only add-on I've got is Adblock Plus. I've just downloaded Call of Atlantis from MPC and that's installed fine.

    Off-topic, thanks to Mikiem2 for the suggestion about XP - I'll bear it in mind especially as I've got two hard disks so could probably keep it quite separately, but I'm not all that techie-savvy and think I'll concentrate on learning Win 7 instead. So far, so good, but I'm sure I'll come up against something that won't run sooner or later.

    Posted 11 years ago #
11. 

    Diane16
    Member

    Dragonlair, is the latest HOG your friend downloaded, the Marie Antoinette one? If so, have they had any problems playing this, as I regularly download MPC games using firefox with no probs, but have tried to play this game twice and both times this game has caused my computer to shut down completely then on starting up again, the system has recovered from a serious error, and wonder if this is connected with firefox. Diane

    Posted 11 years ago #
12. 

    Dragonlair
    Member

    Diane,

    Yes, the latest HOG is the Marie Antoinette one. As far as I know, the only problem she has had is NO SOUND. She has played some but I don't know how far.

    I cannot play the game. Not only do I get no sound but I only get the system cursor and the game REQUIRES the custom cursor to know what to do.

    She downloaded from IE because that allows her to install without the hijacking.

    I have no idea of your problem.

    At least you spell your name right! :)

    Diane

    Posted 11 years ago #
13. 

    mikiem2
    Moderator

    Do not know if this will help or be useful to anyone or not...

    Downloaded "Marie-Antoinette and the disciples of Loki" using ie10 in win7, & then expanded loki_setup.exe using Universal Extractor [ http://www.legroom.net/software/uniextract ] looking for anything odd or out of the ordinary, & didn't see anything. Then fired up win7 32 in a VirtualBox VM [Virtual Machine], started Process Explorer so I could see what files the game used, & ran the game using the expanded files/folders. The game seemed to run OK [in case anyone wanted to bother with a VM], & Process Explorer showed it using MIDI, OpenGL, & *possibly* Direct X 8 (?).

    Using MIDI *might* have something to do with no audio -- it's a bit rarer nowadays & I've seen many soundcards &/or on-board sound chips without MIDI support. From Vista on it's also a bit of a hassle because you can't just select your default MIDI playback device from Windows Control Panel. Google & if you wade through all the musician complaints [they still use MIDI for stuff like keyboards] you'll find a few fixes like this that **might** help http://www.benryves.com/products/vistamidi -- http://coolsoft.altervista.org/en/virtualmidisynth

    I would suspect OpenGL to get the blame for no cursor & quite possibly the crashing Diane experienced. Direct X won the battle with OpenGL for dominance in games, but OpenGL's still there as an alternative for game developers to use -- OpenGL graphics hardware support OTOH is a bit iffy & trouble-prone. Searching on your graphics hardware & OpenGL *might* present some sort of cure, possibly in the way of a different [newer?] driver version.

    Posted 11 years ago #
14. 

    Dragonlair
    Member

    The problem is not a midi problem. My friend and I both have a lot of Kaser Games (I have all of them) and he uses midi files. I only have one game that has any consistent problems with sounds and that's the win-display. Somehow Greek Squares tries to get going too fast and the sound just quits and it goes to the next level.

    Posted 11 years ago #

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