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To all SDN EVE players: If you don't know by now, DO NOT REBOOT YOUR COMPUTERS!

The article:

6.12.2007 11:47:45
ALERT: READ THIS IF YOU INSTALLED TRINITY BEFORE 4 A.M. GMT
If you have Windows AND upgraded EVE Online: Trinity Classic before 4 A.M. GMT to Premium using the content upgrade path then you MUST read this before doing anything else.

1. PLEASE DO NOT REBOOT YOUR COMPUTER
2. Check the root directory of your hard drive and see if you have a boot.ini file. Boot.ini file is normally hidden so you need to click Tools : Folder Options : View and select "Show hidden files and folders" and uncheck "Hide protected operating system files" to be able to see it. You can also check for the presence of this file by clicking Start : Control Panel : System : Advanced : Startup and Recovery : Settings (third button down). Windows will alert you if the boot.ini file is missing.
3. If boot.ini is still there then you are not affected and do not have to take any further steps.
4. If boot.ini is NOT there then please click here: FORUM LINK

We have removed the faulty updater so anyone installing the Trinity Expansion now will not be effected.

A new updater will be available shortly.

We apologize profusely for this error and are working on offering more extensive help those that have a non-working Windows PC, so please stay tuned.

Way to go, CCP. You made a patch that disables windows. Good going. Fucking retarded thing to let through QC, but hey, we all make honest mistakes, right?

Now more than ever I'm glad I stopped playing EVE.

I hope somone gets fired over that boo boo

Just a note on the above.

Your ini file is ONLY deleted if you had eve on the same harddrive as windows/your bootable.

Vista users are also immune.

I agree that it was a pretty big fuckup. However, shit always goes wrong on patchday in some shape or form, it was only a matter of time before something cropped up

Coaan wrote:Just a note on the above.

Your ini file is ONLY deleted if you had eve on the same harddrive as windows/your bootable.

Vista users are also immune.

I agree that it was a pretty big fuckup. However, shit always goes wrong on patchday in some shape or form, it was only a matter of time before something cropped up

Yeah, but it's a pretty damn huge leap from "shit goes wrong on patchday" which is true of any MMO patch to "OH SHIT MY COMPUTER WON'T BOOT!"

To my knowledge, this is the first such major fuckup in the history of MMOs. Someone should be roasted alive (figuratively speaking) for this.

Hotfoot wrote:

Coaan wrote:Just a note on the above.

Your ini file is ONLY deleted if you had eve on the same harddrive as windows/your bootable.

Vista users are also immune.

I agree that it was a pretty big fuckup. However, shit always goes wrong on patchday in some shape or form, it was only a matter of time before something cropped up

Yeah, but it's a pretty damn huge leap from "shit goes wrong on patchday" which is true of any MMO patch to "OH SHIT MY COMPUTER WON'T BOOT!"

To my knowledge, this is the first such major fuckup in the history of MMOs. Someone should be roasted alive (figuratively speaking) for this.

In their favour, at least they were honest about the fact that it was their fuckup. They could have so easily waved a hand and dismissed the issue as hardware failure on the client end.

They are at least taking measures to make sure that people know about the problem and how to fix it.

The dev responsible should at least recieve a severe warning and a threat to be sent back to school if his typing doesn't improve though. You can forgive typos on a message board. When dealing with system Ini files, it's unforgivable.

Um, okay, sure.

Look, if they claimed it was some sort of hardware failure, the users would have been up in arms so fast that by the time you saw movement they would already be there. Something like deleting the boot.ini from windows is so easy to diagnose as to not be an issue. If they had tried to cover it up, they would have been dragged over the coals from Iceland to fucking Australia. Nobody, and I do mean nobody, would EVER TRUST THE COMPANY AGAIN.

That is a crucial thing to remember when dealing with MMO companies that survive on continuous subscriptions.

So no, they don't get fucking brownie points for doing what any sane team would do and avoiding a COMPANY KILLING IDIOTIC MISTAKE. They may get brownie points for identifying it early, but here's a news flash kid: they only knew it was a problem because their users got hit by it.

Seriously, how the fuck do you think this got reported? They would have been completely oblivious if not for dozens of users getting nuked and piecing together a diagnosis from there. Chances are the problem got diagnosed by a user and passed on to them.

Even assuming they pieced it together themselves, there is no way this should have ever gotten to the public. Period. Making the game unstable or crashing the game is one thing, fucking up the user's entire computer is entirely something else. Restitution, at this point, is expected in order to maintain something even resembling the status quo.

Coaan wrote:

Hotfoot wrote:

Coaan wrote:Just a note on the above.

Your ini file is ONLY deleted if you had eve on the same harddrive as windows/your bootable.

Vista users are also immune.

I agree that it was a pretty big fuckup. However, shit always goes wrong on patchday in some shape or form, it was only a matter of time before something cropped up

Yeah, but it's a pretty damn huge leap from "shit goes wrong on patchday" which is true of any MMO patch to "OH SHIT MY COMPUTER WON'T BOOT!"

To my knowledge, this is the first such major fuckup in the history of MMOs. Someone should be roasted alive (figuratively speaking) for this.

In their favour, at least they were honest about the fact that it was their fuckup. They could have so easily waved a hand and dismissed the issue as hardware failure on the client end.

They are at least taking measures to make sure that people know about the problem and how to fix it.

The dev responsible should at least recieve a severe warning and a threat to be sent back to school if his typing doesn't improve though. You can forgive typos on a message board. When dealing with system Ini files, it's unforgivable.

The company responsible for this bullshit should fucking be ashamed of itself, and the boss of the company should resign immediately due to his failure to oversee the programme properly.

Hotfoot wrote:Um, okay, sure.

Look, if they claimed it was some sort of hardware failure, the users would have been up in arms so fast that by the time you saw movement they would already be there. Something like deleting the boot.ini from windows is so easy to diagnose as to not be an issue. If they had tried to cover it up, they would have been dragged over the coals from Iceland to fucking Australia. Nobody, and I do mean nobody, would EVER TRUST THE COMPANY AGAIN.

That is a crucial thing to remember when dealing with MMO companies that survive on continuous subscriptions.

So no, they don't get fucking brownie points for doing what any sane team would do and avoiding a COMPANY KILLING IDIOTIC MISTAKE. They may get brownie points for identifying it early, but here's a news flash kid: they only knew it was a problem because their users got hit by it.

Seriously, how the fuck do you think this got reported? They would have been completely oblivious if not for dozens of users getting nuked and piecing together a diagnosis from there. Chances are the problem got diagnosed by a user and passed on to them.

Even assuming they pieced it together themselves, there is no way this should have ever gotten to the public. Period. Making the game unstable or crashing the game is one thing, fucking up the user's entire computer is entirely something else. Restitution, at this point, is expected in order to maintain something even resembling the status quo.

I'm not defending the company. After seven fucking years running the same mmo, they should have an idea on how to keep their own program and livelyhood running.

The look in the guy's face that's responsible for that one will be priceless.

I wouldn't be too hard on the testers. It wouldn't occur to me to make sure a machine still boots after an application patch (although I imagine they probably will now). You'd typically assume the coders weren't complete muppets.

Destructionator XIII wrote:I would - rebooting is an easy way to check if your own program didn't subtly break as well, since it ensures the old version has stopped running entirely, and any old versions of libraries it depends on would also be unloaded. Rebooting would also clear the RAM caches of files, so you could have a better feel for if it loads unusually slowly afterward. Start from scratch to ensure the program's initial loader still works correctly, etc.

You wouldn't be expecting it to break the OS itself, but the check takes all of three minutes to do on a test machine and can catch individual app problems too, and it not booting would certainly go noticed.

The stupid coders do take more of the blame though.

It's entirely possible they did reboot, but their test boxes have a separate volume for the Windows folder, since this massive clusterfuck doesn't affect such systems.

Granted, were I testing a game, I would use all of the default options including the installation directory so as to duplicate the majority of customer installations, and that would have put everything on the same drive...

Hahah, I'm so glad I don't play MMOs.

Anarchy Online could corrupt your boot.ini back in the day(Part of it's intial anti-theft coding that was cut prior to release) or later on could redirect your computer to a trojan choked website(About two months before Shadowlands) but other than.

But just deleting it? That's fucking crazy.

Damn, I'm lucky I decided to play again only yesterday and not before. Since I downloaded the full client yesterday I wasn't affected. I would have been so completely screwed since I just turned on my computer half an hour ago.

Wow.

That is just downright hilarious. Sorry to anyone who's PC got hosed, but I find it incredible that it got through QA.

It's easily possible they never rebooted the PC because the patch may not have touched anything to require a reboot.

I'm curious how the company is helping users who are not tech savvy? Replacing boot.ini is not easy if the PC won't boot and the user doesn't have the technical knowledge to replace it; it's not like they can just email them a new boot.ini.

Spyder wrote:I wouldn't be too hard on the testers. It wouldn't occur to me to make sure a machine still boots after an application patch (although I imagine they probably will now). You'd typically assume the coders weren't complete muppets.

I dunno how QA works in software development, but in the company I work for we work under the assumption that there is a mistake in the files somewhere when we put them under scrutiny. Something this blindingly stupid should have been noticed almost immediately in a company their size.

Update: it apparently doesnt affect as many people as it sounded at first.

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.

So, it ONLY hits if you're running multiple volumes and Windows is installed on a directory other than the primary. I doubt that's a huge percentage of their playerbase. Those it affects will be rightfully pissed the fuck off, and it was completely retarded to use a file named "boot.ini" for an application (seriously, who the hell uses a major Windows filename for anything?), but at least it shouldn't affect the vast majority of players.

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.

Way to hose your Linux users, CCP.

Could someone explain what boot.ini is and what all this means, so us computer illiterate n00bs can piss ourselves with fear too?

But seriously, no joke, what does this mean? I mean i gather this is rediculously bad and bone headed and the coders were working blind folded but what is boot.ini?

18-Till-I-Die wrote:Could someone explain what boot.ini is and what all this means, so us computer illiterate n00bs can piss ourselves with fear too?

But seriously, no joke, what does this mean? I mean i gather this is rediculously bad and bone headed and the coders were working blind folded but what is boot.ini?

Boot.ini basically tells Windows how to start up. Without it your machine isn't going to do much of anything except beep at you.

18-Till-I-Die wrote:Could someone explain what boot.ini is and what all this means, so us computer illiterate n00bs can piss ourselves with fear too?

But seriously, no joke, what does this mean? I mean i gather this is rediculously bad and bone headed and the coders were working blind folded but what is boot.ini?

Put simply, no boot.ini, no bootup process. No bootup, no windows operating system. No windows, well, you get the idea.

If you'd like to know more, knowledge is a mere google search away.

LMAO...I don't play the game, so that out of the way, this is absolutely disgusting of a bug to miss.

Seriously the game fucks around at any point with relevant pieces of an OS? I mean most MMOs have shit like player complaints or bizarre slowdown issues, but actual OS tampering. Wow, and here I thought Blizzard or Sony were major fuck ups.

HIGH LARIOUS. Like Hotfoot says, patch problems are pretty normal, but 'kills your computer doing something it shouldn't even be touching' is pretty awesome.

I pulled down the new client yesterday (I'm *almost* $15 curious about the changes they've made with Trinity) so I won't hit this problem. Unfortunately I think Flash used the client updater, but that was at ~1900 AU time so hopefully after they patched it.

The problem was, there is a file that EVE online uses called "boot.ini" which isn't THE boot.ini so when the installer updated the file, it acciedentally deleted "\boot.ini" instead of "boot.ini"

Moral of the story: Don't name important files "boot.ini"

Yogi wrote:The problem was, there is a file that EVE online uses called "boot.ini" which isn't THE boot.ini so when the installer updated the file, it acciedentally deleted "\boot.ini" instead of "boot.ini"

Moral of the story: Don't name important files "boot.ini"

Ah, so that's why it was doing something like that. I don't play any MMO games, but the fact of the matter is that the assgoblin responsible for this design decision should be fired immediately. The level of incompetence is simply mind-numbing.