Still life is a pretty decent, albit a bit dark, adventure game from 2005. As all games it runs fine on XP and like most games it fails to run on Vista (who cares) and Windows 7.

NOTE: I’m running Win7 64bit. With any luck this will not matter for 32bit users.

Googling around will give you a bunch of forum posts, but the general consensus is that you should try the 98 compatibility mode and if not then run it in XP. The problem is that the game either wont start, start and never progress past a black screen, will throw and error or else will hang after you start talking to the cop in the first scene. Turns out there is a simple way to make the game run perfectly (I’ve finished it and it ran nice and smooth, without a hitch).

As windows still hasn’t fixed some of the issues with compatibility mode, you cant just right click stilllife.exe and change the settings there. For some retarded reason you need to create a shortcut first (nice Microsoft, real nice). After this you need to do the following:

• Right click the shortcut, select the compatibility tab.
• Change the program to run as WinNT 4.0 (not 98 or xp as these WON’T work).
• Then check the box ‘disable visual themes’.
• (Unnecessary?) Check the box ‘disable desktop composition’ (to ward off evil spirits).
• Lastly check the box to run this program as an admin (since windows still doesn’t and probably never can have a decent security infrastructure that would allow you to run programs and games without running them with admin rights).
• Apply and OK. Now you can run the game.

Have fun I’ll post an update if the same settings apply for Post Mortem (prequel) and Still Life 2.

Just a quick post. Basically the free version of avira comes with a splash screen and an annoying nag screen that’s basically a popup ad that opens up every few hours telling you to go premium. Disabling the nag is easy (same as on vista):

1. Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Avira\AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic\avnotify.exe
2. Right-click avnotify.exe-> properties-> security->
3. Under the group or username SYSTEM click edit
4. Put a checkmark under the DENY column for “read and execute”

It’s also possible to do this via the security policy app. For more info check this helpfull site.

Now to disable the splash is a little different – since avgnt is no longer in the registry under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run on Windows 7 64bit. Instead you have to look for it in:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

FYI this seems to be the currentversion\run for 32bit apps on a 64bit OS.

Now you just find avgnt and add /ns at the end (i.e: avgnt.exe” /min /ns). For avira versions before 9 (update!! Outdated virus scanners are bad. It’s free. You have no excuse!) use /nosplash instead.

Hope this helps people

UPDATE: As MisterAV pointed out, avnotify is also used for browsing virus info. An alternative is to use VirusList which will cover you on the virus info side and leave you able to block avnotify and enjoy a nag free antivirus

Just a quick post.

Ok an annoying thing that’s plagued me is that with mediamonkey (best media player ever!) when I’ auto tagging stuff from amazon is that I don’t get any leading zeros. When i then auto organise the files on my hdd they get named with no leading zeros. Stupidly this causes sorting algorithms (without application of logic) to fail (because in the computer world 10 onwards comes after 1 and then it will list track 2 – 9). Pretty much EVERYONE who handles files and media playback has fixed this issue (try it in your file manager). My E71′s music played deals with it correctly. However the guys at rockbox seem to think it’s not a bug but a feature and (in their slightly arrogant ways) dismissed this as a bug (i quote: it’s the users job to tag files correctly). Regardless of whether the rockbox team can be bothered to actually apply logic to sorting i’ve found a quick easy way to fix the problem in my library.

First:
You can autosort files by using track#:2 instead of plain old track#. This will make all track numbers 2 digits (adding a leading zero to single digit track numbers accordingly). You can replace 2 with any number you like.

But you might also want to fix this in the DB itself. So….

Second:
A cool script by Bex http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14822
This script is awesome in that it’s not just for fixing the leading zero problem, but it can correct cases and all kinds of other cool stuff. You can apply it on a selection of tracks via right-click or if you open the script options you have a nice big button to fix all tracks in the library

Shame my old Iriver 320 has finally died on me (in terms of the hdd) and until i have the cash to buy a new one (perhaps a 100GB one or i might just go SSD) I’m not using rockbox anyway (unless they port it to Symbian ). I kinda like having all my gadgets in one though….it’s really convenient.