The future's not certain and nothing is set in concrete. That's what someone told me yonks ago, and I've never heard truer words. Things have certainly been crazy lately... On Monday when I was half way between Eudoria and Amethera (aka as teleporting), I'm suddenly disconnected from EU and returned to the desktop. That was, so far in my two-and-a-bit months of playing, the wierdest TP jaunt yet! I thought 'probably just one of those things', so logged back in a few minutes later after running dxdiag to see if there was any issues with my ATI gfx-card (all seemed OK). I find that I'm still at the the place that I started from, so I try again to get to the same destination, Treasure Island Castle. Same thing happens, so I'm wondering what's going on as I stare at the desktop. This time I go to Calypso's official site and lodge a case there, and I'm told to run the repair option under Tools. This took ages, but eventually some unexpected files were showing, and I'm asked if I want to delete them? What? 'If I would like to delete them', I'm thinking... How about 'you should delete these unwanted files'?? Would be a bit more affirmative, but then I guess that would be stickiing their necks out - LOL! Anyway, I deleted the files, and then logged bck in to see if anything had improved. This time I did manage to get to TI Castle OK, but then as I spawn my Vtol because I wanted to take some high-up pics of the castle itself, again I'm disconnected! This was not good! I've never had these issues before in an online game, so this time I'm thinking that there's a malware issue - because in truth, I've never had these problems with EU either before - not three disconnections in a row at any rate... So then I run MS Security essentials to see if anything is on the machine that shouldn't be there, and after 10 minutes or so of running, a whole slew of potential threats is listed. I wait for MSSE to run its course, then instruct it to delete the malware. I have no idea if these files were responsible for the crashes with the EU client, but you never know... I was certainly glad to get rid of them... So I logged back into EU again, to see if the situation had resolved itself, and finally I was able to get some gameplay without any real problems - except one thing! The graphics were now much feinter than usual, and there was some really bad 'lag' even though I wasn't near other colonists (green dots) and not hunting anyhting, etc, not that I can hunt anyhting on TI with an Opalo anyway ;) So, I knew that something still was not right, therefore decided to do the only other thing I could think of, which was to uninstall the whole thing, as I was certain that some of the files were corrupted. So I did this (and I mean everything) and then went back to the official site for Calypso and re-downloaded the EU instalation before running it. Some four + hours had clocked-up on the timeline so I knw I was going to ahve a long wait, and it was already 5.pm-ish. Then, as the instaler starts to kick-in at full pace, I get a call from my Mum saying that there's a leak comming from the hot water tank. To cut a long story short (she is 'getting on' and has no knowhow of plumbing, etc - and calling an emergency plummer was out of the question as they charge the earth), I then told her to find the stopcock and turn it off, which she did - and I then said i would be over ASAP to see what I could find or do... So, I then backup all my data because I still need to keep the EU reinstalation running, but at the same time I know that leaving a PC unattended for a long time is something you shouldn't do if at all avoidable; and then get my bits'n'pieces together and head for the station. Basically I had to get the train from Brighton to Victoria, London which took me to about 6:45 pm; and then I had to get the Underground to get to N/W London - which was a bit ironic as earlier I was trying to get N/W of TI Castle! The usual greetings, etc, that happens when you see your Mum for the first time in weeks happened (by this time it was about half-past Seven), and then I went upt to the bathroom so as to inspect the hot water tanks, and discovered a hairline crack in the pipe! My Mum had turned off the stopcock, which of course was the main thing, but the carpet was soaked and there was still aslow but steady trickle comming out of this crack. I managed to do the best I could with some 'plastic steel' that I luckily found in the garden shed, and this seemed to work well. During this time, I mentioned the fact my computer was on, and what the reason was - and of course she realized that I would have to go back to deal with that. At this point, I suggested that she leave the bathroom door open to try and air out the carpet as much as possible, and I also gave some finance and told her to hire an industrial wet'n'dry vacuum cleaner from a local hire shop in the morning. I then left some ten minutes later, and got the train back to Victoria, London and then from there another one all the way back to Brighton. By the time I got back home it was about 9.pm and the instalation had already finished. As tired as I was, I still just had to check everything just to make sure that the reinstalation had improved the earlier problems. So I logged into EU once more and the first thing I noticed was that the graphics had returned to the usual quality! I then palyed for some fifteen minutes or so, during which time I hadn't been disconnected once, nor had any TP problems! So I was glad to say the least... Then i switched the machie off and decided to call it a day.
