Erik

cheers an' all that

Happy Birthday.

Once while in DC I stood behind a man who while ordering a pretzel wanted mustard. When the vendor said sorry he didn't have any mustard he could have refused and went elsewhere but did not. He purchased the pretzel and then stood there and complained mockingly about the only pretzel vendor in DC who didn't have mustard on his cart. It not only was embarrassing to watch but was painful to listen to. This thread reminds me of that day.

Debate topics, not people. If all discussions maintained that most basic courtesy we'd never have to lock anything. Until they do our staff has my full support. If I had any issue with someone's modding release I'd personally pick up my modding tools and offer a collaborative work to better the community. I certainly would never say to anyone that their abilities are anything other than appreciated. Just my dimes (inflation you know) worth of opinion. Erik

Generally I don't offer advice because of the "what could happens" when I do. Keeping that in mind here's what I might consider or research at microsoft's support site. Windows has a built in system file check. Basically what it will do is verify that the files on the hard drive are the same as on your OS disc. To use this feature you'll need your original Windows disc and to be able to boot the machine and open a command window. You can also burn a warm copy of Windows over your current install just by inserting the Windows CD and installing windows. I wouldn't recommend using the Repair Command Window unless you are absolutely certain of what you're doing or have exacting instructions. Like I said research "re-installing or repairing a corrupt windows installation" at microsoft's support site. Keep in mind that both of the above options I mentioned will revert your OS files to a factory state but it will NOT fix a malicious or corrupt registry in most cases. The only way to be certain your OS and machine are untainted is to write zeros to the drive or full format your HDD and reinstall your OS. The beauty of the restore feature is that it maintains a copy of your registry so should you need to revert it's there. The bad thing is that most people who write malware know that if you turn off the restore feature all those check points become unselectable when restore is turned back on. Most times they are still there and can be used which would solve your problem completely. The problem is that the instructions to reclaim them using the repair command window can cause problems for the novice or faint of heart. Microsoft does publish a how-to page about recovering check points that aren't visible in the restore GUI. You might also search for that support option if you fear your registry is corrupt. The good news is that if you successfully enable the old check points you can restore to a pre-problem date and all will be good as new. Why microsoft doesn't add some security to turning this feature off I have no idea, but it would fix a lot of problems for people. Let us know how you did. Erik

Have you tried restoring back to a time your computer was good? Since it was just yesterday I'd think that might be an option.

I'll probably be lashed for this. I like the ideas. ------- The "Reply" Button is painfully misleading. Reply means to quote someone. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the thread to find the "Add Reply" Button that's the one that doesn't throw the quotes in thereby copying what someone posted earlier, including images. -------- That's all for now.

Hi Dan; We don't offer payments outside of PayPal. Sorry about that. Can you get someone you trust to help with maybe sending in a subscription payment through PayPal for you? We chose a third party processor (read: PayPal) so that member's personal information and banking information would always remain confidential, secure, and off site. I understand that for some PayPal might not be an option for payment, I apologize, but the benefit of knowing our member's information is always protected far out weighs any inconveniences. Trust me I'd rather not pay the fees associated with third party processing but I sleep better at night knowing our subscriber's information is safe. Hope that helps. Let me know if I can be of any further assistance. Erik Thompson CombatACE.com

"bells in it and smells like pepper." Too funny.

The free accounts can still download they are just not unlimited accounts as they were before. If you don't get an error message then it's not your account here or us, it's probably something with your machine (example: download manager, download accelerator, or possibly anti-virus software) that you might check into. Erik

Stormtrooper ... I like his layout better too, but he had it first so we're stuck with second best. I suppose we do pretty well considering we have some 4500 downloads to offer. Keeping that mess sorted is a workout in and of itself. C5 ... We're simply appreciative for all you do for the community, it was our responsibility to make sure we did everything we could to help. Becoming a subscription member has always meant more than just CombatACE. I'm glad everyone gets the opportunity to see that. I'm thinking a C5 Telethon during Thanksgiving Season is next on our plate. Wonder who we could get to stand in for Jerry Lewis?

5.4 barely a tremor or even a minor rattle. I'm still banking on Arizona becoming beach front property. Hopefully California floats. E

Hi Everyone; With all the recent changes I need your help in determining how we're doing and what parts still need attention. Please take a moment of your time here with us to fill out the above poll and if you feel we need to give some attention to a specific area(s) of the site please list them and what you'd like to see improved about them. Thank you for your time in helping us improve your home. Erik

The downtime this morning was a result of me removing some old IPs on our machine we no longer utilize. Once I dropped the IPs from bind the machine stopped responding and needed someone at the data center to console it for a restart. I lost a beautiful 277 days of uninterrupted uptime but all is back online now. Sorry for the downtime I really tried to keep our IP migration to zero downtime.

Site rippers aka download managers are the dirty underbelly of the internet ... but the good news is we'll be adding partial file download resume to the site on the next software upgrade. From the looks of it we'll be able to select member groups who have access to it as it's a rather intensive addition. We'll keep you posted. Erik

That's funny I never looked at her mag. The article says man wounded ... I wonder if that means she threw the gun at him when it wouldn't fire and it dislocated his finger or something. God you know she's the laughing stock of the department especially after being front page news. Poor Police Cpt is probably still in tears.

no wedding ring? I give.

You just don't mess with Texas girls ... you just don't.

I love the UK and when I see things about all the big brother stuff there it freaks me out that it's publicly acceptable.

Fixed. We were trying to implement some new features and we botched it. Sorry we'll be more careful in the future. Please let me know if everything has returned to normal for you. Erik

I apologize for the downtime we experienced Sunday evening. Our data center where the server is located experienced an outage affecting the entire facility. My apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused. Regards; Erik Thompson CombatACE.com

SD You should post those up in the gallery ... because seriously just one pic is a tease. <<chuckles>> Erik

Do you think times like these are where songs like "she thinks my tractor's sexy" come from? Very nice though ... good on ya! Erik

I've got two support tickets into Invision right now and this is one of them. This one has to do with searching the download section. IPB opens the connection to the DB but then never closes it. Once the DB reaches its user limit we start getting those "can't connect to DB" error messages. The fix maybe installing a new search engine for the site which wouldn't terribly disappoint me anyway. :) I'l keep you guys posted and thanks for reporting this. Erik

A specific user action on the site is causing an insert of user name instead of display name into the cache table. Until I can duplicate the problem I can only continue to look for it. I've submitted a ticket to Invision and we're working through the details. I have no estimated time for repair as this is a minor bug which fixes itself as the cache table is refreshed. I'll let you know when I have more information. Just to clarify 3 days to locate and fix such a minor bug is an unreasonable expectation considering the size of our code base. Thank you for making me aware of the details however. Regards; Erik Thompson CombatACE.com