DragonSpawn

Hi everyone, I had some friends over. One of them went on my PC. Used my Windows Live. Normally I have my msn on "remember all" so I don't have to type my password in new everytime. Anyway this friend clicked that away and logged into his own account. Next day I want to log into mine. And it asks me for the password. Which I forgot. Issue is the email used on my msn account is an old one which is no longer active, so I can't easily retrieve the password so I'm in a clincher. I'm not asking for the password though. Is there anywhere in the windows live folder or possible way where I can salvage my contacts list? Such as a file which contains them which is saved somewhere on the PC. So I can simply cut/paste that file into a new windows live account, so I don't have to manually re-add over 200 contacts. Some of them which will be hell to find.

Hardware: None Software: Age of Empires II Audiosurf Open Office Yahoo messenger American instant messenger Hamachi Mumble Irfanview nLite VLC mediaplayer And I updated my Service Pack II to Service pack III.

Hey. So the past weeks I've been playing in windowed mode. However out of a mood I try to launch a game fullscreen again. It worked. Several times it worked, even after several reboots. The only thing I've really done is stress the card a bit in the past weeks. Otherwise nothing. Playing Crysis in windowed mode at high settings for hours and stuff like that. Wonder if getting the card heated up and working hard somehow knocked the few bugs out of it?

Nvm. Got the CSS to boot in windowed mode. PS: DO I win most annoying/hardest problem of the month though? >_>

If it becomes unbootable I suppose I can always reinstall windows. Also that screenshot was not of safe mode buddy. It was a screenshot of when I restarted it in normal mode, meaning after renaming the extension it seems my display went insane. So I went back and changed it, and everything is normal now again. So my next guess is to: 1) Boot safe mode 2) Rename the file to .bak again 3) Start in normal again 4) Uninstall the NVIDIA drivers (if I see the ****ty thing like I did above again) 5) Reinstall them 6) Reboot And see where that leaves me. Good or bad idea? Also does anyone know if CSS boots in windowed mode?

I didn't fix it buddy. I could always launch games in windowed mode, thing is I still can't launch games in fullscreen mode :/ Anyway here is what I tried in the meantime: I did that f8 and "ATKOSDMini.DLL" rename thing and renamed it to "ATKOSDMini.bak." The results of the experiment were.....interesting to say the least. I also made screenshots as usual: After I renamed the file to .bak and rebooted, my display was completely borked, it was running on 4bit depth, and also as you'll notice the NVIDIA settings control center was missing at the bottom right taskbar. Also it wasn't present in the list above properties, when I rightclicked to get to properties. But here, a picture says a thousand words: http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a364/DS16/Unbenannt-56.jpg The next picture is of the actual DLL file. I tried to make a screenshot of it in the safemode, but apparently saving a picture there doesn't bring it over to normal mode at reboot. So I looked in the normal mode system32 folder, and since it looked 100% the same as it did in safe mode, I decided to screenshot that. Is it normal for the file to have .DLL instead of .dll, since I noticed the contrast of that with the other files in the folder. Just thought it was curious and didn't see the harm in showing it: http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a364/DS16/Unbenannt1-8.jpg PS: Perhaps errenous. But when I tried to launch a game this morning it launched cleanly in fullscreen mode, I noticed something peculiar though with the res of the menu of the game, I checked in the display settings the game launched at 800x600, the lowest res that the game can launch at. Even though I know that I put it at 1280x800 in normal and in windowed mode on previous occassion....So when I then tried to change it to 1280x800 in the ingame display menu, it crashed and BSOD'd again. But I find it odd that I could launch the game in the first place, even odder as to how the resolution it launched at changed....Meh. Maybe this tells you something, since it's a bit of an anamoly.

Anyway just in case it interests you guys, this is how my temporary solution looks like. Have the monitor res on 1440x900 and play the games in a 1280x800 window mode: http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a364/DS16/Unbenannt1-6.jpg Just sharing this so you guys don't break your backs trying to find an answer, since I am lucky enough that my issue is merely that the games play super, just not in fullscreen. But even then my windowed mode is probably a larger window than 75% of the PC users out there. So meh. It's a shame but meh. If there is no solution to it, I theoretically can survive trying to live around the issue. With my specs I can even play Crysis in windowed mode without too much of a performance loss, so the general anti-window thesis is thankfully not applyable for me. Although on the bright side of things windowed mode does have it's advantages in that I can multitask and simply chat message people at the same time as playing. >_> Another thing. Theoretically all games can be window moded right? Or does one need to go .ini messing with them to window mode them to an appropriate size?

Also since the site of the monitor said the natural resolution of the monitor is 1440x900, I returned to that one. Since apparently using the same resolution at desktop as is demanded in the game doesn't bring one anything as we saw. Or should I change it to other resolutions for other tests?

I did what you said. I turned the desktop resolution to 1024x768. I then proceeded to launch the game in windowed mode, however I forgot that I last time put in the command "setres 1280x800" when testing the windowed mode. This led to this peculiar result where quite a bit of the window was offscreen: http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a364/DS16/Unbenannt-53.jpg Since I couldn't reach the exit option in the game menu which was offscreen, I got rid of the windowed game per ctrl-alt-del and task manager, by killing the process. I then decided to launch the game in fullscreen. In the launch options I put in " -autoconfig" for the game to best adapt to my system. It launched clean. I then went to check the configurations, in the ingame configurations it said the " -autoconfig" apparently made it launch at 800x600 resolution. I then to test it, in the display tab in the ingame menu attempt to change it from 800x600 to my current desktop resolution of 1024x768....and it crashes. So does this mean it can play windowed games with resolutions making the window bigger than my actual screen, but it cannot play fullscreen at equal screen resolution? PS: Also I attempted to go on that website, all I got was a referral website with loads of links to ebay and the likes. You sure the site still exists?

Should I try putting my desktop resolution to 1024x768, then try to launch the game at 1024x768? Or is that pointless?

The natural resolution of my 19° widescreen is 1440x900. But since no game has that res I changed the desktop res to 1280x800 the same res I put the game to, so the system wouldn't have to convert from 1440x900 to 1280x800 but could stay at the same resolution. Obviously didn't bring anything.... Which drivers for which OS? I use Windows XP home edition service pack 2. The game is a steam game called Red Orchestra which hasn't had an update in months.

I ran another interesting test. I started the game in windowed mode. The standard window is 640x400. 1) So I started playing the game at max settings with 640x400 to see if stress to the system causes anything. No, everything goes smoothly. 2) I open the console in the game, put in "setres" and expand the window. I go to 800x600. Again I play at max settings to see if any stress causes issues. The game played smoothly. 3) I put in setres again and do 1024x768, again all goes and plays smoothly. 4) Then as a last thing I put in the resolution of my desktop, 1280x800. It crashes immediately. It doesn't even allow me to join a match to stress it, the sheer fact that I in the menu changed the resolution to the same as the desktop, which would theoretically make the 1024x768 window fullscreen size. It went boom and did the usual BSOD and reboot.

I've had another thought. Could my Acer screen's drivers be the issue? I never updated them. And I used to use the screen for my old computer which used an ATI card. Any possibility this could have an adverse effect? Also I'll uninstall teamspeak and try it in a bit again and bring back the results.

Apparently it was a fluke or so. Since now again despite not doing anything I can't launch the games in fullscreen anymore. It's sporadic as hell it seems. Ah well thanks for trying anyways.

Ok I just launched it with teamspeak already on before launching it. The launch failed and I crashed. I then next time decided to launch the game without teamspeak on. It launched perfectly again. I then alt-tabbed and it crashed me. So judging from these tests I should not alt-tab the games. But still after the driver cleaner it seems to me the amount of successful launches to fullscreen increased by easily 75%. However crashes seem to occur as a rule if I have a program that requires audio drivers (such as a gaming chat tool such as teamspeak) running or if I alt-tab from the game once it launched fullscreen. These info's helpful?