Palm Heel on Flash's Brow

When we last left Flash, he was scratching his chin and wondering why EQ2 crashed immediately on launch. Flash managed to figure out the Vista permissions issue, but thanks anyway for the tip, Joshua.

Flash, in a fit of exasperation, decided he needed to reload the game from DVD. There was just one little itsy bitsy snag. Flash has been getting the digital download versions of expansions (Flash has had trouble finding it expansions in the store, especially on the first day of launch, which we know is mandatory for an important journalist and chronicler of the game like Flash, right?).

Sigh. I'm going to have to go buy another copy of the game, thought Flash. And I'll have to make another trip to Fry's. Flash went, endured it, managed not to get distracted by all the shiny electronics and games, and returned home DVD in hand. Flash popped them into the new computer and it began installing, while Flash went off to drive his daughter somewhere.

When he returned home, the install was nearly done, and then a dialog popped up. Would Flash like to install DirectX 9(whatever subversion)?

At this point Flash applied his right carpals to his frontal bone in a percussive manner.

Vista doesn't come with DX9? Really? Who knew? Besides everybody, I mean.

---

Anyway, it all works now, and it works really well, I might add. There is something a bit odd going on with the Station Launcher, it's leaving a blank white rectangle on top of my lower right screen when its on. Ah well, it's only a beta. But the game looks good, and runs very well. I can now go back into my guildhall without crashing! And man do I zone fast!

Oh, and as for the question about .NET 1.1, that's what LOTRO requires. It doesn't work with the new shiny up-to-date version, not as far as I can tell. I did a reinstall of LOTRO too, but fortunately I had the DVDs for that already. The download after surprised me by only lasting 20-30 minutes instead of the horrific 4 hour monster that we got when they released their new expansion.

LOTRO then offered me the opportunity to use DX10, so I tried it. It didn't work so well. I started a new Dwarf Runekeeper and was running around near Thorin's Gates and Hall. There are areas where the shadowing/shading on the ground is having problems, maybe with blending? Not so good, I'm going back to DX9.