iCloud can’t be installed – the specified account already exists

Do you have the same problem like I have had with updating iCloud? The Apple Software Updater only offered me to download the setup file separately and install it manually but with no difference. I have always received the error ” the specified account already exists” and the installation aborted. Interestingly, this is not an iCloud specific problem but can happen to any Windows program but the problem is caused by registry error. Help and a method to fix this error, I found in The OpenOffice Forum. The problem is, iCloud cannot even be uninstalled due to the same error. However the solution is simple, use IOBit Uninstaller, it allows you to fully uninstall iCloud and remove all the remaining parts of iCloud afterwards, so that you can reinstall iCloud without running into this error ever again! 🙂

Get your newly purchased Sony Smartwatch 3 to work with your iPhone

If you are like me, and looked for a replacement for the Pebble but don’t want to waste your money on a too expensive smartwatch, the Sony Smartwatch 3 comes at a price of about 100 € and will be updated to AndroidWear 2.0 later this year. But until then we have a problem, the AndroidWear app on iOS cannot find the smartwatch 3 . And firmware updating via Bluetooth fails and results in the smartwatch 3 rebooting and re-trying endlessly. Unfortunately Sony simply told me “it’s not possible” despite the web said it is. So here is how it is done and how I did it myself 🙂

Here is the feedback I sent to sony including the solution I worked out myself as theirs failed. Hope this helps you! “Since Pebble unfortunately closed, I was looking for a cheap replacement for my Pebble Time. I came up with Sony Smartwatch 3. Prior to my purchase, I did a research on the Internet whether this Smartwatch with Android Wear will work on the iPhone. My search in the Google revealed entries in the Sony forum of users the said since June 2016, the Sony Smartwatch 3 is supported in Android Wear 3 for iOS. Unfortunately, the Android Wear app and the Sony Smartwatch 3 could not find each other. I thought to myself, I try the support, because you know surely what is more than if I have to “Google” to find a solution. Well, the lady unfortunately did not know there is Android Wear for iOS at all. Est told her she researched times and calls me back Monday, but then decided differently and has “held with a colleague consultation”. The answer was: “No is not going” When I then posed, if perhaps not simply the software on the Smartwatch is too old and whether one could not update via the PC, I received the answer: “No, via USB via the PC does not update”. And again wrong. See in your own forum: Https://talk.sonymobile.com/t5/SmartWatch-3/Smart-watch-3-frozen-on-the-downloading-screen/td-p/970106 “You have to download and install Sony PC companion in your PC. Then try to run a software update for your watch. In the Sony PC Companion try the following: Support Zone (click on start)> Software update (click on start)> the software prepares the update> select SmartWatch 3 from the list (click next)> here comes the tricky part: 1. Turn off the smartwatch3 2. (Take it off the wristband for easy access) 3. Connect the USB to the computer (do not connect the micro USB to the smartwatch3 yet) 4. Hold the power button until you get an image of someone connecting the USB to the watch. When this image is connected to the USB to the watch. (When I did it, it was different. 5. After you do step 4 above your computer will recognize your smartwatch and starts the software update. ” Thanks to the “PC Companion” for Windows, I was able to update the Smartwatch and successfully pair with Android Wear on the iPhone and can now use it wonderfully 🙂 Thank God, I am powerful to English and have not simply the statement “in the forum can stand a lot” so. From a purely logical point of view I was not clear why it should work with many other users and only with me not.”

The Pre-Disaster!

What is that when even your grandmother rings you up and is worried, because her daughter’s phone is always busy the whole day?

Right, it is The Pre-Disaster!

When and how does a pre-disaster happen?

Simple, you offer in a country in half a dozen cities internet & phone by cable tv. So, to be more congret; You offer what people in other countries have since ages!

Then you make it to an ok price and in an area no normal DSL internet is possible?

What happens? Right, a boom of costumers that sign up to the service!

What Bulgaria, The Netherlands, USA, Canada, UK and a few others have since ages, finally comes also to us!

Now, what happens if you cannot ring up your mother anylonger because of overloaded service? Right, you don’t bother 😛

So, imagine this, that you are not catchable by phone from morning till night, that adds up pretty much like 15 hours in a row hearing a “busy” sign when you try to ring somebody up.

Hehehe, I knew why I will keep my ex-monopoly phone company, 1st it’s cheaper to call to abroad, because you can use CallByCall phone companies and 2nd, Who would be so insane to pay for a call 1 USD per minute if you can do the same call for 0.04 USD per minute?

Now that my mother is barely catchable and the cable tv provider says “We are about to upgrade soon, but sorry that we can’t say exactly when!”

Ok ok, didn’t I mention DSL is technically not possible in that area to which I am about to move in February? Right, I will have to use that cable tv provider and there is only one there! I hope my internet will work better than the internet of my mother!

I get twice as much speed than now for the same price, but still, hey hey, I want a stable internet connection! I pay for it!

I only can hope all will work out fine. Right now I am scared and I receive calls from an annoyed mother!

Father!

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I Love Notepad Badly!

-“Oh ok, Nafcom loves notepad, but why?”

Because it doesn’t need an internet connection running

-“Oh yeah?!”

Yeah!!!

Trend researchers say, that in 5-10 years, over 90% of the world’s population will have an internet access and that receiving emails and checking your email inbox each morning will be as common as doing that with your letter- or P.O. Box.

Granted I am not 90% of the world’s population (but hey, wasn’t there that nice saying in English; “You can be on person on the whole world but also a whole world to one person”?! Heheh!).

Ok errr… So the first thing I do each morning is not heeding towards the bathroom, Noooo nooo! The first I do is switch on my PC, waiting that 240.37 1/2 seconds till it’s booted up (including my windows), connect to the internet, open M2 and listen to that “Incoming Mail!” mail sound, taken from ICQ Pro 2003b and check how much spam I got.

But not today, Noooo nooo! Today, I receive: “Error: domain or password invalid”. Aha! Then I remember… Uh wasn’t that I cancelled my DSL for February, 2005? (because I move and there in the new city I get CABLE internet, hauahauhauhauha!). Maybe they confused January with February?

(really! I have heard there are people who cannot count till 11 1/2!).

So I ring up the costumer support (by the way… A call to Brazil is cheaper than calling the costumer support!).

So after many tones, I hear a voice: “Good morning, how may I insure you?”, or something.

“Oh hey, yup it’s me here. You know, I have sent out a cancelling letter on December, 14th, 2004. Maybe you have confused February with January. Do you need help?”

A sympathic laugh on the other side of the line: “No, there is an error, people cannot log in since yesterday, infact nobody can!”.

And then, me: “Ah ok ok, do you know yet how long the problem is and what it takes?”

Her reply: “No, unfortunately not, I don’t know, I can’t tell!”.

Now that is groovy! They have no idea what the problem is or how long I won’t be without my email! I had a serious break this morning in my “same procedure as every day!” routine and they even cannot tell, wether the same hell happens again tomorrow?!

(My grandmother at my place would have asked: “Oh ok, and now a very very stupid question; What is the problem?”).

Now I feel like the Brazilians on my ICQ Contact List! Folks, I Feel With You!

Same thing with cancellation; Instead of sending a cancel confirmation, I found the day before yesterday a promotion letter: “Now get more service for your DSL, more features! APPLY NOW!!!!!!!!”.

Father, what a crap.

Was a nice thing, asking Mrs. DSL Costumer Service how that goes (I have never had to cancel my DSL, yet!). She informed me, that I get that letter shortly before it gets switched off! Aha! Ok!

Now considering that in my new flat, DSL is technically not possible, it’s rather silly to send me promotion to get a better DSL connection! I am going to move to one of the half dozen countries, where you can get cable internet!

Well, a couple of month ago, my phone line broke. Yes, on the phone service provider’s site, the cable broke! Before that, I had a lot of glitches (cracks!).

You know, I did those phone calls to abroad. and when somebody on the other side said: “The connection is bad”. – “Oh, that’s not Ghana’s fault, it’s an error over here!”

A similar thing with mobile phone provider, they don’t tell you if there is a problem, they just switch you off.

And their costumer service hotline wants 48 cents per minute! For this, I can do 2 calls to Ghana and 4 to Brazil! So, I better did emailing them, that is cheaper, and it helped!

Father, what do I love this country! I am feeling like in a country with no propper phone & internet services!

PS: Now as of 2 PM, it works again, hooray! =)

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Me in German TV (Heute+ in ZDF) and Skype video interview of Forrest S. Mozer!

Recently, I was interviewed by  German TV (Heute+ in ZDF) to talk about retro gaming and play on the NES Classic mini videogame console!

Here the video from Twitter!:

There was also a further more detailed article published along with it! (German original / google translated to English)

Also the German commercial PC magazine PC Games released a summay of this interview on their homepage! (German Original / google translated to English)

Furthermore I had the pleasure to interview Forrest S. Mozer who is the inventor of speech synthesis and speech recolonization via Skype video:

Enjoy it!

More interview videos, podcast shows, our diskmag and more can be found on our homepage:

www.sceneworld.org

upgrading and refurbishing of a Sony Vaio VGN-FW46M laptop

I love my

Sony Vaio VGN-FW46M

it is with a huge brilliant screen, a BD writer and even a HDMI out.But the previously owned person beat the poor laptop half to death, it went 3 times to Sony repair center for warranty repair. and then was exchanged by an overpriced Macbook instead as it was too slow for her. and then it was sold to me.
So………probably due to the many repairs, the bluray reader got exchanged by a writer, the MATASHITA BD-MLT UJ230AS
It is highy recommended to do a fw update to latest 1.20 fw from 2010 but don’t do it from the sony homepage as the computer originally is shipped with the UJ230A, so without the S!
hardware upgraded:
from 4 GB RAM to 8 GB RAM
Inserted a USB 3.0 PCMCIA Express card.
Battery replaced with a new one
the HDD got replaced first by a Samsung 480 Basic Series SSD then again with a 1 TB Crucial SSD
As the case is full of scratches and so on, I got a skin called “Colourful” to make it look good again! 🙂
Meanwhile, the Bluray drive front bezel broke off and I had to fix it with tape. on the way to me is a replacment bezel which is silver instead of the black original as its for the models SONY VAIO VGN-FZ11L PCG-382M but it should fit fine anyway. probably looks kinda stylish to have a silver line in the black sides of the laptop, let’s see 🙂 

Further upgrades of my hp-compaq-6910p-laptop

For further details on how I have upgraded this already to in 2014, read part one of this story.

So what else I have done to this to pimp it even further?

-Well, I have tossed the 2ndary travel battery and the main battery as both died on the same day, with a bigger main battery with 6600 mAh instead of 4400 mAh.

-and I have removed the b/g/n wireless NIC with a Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260  PCI Express Half Mini Card

-The Samsung 840 Basic Series has been exchanged by a

Crucial SSD

simply because Samsung just this month released a fix for the problem that the drives get slow with time. when I have contacted their support last year they said there won’t be any firmware update to fix this despite being promised a year earlier.
Also I will exchange the multiwrite DVD writer with a DVD-writer and BD reader combo drive. 
Most internal drives are SATA but I found an IDE drive to fit: Sony NEC Optiarc BD-ROM/DVD/CD RW L BC-5500A .
It’s in the post waiting to arrive to me

Running a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 as primary and a ATI FireMV 2250 as secondary card.

First of all, there are 2 problems here. Installing a new NVIDIA driver will fail as the installing routine will give up with undefined errors.

Secondly, there are no official Windows 10 drivers for the ATI FireMV 2250

So here is the workaround for installing by benoith in the AMD Support Forums:

I had the same issue and found your thread while trying to fix it. I am not sure if you still need help, but I was able to get this running by manually downloading the windows 7/8 x64 package for the fireMV 2250. Installing the package didn’t work, so Instead I let it extract itself, then went in device manager, found the device in it, right clicked on it, then clicked update drivers…

Then chose the “browse my computer for…” and point to the folder where the drivers extracted (most likely c:ati******)

This worked like a charm for me.

The cool thing of having an AMD graphics card as a primary card and a nVidia as a secondary card is, that the setup of the AMD drivers do not give a damn if a 2nd card is installed.

While it is a problem if NVidia is your primary card.
So here is how to workaround the issue in the NVIDIA drivers. I am installing GameReady Drivers from the GeForce Experience application on Windows 10 x64.
Posted by  AntiRivet on Reddit:

 If you’re still attempting to install, don’t use Express. Use Custom and make sure you click “Clean Install”. I deselected all of the 3D stuff as well, since I don’t use it, but your mileage may vary. Also of note, I disabled my second monitor/TV temporarily.

This should fix all your problems and allow you to update to the latest GameReady drivers without removing your secondary ATI / AMD graphics card.

The question I am asked since quite a while now: Is Bombshell a bad game?

Short answer: No!

And here my long answer: I have read a lot of reviews, I have seen a lot of YouTube videos that reviewed the game. I am also aware of the review of Gamespot who gave it a 2 of 10 and also IGN Romania who  gave it a 9 of 10 refering to it as “amazing”.

So what’s the truth and why the discrepancy?

Well, first of all, it’s interesting to see different standpoints of the reviewer. While IGN Romania explains he started out with the SNES and was always a fan boy of Duke Nukem and he loves Shelly being like him and the game really action packed and adventurous while the GameSpot reviewer mainly focuses on dull story writing, bugs and glitches, etc.

Even if you look at Steam reviews and youtube reviews, most negative ones rely on press previews. I honestly bought the game 1 day after release and after the 1st day patch that was automatically applied, I found no show stopper bugs that would crash my game during playing.

In contrast to other “The Crew Wild Run” who crashed on me constantly. I wrote UbiSoft this and now 3 weeks later, I still got no statement from Ubi Support. Too bad. They released a patch a few days ago which makes the game more stable, let’s hope it won’t suddenly crash again.

Having seen a lot of Previews, videos and such I was well aware what kind of a game I would expect. A Diablo with way less RPG (I really don’t like RPGs) and more action and bad-ass attitude.

It’s  surely a good game, and I didn’t feel bored or something at all and it’s one of such games I am playing regularly at the moment. It’s also to turn out, press didn’t like the unbalanced difficulty but personally I have had no problems with that. I am an vintage game player, and I generally suck at them (except racing games and some adventure games, yes and I have played through the relatively easy Star Fox 2 on the SNES recently 🙂 ) but what everybody forgets, I am used to old games from the C64, NES or from the arcades being rock bottom hard!

Also, some may wonder, but yes I actually buy every game I play. We receive steam codes now and then for review, but personally I prefer owning the paid boxed version (if available) 🙂

So ergo, the game is really cool, if you take into account that it isn’t what some of you had expected. But the previews may it be playable or not where pretty much showing what you could expect from the final product. I am not disappointed at all and for me on Day 2 it had no show stopper unlike The Crew Wild Run and Batman Arkham Knight, which took me 6 months until I could start the game and another month till the graphic glitches were fully removed!

Here is our latest interview with 3D Realms and we are talking a lot about Bombshell as well:

So feel free to purchase the game, it’s really worth it! And I think best bet for 3D Realms would be focusing with that game on the retro magazines. Maybe those reviewers – just like IGN Romania  – will more likely find what they were looking for in a kick-ass action game

Bombshell on Steam

Bombshell on GOG

Q & A with 3D Realm on GOG

GOGCast#5 with 3D Realms

Our podcast episode with 3D Realms

Installing the GTX 750 and the Quadro NVS 290 to run both at the same time in Windows 10!

So, are you among those guys and gals who updated from Windows 7 or 8 to Windows 10?

For Windows 7 or 8.1 you could use this driver version so installs drivers for the Nvdia GTX 750 and Nvidia Quadro NVS 290:

337.88

Why is having 2 graphics from nVidia running on Windows 8.1 X64 being an issue? Because for some reason Windows assigns the same driver to both graphics cards , when I had an ATI card as primary card, both had their separated drivers and no issues!

If you need any more help or have any questions feel free to email me and I will answer you! 🙂

For Windows 10 we need a new driver of course. Here, I found that the driver package 341.74 works! Despite not listing Quadro cards as supported, it does contain drivers for them as well. However you cannot go any driver version higher than that.

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