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When updating to the latest Vivaldi version, i.e. its major 7.6 release, I noticed, that certain websites no longer displayed or youtube running super slow experiecing issues and the “how to fix” or “learn why” links on either sites, didn’t provide any solution or help for me.

It turns out, that the default settings of your browser, even when updating from a previous version of Vivaldi, have changed, and therefore your settings are overwritten and new rules are applied without warning, prompting or prior notice!

So, I did resume a broken functionality at Vivaldi first, so when I reported the issues with youtube and winfuture.de, I received the following:

Vivaldi Team wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Thanks for reporting this issue.
>
> Issue can be caused by strict ad and tracker blocking, and depends which block list is used in Settings → Privacy → Tracker and Ad Blocking → Manage Sources.
>
> Please [disable Vivaldi Blocker for the site]([1]https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/privacy/tracking-and-ad-blocking/#Blocking_per_site).
>
> If you use a ad/tracker-blocker extension, disable for the site.
>
> Thank you for your time and using Vivaldi!
>
> Best wishes,
> —————————————————————————————-
> [1] https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/privacy/tracking-and-ad-blocking/#Blocking_per_site

turns out the following settings have been altered from:

why does it put it to blocking enabled for trackers and ads and enabled Proton VPN automatically without asking me when I updated to 7.6?

This is almost a scandal.

The browser should let me change settings in my own will only!

Anyway, it works now as expected, again.

So the new OS version 25H2 of Win11 created new issues, what worked fine in Win 11 24H2 no longer does.

One of the examples here is the Sonic & All Stars Transformed Collection.

Issue no one is that the config tool does still not open (didn’t open in 24H2 either), her browse the install folder and double click to run “Launcher.exe” manually.

A new isssue however is this problem here as soon as you try to start the game:

its failing at running the install script because dotnet4 stops with error that it is already shipped with this version of windows.

delete the file “installscript.vdf” in the installation folder of the game.

After that, the game will launch again.

Once in a while you come across a game that seems to be unplayable, as it either runs too fast or certain actions like jumps cannot be mastered, in this case the game is tailored towards the Hz of your monitor, and since many modern systems have 120 Hz, 144 Hz, 165 Hz or even more and a lack of VSync in the game, you have to manually fix the game in question to a fixed frame rate.

In my case of owning an Nvidia RTX 4060 at the moment, here are some examples I came across:

–MURDERED: SOUL SUSPECT™: Frame rate remains unstable, no matter if VSync is n or off within the game: Max Frame rate setting necessary: 58 FPS, Bonus: If you Can’t walk past a demon because of a glitch with the priest, toggle VSync.

Nubarron: The adventure of an unlucky gnome: If you find yourself being Stuck because Triple mudslide and brambles jumps have a too narrow margin for error thrice: Max Frame rate setting necessary: 60 FPS

Double Dragon Advance: Game runs too fast, and certain gaps are impossible to jump over: Max Frame rate necessary: 58 FPS

Double Dragon IV: certain gaps are impossible to jump over: Max Frame rate necessary: 60 FPS

Super Double Dragon: Game emulation runs too fast: Max Frame rate necessary: 60 FPS

here is how to fix it with any game that support Steam Cloud Saving in the future if that ever happens to you with any game again:

Switch from within the game back to Steam (E.g. CRTL & Enter to switch to Window mode, Windows Key, or AlT & Tab or CRTL & ALT & Del,. depending on the game, in Steam, go to your library to the game ypu have issues with –> right click –> properties –> disable Steam Cloud –> Kill the game using WIndows Task Manager

This way your savegame that is still fine and lives online on the Steam Cloud Servers are not synced with the broken local ones when exiting the game.

In this moment, it is a good idea to make a backup copy of your local savegame folder just in case, tho

Now, re-enable Steam Cloud in the games properties in Steam and Play the game again, this way the intact savegame files are downloaded from the Steam Cloud and the corrupted local ones being overwritten, and voilla 🙂

The good: The final patch for the game has officially SecurRom removed so that the game runs under Windows 7 and up without a no-CD patch.

The bad: The developers never tested it – also most 1.4.3 updates require the previous update being applied 1.3.3 beforehand.

Despite the German description contradicting itself, by first stating the update 1.3.3 is included, and later on claiming 1.3.3 has to be installed first, this patch’s RAR archive really includes everything needed to update the master version 1.1.1 to 1.4.3 in one go!

Furthermore, make sure that all secondary monitors are disabled and when asked by Windows compatibility assistant after closing the game if compatibility mode should be applied, select “Program ran flawlessly”!

Caution! Do not run the game after installation! Apply the above patch first! Trying to run the game before, will cause the Starforce2 copy protection to install and Windows 11 will refuse to boot as a consequence!:

You can work around this by selecting “7) Disable driver signature enforcement” in the Startup Settings Menu (F8) .

After Windows 11 has booted up completely, run StarForce’s Driver Remover Utility.

After the next reboot, Windows 11 will boot up again flawlessly.

First: For the first installment of the game series, getting the Steam version to run is a bit finicky:
More in detail described at the Steam Community post “FIX Game start 2024“

What actually appears to happen, if you try often enough, instead of “nice1.exe is experiencing an error and has to close” you get an “Unknown error while trying to iniciate MCI Device” error. which then re-draws the window and you are in the game.

However in Windows 11 24H2 you have no mouse or any way of selecting any option and a few seconds in, it will leave full screen and it won’t re-draw the window ever again.

All hitting “esc” or “Enter” does, is prompting the “nice1.exe is experiencing an error and has to close” error in the background without you seeing much of it.

If you however try again and you are lucky, the mouse arrow appears and you are lucky and can play the game. The reason all this is happening is, it tries to initialize the intro of the game which fails, and after 4 times of trying, the game appears to give up on trying and falls back to showing you the main menu instead.

However, if you speak German, it might be a better idea to get a copy of the game, as the game runs natively fine on Windows 11 24H2. Many releases however are without the CD Audio and then have the file “cdsnd.off” on them.

Final and proper solution for the English version:

It appears the Nice1-4.exes start the game using different directX compatibility layers, for me simply starting Nice3.exe worked flawlessly.

You can edit the “game.bat” to call this instead of the default nice1, then the game will also run via Steam’s Play button.

You can however get the Soundtrack for free on Steam as a separated soundtrack release: Have a N.I.C.E day! Soundtrack.

Info in English how to check controls, can be found in this post on Steam

For N.I.C.E. 2, I’d suggest using DDrawCompat as it fixes crashes when trying to initilizes the races and make controllers work as well! More in this Steam Guide.

Also for this, get the Soundtrack of N.I.C.E. 2 for free from Steam

This is a collection of findings by the press, by Saber / 3D Realms themselves and the IT press to allow you a better performance on old hardware and perhaps less crashes depending the circumstances for the newly released “Tempest Rising”.

First of all the used Unity5 engine is known to cause incompatibility to AMD GPUs when DirectX 12 is used, hence an option to start the game under DirectX 11 has been included as a start option when running the game in Steam.

Furthermore the latest GameReady drivers from Nvidia do have known issues to overheat or blackscreen in games in general (see more info for release 576.02 at the GeForce GRD 576.02 Feedback Thread (Released 4/16/25) ).

To use DirectX 11 in a better performance way and with – under some circumstances – fewer or no crashes, it is advised that DXVK can be used, with details how to place the necessary DLL files into the game’s folder in a Steam community post.

Since it does not tell you how to obtain the right package to take those from, and most DXVK manuals are written for Linux, an unofficial but detailed set of instructions for Windows can be found in the reddit post “A guide to DXVK on Windows“.

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If you are one of those people who bought Canabalt on Steam back in the times before Windows 11, you might be disappointed to experience, that the game no longer works in Windows 11 24H2, it simply doesn’t run, and the process is stuck forever without any error messages, whatsoever.

However, when emailing and trying it out, the developer actually made the same game based on a different code branch which does work in Windows 11 24H2 and can be downloaded for free from his website, as well as running a web version from canabalt.com, as well.

When asking why he doesn’t update the Steam release with the version that does work in Windows 11 24H2, I was told he might consider it, but it is a lot of work doing so as the code base is so much different from the version released on Steam.

What do you do when you above’s error message appears if you try to run the Alpha Polari’s setup program?

Answer: As right click “Run as Administrator” does not work, run CMD as Administrator instead and run the setup.exe from the command line instead! 🙂

For the longest time, calling internationally was super expensive, despite it still is in many situations when calling to mobile phones rather than “landline”, calling to the PSTN was never on the cheap side.

This changed in some places of the world, e..g. with call-by-call phone providers that would append in front of the country code, making calls to abroad from Germany really affordable at the end of the 90’s, and eventually for the whole world when Skype became the first mainstream and easy to use VoIP service, that also included Unlimited World subscriptions, even including some cellular destinations like China and USA.

In most cases, people would use credits top-ups for destinations not covered by the subscription, this however changes in December last year, when Skype announced, it would shut down manual top-ups of Skype Credits. For whatever reason, as of February this year, the function for auto-recharge if the balance is under a certain low, appears to have been re-enabled (for existing users at least).

The most prominent VoIP provider in Germany, i.e. “Sipgate” and their free basic option, was a real model to the change of the situation on the VoIP market.

It discontinued the free basic (German) – pay as you go via credit – model for new users

So what did I do when I wanted to call the Domain Provider Reg.AM which doesn’t use a Yerevan city coded number for their customer support line but a 60-premium number? I have tried out Viber by Rakuten, which seems to be a direct competitor to Skype and most preferably used in the Baltic regions of the world – plus they include support for calling those 60-premium numbers which are meant to be only dialed within Armenia itself.

Why would I even bother you ask? Because in life, especially when dealing with business abroad, sometimes they don’t reply to email or What’s App messages, then more often than not, giving them a ring in a traditional phone conversation is the snappiest, easiest, more convenient and sometimes even only to find resolution to a problem.

I find big shame in the new direction the major industry leaders for PSTN and mobile calls in the VoIP industry are going, it is not a good trend, and there is hope competitors who still put their customer first came to stay a bit longer or even forever?