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I once had the issue of buying a warehouse deal Western Digital HDD to put into my NAS. Turns out the electronics of the drive were damaged and ended up short circuiting my NAS case, Amazon refusing to cover the full costs, but only a small amount which they claimed equals the “2nd hand market value” of my NAS, I got a refund for the my ordered HDD and they didn’t demand the drive back.

I explained the whole case to the RMA department of Western Digital, they got me covered, I sent in the damaged drive, they sent me a new one, I flipped the RMA replacement as such on eBay and this way had enough money to buy a new NAS case.

Another case was when our Postal Service was on strike and an OCZ SSD from Amazon was considered lost in the post, I was refunded, but received it weeks later anyway. However they sent me a different drive than what I ordered, at the item bar code was confused with another model. After a year in my cupboard, I found the drive was dead.

Meanwhile Toshiba took over OCZ and when I explained the whole situation to Toshiba’s RMA department, they allowed me to send it in for a replacement. In both cases, the stories and circumstances were so wild, I was surprised by the outstanding support from both Western Digital and Toshiba! 🙂

For a best rate of success, there are some dos and don’ts on this one.

Don’ts:
– don’t use the patch for upgrading to version 1.1, it will cause the game to crash when you try to run it.
– the controller compatibility patch for XBOX and Playstation controllers has been removed from the general patch for this version of Need For Speed, stay away from it at it will also cause the game to crash.
The game will run fine without, but simply not displaying the PS/XBOX buttons to press.

Dos:
1) download the Need For Speed ProStreet Generic Fix, you can enable all options on this one as your heart desires. – even including resolutions past FullHD and above 60 Hz refresh rate 🙂

2) Apply a no DVD Patch for version 1.0 of the game

Enjoy playing it 🙂

First of all, follow these instructions, however if you have a multi-monitor setup like myself, you might run into the problem that the game will open on the wrong monitor and hence also use a wrong resolution. Solution here is, too choose “Windowed Mode” in config.exe and install the tool Borderless Gaming, which will force opening the game in full screen on the correct monitor 🙂

In my case, I bought a key for Origin / EA App , which brings in some things to take care about, I will mention them here.

1. Download the Generic fix by selecting \/ -> Developer Build (untested). The final release (aka “Direct Link”) did not work for me. The Developer Build was from early 2024, which would be executed under Win11 just fine, while the final release would simply not activate, so no changes were made to the game: https://thirteenag.github.io/wfp#nfs
2. . Activating all re-sizing options (1) as by default was however worth It, the FMVs were not in a wrong aspect, at least not on an Nvidia GTX 1070 in FHD. I also activated XBOX Controller Support

• When using an optical media, you may need a no CD Fix, for EA App download, just had to decline the PunkBuster installation at the end of the setup process. Unfortunately the progress for the EA App will freeze at 72%. I had to force close EA App via Task Manager, then re-open the EA App.

Enjoy playing this 16 years of jewel in gaming history in Full HD  😊 – it’s one of the rare games even supporting higher resolutions than that! 😊

If you have however a 2K or higher res monitor with G-Sync functionality, then do this:

1) use the final release of the Generic Fix.

2) Make sure G-Sync is on for your graphics card and in the monitor

3) Set the following settings in NFSUndercover.GenericFix.ini:


[MultiFix]
ResDetect = 0                            ; Adds resolution auto-detection for the in-game options menu.

[MAIN]
Scaling = 0                              ; Adjusts FOV aspect ratio to be mathematically correct. Requires FixFOV to be enabled.

[MISC]
SkipIntro = 1                            ; Skips FMVs that play when you launch the game.

WindowedMode = 5                         ; Enables windowed mode. (1 = Borderless | 2 = Border | 3 = Resizable Border | 4 = Borderless Fullscreen | 5 = Borderless Fullscreen Stretched)

[GRAPHICS]
SimRate = 0                             ; Controls the refresh rate of the gameplay engine. Match your monitor’s refresh rate or your target frame rate. (0 = Disabled | -1 = Monitor Refresh Rate | -2 = Double Monitor Refresh Rate)

4) Rename the file “dinput8.dll” to “dinput8.dll.disable”

This installation manual is based off the YouTube video by 77Vids about installation on Windows 10 (This installation manual is based off the YouTube video by 77Vids about installation on Windows 10 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFWGGR97w3Y) , however there are some differences, which I will mention here.

Differences:

1. Download the Widescreen fix by selecting \/ -> Developer Build (untested). The final release (aka “Direct Link”) did not work for me. The Developer Build was from early 2024, which would be executed under Win11 just fine, while the final release would simply not activate, so no changes were made to the game.
2. The options of the .ini file slightly differ from the suggestions in the video, but nothing too major that one would be confused. Activating all re-sizing options (1) as by default was however worth It, the FMVs were not in a wrong aspect ratio as claimed in the video, at least not on an Nvidia GTX 1070 in FHD.
3. A No CD Patch was required, so you can forget about putting it into compatibility mode.
4. The download for the patch to the latest version of the game can be found at: https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/1067-need-for-speed-carbon-patches/
5. If you have a version that supports multiple languages, you can set that in the Windows registry as described here: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Need_for_Speed:_Carbon

Even though I kept mine to German, I had to enable to skip intro FMVs in the widescreen fix.

Enjoy playing this 18 years of jewel in gaming history in Full HD (any higher res will crash)  😊

This installation manual is based off the YouTube video by 77Vids about installation on Windows 10 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFWGGR97w3Y) , however there are some differences, which I will mention here.

Differences:

1. Download the Widescreen fix by selecting \/ -> Developer Build (untested). The final release (aka “Direct Link”) did not work for me. The Developer Build was from early 2024, which would be executed under Win11 just fine, while the final release would simply not activate, so no changes were made to the game.
2. The options of the .ini file slightly differ from the suggestions in the video, but nothing too major that one would be confused. Activating all re-sizing options (1) as by default was however worth It, the FMVs were not in a wrong aspect ratio as claimed in the video, at least not on an Nvidia GTX 1070 in FHD.
3. A No CD Patch was not required if you use the Black Edition release of the game (US Markets only)
4. The normal release of the game can be upgraded to the Black Edition by adding these files to the game directory: https://www.nfsplanet.com/download_sel.php?file=http://ftp.gamesweb.com/pub/nfs5/nfsmw/files/be_patch.zip&key=b012e4bf975d86c07688b280ca8836a7&lang=eng

Enjoy playing this 19 years of jewel in gaming history in Full HD, (any higher res will crash) 😊

After fighting for 2 years to hav e my Toshiba TV not automatically turn off on me despite sleep timer and power saving are both off. (see suggestion 1, 8 and 11), it keeps giving me a warning after a while that the TV is powering off if I am not pressing a key on the remote. This is especially annoying as I connected it to my PC as a 3rd monitor.

The solution is found in the developer mode of the TV as described here.

It is perhaps done to avoid burn-ins (which isn’t just a CRT thing as Linus Tech Tips describes here)

Still this sucks if you don’t know about it and usually nothing much happens on your 3rd screen if ever.

Android Developer Mode for the win!

Street Fighter IV is a game that really connects certain events and memories in live, so when I found a way to get a Steam key, I went for it, and then the challenge of getting it to work in the latest Windows 11 was on.

There are basically 2 ways:

Solution 1: with GFWL (“Games For Windows – Live”) already installed
Requirements: You already have GFWL installed from a time back then (e.g. when Windows 8.x was still around, and then updated your installation to Windows 10 and then to Windows 11).

Steps:
– Block StreetFighterIV.exe’s accesss to the internet in your local firewall
– When the game starts GFWL overlay will try to connect but fail and ask you to enter the game’s serial key.
– Hit Escape to exit the prompt and overlay and enjoy playing the game!

Solution 2: Replace the GFWL files and add a dummy

For the longest time, there was no “settings app” available for this webcam under Windows, reason for this is, that is – as the name indicates – this specific model has been certified for use with the Cisco Conference Systems and Skype. While this particular model can be used with other video conferencing programs like Teams, Zoom, Google Meet, Discord, etc – anything that isn’t Cisco or Skype will result in a short flash of the picture every couple of minutes, it is not really disturbing much and only visible for a fraction of a second, but it is not certified for their use.

In 2022, The Logitech Webcam Settings App has been updated to support the C920-C!

Unfortunately earlier this year, they removed the Webcam Settings App from the download page of the C920-C and replaced it with their new universal webcam app “LogiTune”, despite it being listed in its recent release to be officially supporting the C920-C, it is not detected by LogiTune at all!

Luckily, if you check the “more” section, of the business webcam C920e, it is still available for download and can be used to setup your C920-C as well, while Logitech (hopefully?) works on releasing a fixed version of LogiTune.

If you want to check with Logitech on the status of my bug report with them, you may refer to Ticket Number : 11130729 with their tech support department.

Since 2008, I am using the this soundcard in my desktop pc. Despite Creative Labs planned to EOL the product with release of Windows 8 in 2012, i.e. even before its release, they originally planned to never fix the dolby surround bug they had in their Windows 7 drivers back in 2010 (I found the bug in 2009 and reported it to them). Despite that, they even released updates for Windows 10 build #1903 in 2019

However with the release of Windows 11, Creative Labs finally put the card to rest and since even Daniel K. gave up on it (Final updates for my Support Packs and farewell), I was lucky that upgrading Windows 10 to Windows 11 just made the soundcard keep working, however occasionally, the driver would crash and require a reboot, and even in rare occasions, a workaround was necessary (spoiler alert: it still is, I just tried it out for this post).

Thanks to the free tool DriverMax I found that there is a modified driver for X-Fi cards that even run more stable than the official Windows 8.x-10 drivers, i.e. without the occasional crashing. It finds a driver version 6.0.1.1285 dated 24th of January 2021 by Auzentech and signature by Riolin Limited (Auzentech was a Korean computer hardware manufacturer that specialized in high-definition audio equipment and in particular PC sound cards and which went defunct in 2014).

It turns out Riolin Limited fixed the driver’s stability issues, by removing the “What U Hear” feature, means you cannot anymore record what you hear through the soundcard. However I decided to keep using it, as I prefer a more stable driver than having more features.

If you need the “What U Hear” feature, I suggest getting the headphone DAC / USB Soundcard Creative Sound Blaster Play! 3 which does provide this feature, plus is one of the few USB soundcards still offering an analog line in port (No, Mic and Line-In are not the same!).

You may thank me later! 🙂