Author: Tj

Skype taking a long time to run on startup

A couple of months ago I experienced what seemed to be a glitch where Skype would take a few minutes to start up, You would double click the executable and literally wait there looking at the screen for up to 5 minutes before it decided to start. After google didn’t help me I realised there was a quick and dirty fix for this problem.

Open My Computer and locate:
“C:\Users\*YOUR USER ACCOUNT*\AppData\Roaming\”
(Appdata may appear non existant that is because it is a hidden folder. You can type that bit in the address bar to get there.)

Rename the “Skype” folder to “SkypeOld”.

Try launching Skype now, If it still takes some time, reinstall and it should now work normally.

Continue Reading

Age Of Empires 3 has stopped working

I was attempting to play Age Of Empires today and having recently upgraded to Windows 8 I had previously had issues with a number of applications that couldn’t run.

I received a message after starting a multiplayer match that the application has stopped working.

The issue was simply resolved by locating the Age Of Empires folder on your computer
For me it was in: C:\Program Files\Steam\Steamapps\Common\Age Of Empires 3\bin\
aoe3

Right click on age3.exe and goto “Properties” Click “Compatibility”
Untick any checkboxes selected then press Apply and Ok.

Continue Reading

kvmvps.us Review

In April this year due to some projects given to me I required a Windows VPS at a low price. The first website that popped in my head was to look on the site LowEndTalk (LET) (Forum of LowEndBox) which different providers use to post offers about what they can provide to the public in terms of hosting plans.

A particular host called kvmvps.us stood out as a good price for a Windows KVM. Thats when I should have looked the other way and ignored it but I continued into and saw how much of a mess these people are.

Admittedly I had done no research on providers at this point and needed something quick and fast which was a mistake.

I placed my order around 3AM AEST for my VPS, acknowledged the confirmation emails but did note something strange at this point where the FROM address was [email protected] instead of an email account off their domain. Paranoia aside I headed to bed for the night.

Later that day I woke up to find the service was still in a “Pending” status.
I figured this provider mustn’t do automated setups but thought I’d ask the provider how long till provisioning was as I was anxious to get going on my development. This is where things continued to become strange when I received a reply that avoided my question and instead told me along the lines of: “It takes some time to setup services, make a support ticket if you have a question”. I wasn’t quite sure if they were asking me to direct my question into a support ticket as I had asked on the LET forum topic. In the end I created a support ticket but not before I noticed that I had received another message on LET from the provider saying they had run out of IPv4 addresses. I was in awe that a hosting provider could accept new orders and not have sufficient addresses, by this time I wanted to discuss this issue further and decided to give their phone number a ring. Noting of course 24/7 support was provided for all services. Instead of having my call picked up I was sent to an answering machine. At this point I found the lack of communication unacceptable, especially with my support ticket unanswered for over 12hours by this point.

I decided I’d had enough and wanted out. I filed for a Paypal dispute. To my suprise 9 minutes later I received a reply to my support ticket stating “We will have it done by the end of today. All Time will be reimbursed.” from the CEO.
I had to hand it to them that a dispute had to trigger a reply to my support ticket.

The result was the dispute was closed with a full refund given to me. I warn any potential customers that this business seems to be incompetent of providing even the simplest tasks that every web host does. You have been warned.

Update: KVMVPS has disappeared and is no longer accessible as of 10/12/14.

Continue Reading