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When I recently updated to Microsoft Office 2021 Professional, I wondered myself whether the “Microsoft Office Word Add-in For MediaWiki” published by Microsoft in 2010 still works.

Indeed it does, but the setup routine doesn’t detect Office 2013 and up.

I found instructions how to modify the registry so Mediawiki.txt filetype shows up in the “Save as” dialog window of Word 2013.

For Office 2021 (I am using its 64bit version), the following differences to above’s manual apply:

* path modifications mentioned have to be performed for the 32bit and the 64bit (Wow6432Node) section of the registry.
* The Office version’s path equals 16.0

It arrived today and I spent hours with it already and as you all know I am using Windows 11. (But all I mention in this blog post is also valid for Windows 10 as well)

It is a good limited release, but it isn’t very good or even outstanding. Here is what I shared with their support department today:

May I be honest about it? From the physical standpoint, the product is awesome, from the software release side I am on the fence about it. On one hand I was pleasantly surprised to see 3.5″ and 5.25″ disk images of the PC releases and Mac and Amiga and even stream dumps of the data so people can re-create the original media. However if that was thought of, why not an ISO image of the PC releases containing CD Audio? It could have been either multi-data-type ISO images or even enclosing AND inlcuding them as physical versions in the DVD/CD box. What about Atari, Mega CD and FM Towns releases?

and Monkey Island 4 (AKA Escape From Monkey Island”) is an awful buggy release. Monkey Island 3 was at least packaged with ScummVM, but not even using the last version but the Runtime Environment from 2017!
Upon research I understood you just put the GOG releases on them, but Monkey Island 4’s GOG Release has a few major flaws:
No support of 16:9 widescreen and only at 640×480, and any secondary monitors have to be disabled
Also the game easily crashes in the middle a couple of times.
Why not bundling it yourself with the latest ScummVM? It supports the game as seen here: https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Escape_from_Monkey_Island

I would fix it myself as I could but as the releases you put there are Install Shield bundles, I don’t have have hand on the original game data to put into ScummVM to play it in correct aspect ratios without the crashes and overlapping music in the game credit menu.

There as potential and good intent but lacking of execution at some places. Which is very unfortunate. Especially for an Anthology. I guess it is too late for that now, the only possible way to fix the problems would be offering downloads containing the following:

-Providing the game versions of missing computer and console platforms
-Offering ISO Images of the PC CD versions containig CD Audio
-Offering ISO Images of Monkey Island 4 AND/OR bundling them with ScummVM

While I perhaps can excuse some of that for missing licenses, it boggles my mind you just re-released the GOG version of Monkey Island 4 instead of using original game data and bundle them with ScummVM for a more stable, visually correct and more bug free experience as a release.

You surely had enough time to iron out those road blockers.

It is probably too late and doubt Limit Run Games will provide an Update as a download for missing conent/releases and fixed to work on current PC systems better, but I anyway didn’t want to hold back that you had the chance to make this Anthology outstanding and you missed it unfortunately.
And all those things I mentioned do not require any code bug fixing or anything, just re-bundling and using the original release data,

More details on Monkey Island 4 running in ScumVM can be found here:
https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Escape_from_Monkey_Island

Thanks and sorry for the rant.

recent builds of Windows 10 broke compatibility with Driver: San Francisco. However latest app compatibility updates to Windows 11 and the Nvidia Game Ready drivers finally make it compatible! It also will work with latest Ubisoft Connect, however online function is broken and it will be put to your face right on startup, as I just wanted it to play in Story mode, I am fine with that!

There is a recent manual how to make it work using an old version when it was still named “UPlay”, however I personally wouldn’t risk to break it completely:

There is also a petition to bring the game back to the stores!

More about its story in this youtube video:

So I have head the problem that despite I have tried multiple DVDs, none of them would be fully readable to install the Original Crysis von 2007!

Also it was not available on Steam and the trick using dedicated CPU core commands was not working either. there is a patch but you don’t need that either. Just rename the bin32 folder to bin64 as described here and it will work 🙂

The good thing about the Origin version compared to the original DVD version is, that the Origin version automatically installs the last version of the game containing the 64bit version of the game, it is just not used by default if you don’t rename the folder!

Playing this 2008 hit on modern environment nowadays is not that hard, despite SecureRom can’t be verified anymore: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98ursO6atog

The 2nd problem is, that the Game crashes on machines with AMD CPUs, because It should make the game use SSE/MMX code paths instead of now deprecated “3D Now!” instruction paths.

Those 2 things should make the game run for you on Windows 11 with AMD CPUs! 🙂

I recently bought a package of retro DOS games from a friend. I found this the ideal challenge to find out how to get them to run in Windows 11.

So here is what needs to be done:

1. Install Anno1602 (It doesn’t show it but if you go to window overview you can see that the Windows internal copy feature is used to copy aka install the game, there is no progress bar during Setup installing the game whatsoever!
2. Download and install the Anno1602 Win2000/XP Patch:
3. Change Settings in the Settings App of the game to the following:

Activate:

• high video quality
• show hardware mouse cursor
• enable music
• enable sfx
• Screen resolution: 1024 x 768
  
  4. Set compatibility mode of the 1602.exe to Win98/WinME

Enjoy the game! 🙂

In the past, I have been using Buffalo NASes to store my backups with Acronis True Image 2021 on them and was all happy. Cases were available for 30-80 € depending on time and model that you bought. Not bad.

Now, Buffalo appears to have cut the robe, as Amazon and others no longer offer them for purchase.

Hence I had to move towards a different brand, but didn’t see myself spending 150-200 € for just a 2 bay NAS case of Synology.

I found a Zyxel NAS326 for the price of 95€ and went for it.
I put in my 2 Seagate IronWolf 10 GB NAS HDDs in it and after a swift initial setup I was happy and started my first backup with True Image, however, there would always be “A backup error. Edit connection settings.” after 1 h and 18 mins. Even when I resume the backup, it would stop at a further progress stage of the backup, after 1h and 18 mins yet again as this screenshot shows:

The NAS case has, in contrast to Buffalo’s enduser NAS cases a lot of sensors and real time monitors, so I had a look at what exactly happens.

It appears – the NAS being connected to a 1 Gbits LAN port of my Zyxel Managed Switch daisy chained from a AVM Fritzbox 7590 router, that the CPU would have a constant utilization of 60-100% which after 1h and 18m would lead to the NAS just halting and in this very second also its web gui being inaccessible.

Now, with my Zyxel GS1900-16 Managed Switch, I tried to minimize the load to the CPU of the NAS by limiting the traffic of the Port 16 where the NAS was connected to.

It would slow down the speed of writing to the NAS accordingly, but the CPU would still read the same load.

The final solution was indeed to change the Port’s detection mode of Auto to 100 Mbits

At first one would think this means a huge increase for the time it needs to write the data to the NAS. Errr, it depends. seeing that when the port was at 1 Gbits, the constant changing of the transfer speed wasn’t favourable either. As a matter of fact, the difference between what True Image 2021 predicted at frst for 1.4 TB to write, was 4 hours. With the 100Mbits port setting, this changed to 7hours. I rather have a slower and reliable connection to the NAS to write (and read from in case of required recovery) than a fast but instable one.

Now how about incremental and differential backups? Plain No. Because the read and write operations combined cause so much traffic to the NAS’ CPU, that it freaks out again after 1 hour 18 mins!

It’s a known issue for many Zyxel NAS models since 2013 and despite my particular model received last firmware update in April 2021 one would think they have done something about it by now. Spoiler alert: They didn’t.

I have received the following statement:

“I have asked here once internally and unfortunately this is not officially supported by our models, which is why no adjustment will be made in this direction in the future.

Unfortunately, we in support have no further influence on the decisions of our development department here, even if I would like to offer you a solution.”

Thank you for nothing Zyxel. Really!

So what about incremental or differential backups, I hear you ask? You can’t. The constant read and write combined operations will freak out the internal CPU again.

Despite one of the main reasons to get a NAS and use it is to write backups to it, if you do on Zyxel NAS, they will tell you, you are not supposed to!

Could the problems be fixed by Zyxel? Oh certainly! Slowing down things to avoid overload/overheating, etc is a common thing, they could as well slow down transfer speeds when the CPU freaks out rather than just the NAS losing network connecting.

This NAS has so many sensors for utilization, heat and fan speed inside, they could use them to regulate the load!

the Steam community often comes up with helpful guides on how to get old games patched to run in Windows 10. The same is valid for Cossacks,

However, it fells a bit short on assumptions that you don’t need the English language file as Steam’s installation is the English one. But what if you have a CD original in another language and don’t want to pay money to buy the game a 2nd time?

This is what happened to me, so let me help you out.

After installation, you are confronted with the error message “Please log in with administrator privileges and try again” which is because the copy protection driver is blocked by the security mechanism of Windows 10 as you can read in this German article

So what you need is a no CD patch. Once this has been sorted out, follow the guide on how to apply a patch for Windows 10 compatibility of the Steam guide I have linked above.

Last but not least, to change your games’ language, use the same guide, but download this English language file taken from the comment section where I requested the original author of the guide to make it available. Download is broken? then contact me if you need the file.