Back on the sixth, popular space MMO EVE Online released their Trinity update, which added an all-new (and quite dazzling) graphics engine, with the unfortunate side-effect of deleting some XP users’ BOOT.INI file, effectively stopping their PC from booting. While a “We’re so sorry” and a fix would have sufficed, the director of the EVE Online software group Dr. Erlendur S. Thorsteinsson has posted a dev blog explaining the bug in great detail, from origin to fix to helping customers get their PCs up and running again by calling in external tech support like the Geek Squad. While the explanation basically amounts to irresponsibility on the team’s part and lack of diverse hardware – which is really inexcusable – CCP showed some real class in fixing the issue, which could explain why they have a fan base so loyal they actually fly to Reykjavík, Iceland to hang out with them.
About the boot.ini issue [EVE Insider Dev Blog - Thanks Tyson]
Developer CCP has addressed the minor snafu that was causing Trinity, the latest update for its MMO EVE Online, to overwrite an important boot file required by Windows XP systems.
Here’s the word from CCP:
Shortly after the deployment of the update, CCP became aware of an issue involving the Premium graphics content download whereby a small percentage of our users may have been affected and now need to make repairs to system files. We immediately set to work to identify the cause and resolve it. A new build is now available and is safe for all users to download and install.
If you’ve already gone and installed the patch, CCP has a page up with instructions on how to rectify the problem.
EVE Online Installer Fixed [Blue's News]
Trinity, the latest content update for the sci-fi MMO EVE Online, is overwriting an important boot file required by Windows XP. As you can guess, the bug prevents affected systems from starting. Not only is this stopping people from playing the game, it’s making it rather hard for them to do much with their PCs at all.
There are three ways to update to Trinity – using a classic patch, classic to premium and full premium. It’s the second of these that’s causing the problem. The update comes with a file called “boot.ini”, which just so happens to be the exact same name for a critical file of Windows XP’s bootstrap. For some reason, the update overwrites this file, even though it resides in a completely different directory.
EVE Online developer CCP has confirmed that the bug exists and has posted various solutions on the game’s official forums. It’s my understanding that CCP is working on a fix.
Only Windows XP machines are affected, so Vista users and users of older versions of Microsoft’s operating system can sleep easy.
Boot.ini problems [EVE Online forums, via Atomic]
