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( I am cutting and pasting a post from another forums. I was working on some fixes for my Machine and incidentally killed the one fricking bug in my OS that was driving me nuts as a side result. Read on, it may help those of you who are having the same problem. Note that I am only C&P'ing the relevant portion of the post. )
I finally fricking KILLED the Dissapearing Internet Connection Status Icon Bug that I had.
Ran a driver by driver install. From the ground up. Direct X 9 First, Nforce Drivers, Sound, Modem, Graphics.
Then installed the one suspect program. FFXI Online. More specifically the Program that is Playonline. What I found out was interesting. Originally I had installed it to my C:\ drive. Well, I went back and uninstalled it because I wanted everything on my D:\ drive for Gaming. Come to find out, after I installed it on the D drive, suddenly when I try and connect to the internet via Dial up connection, I do connect, but the same damn bug of my Modem status icon Vanishing popped up again.
To Explain this bug, what happens is you can create a dial up connection in network connections. Problem is, as soon as you dial it up and connect, Windows Swallows it whole. The darn thing ceases to Exist. Oh it'll dial up regularly all right if you have a shortcut on your desktop or know other means of acessing it like Internet options. But once you click that Initial connection, Network connections swallows that existing connection like a black hole. All available options of telling your OS to show the Modem connection status Icon Fail. It absolutley WILL NOT show it. Period. The only way to truly tell if you are connected and your speed, well, the one I know, is to hit Ctrl Alt Del and check Network connections. Pretty messed up if you ask me.
Sooo...Go to a system Restore point. Reverse it back after I uinstalled Playonline. Sure enough, reboot the system, check it out. Modem status Icon comes back. I should note here that the System Restore said that two files were changed and backed up. I do not however, know if these files were relevant nor if they pertained to the problem.
Okay....so I go back, Reformat/Reinstall all over again because I want to make 100% sure I have a clean foundation to work from.
( I don't like System Restore Points. They don't wipe out 100% of everything that was there that caused the problem. )
Reinstall Playonline on C:\
Test Modem. No problems. Reinstall FFXI on C:\ Test Modem, No problems. So far the Internet connection status Icon is staying put. Which to me, after about 6 months of not seeing my connection status, NOR being able to disconnect the darn thing by the push of a button, is a small but beautiful godsend to me right now.
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END of C&P
-------------------------------
I have as of yet not patched Playonline nor FFXI online. I do not know if it will kill the Modem status Icon, but seeing as the current situation has not done as such so far, I do not believe it will. (( yeah I know, go and Jinx myself why don't I. ))
Now I should note some important things here. For those of you who say " Why not just reinstall the drivers? "
I did, Repeatedly. More times then I care to count. I also did what is considered amongst the Tech Support industry two Dangerous techniques for an Average, ( Note that I said Average ) end user to do.
I dropped a Comm Bomb, and I did a Nuke & Pave. Both of these techniques pretty much gut and strip the communications package out and reinstall it completley. The Nuke and Pave technique just pretty much takes it a whole heck of alot further.
Some of it is very complex depending on how severe the problem is. Regardless, I performed both of these techniques multiple times and all times they went off flawlessly.
However, the Modem status Connection Icon still just WOULD NOT show up.
Now then, why the heck it makes such a HUGE difference to Playonline as to what particular Drive it is installed on my System when it concerns this bug, I have NO IDEA.
However, The problem is fixed. And for that I am fricking ecstatic.
I figured I would share this information with you guys, hopefully it may help.
My system Specs btw if anyone is curious:
-------------------------------------------------------
AMD Athlon XP 3200+ Barton Core Processor
Gigabyte 7N400 Pro 2 Motherboard with Nforce chipset
1 Gigabyte of PC 3200 Ram, Running Dual Channeled at
400 Mhz ( With Copper Heatspreaders )
Sound Blaster Live Value Card ( Yes, I know, I should be smitten down )
1 Western Digital 40 Gig Hard drive, 7200 RPM's ( OS Drive )
2 Maxtor 200 Gigabyte Hard Drives with 8MB buffer Cache, 7200 RPM's ( Data Storage and Video Game HDD )
US Robotics 56K Controller Based modem ( 100 Dollar modem. Designed for Internet gaming over 56k Connections. I moved from High speed Dial up to an area in the boonies where they have no High Speed. /cry )
1 LG 52X CD Rom Drive
1 Philips CDRW 2400 Series CD Burner Drive
ATI Radeon 9800 XT Video Card
(Thermaltake Giant Extreme III Video Card Cooler on the Card. As of yet to Be Overclocked. Difference of 7-8 Degree's in cooling compared to Stock Cooler. No, I'm not kidding. )
Windows XP Professional, Service Pack 1 ( not touching SP2. I hear it breaks too many games, and I have 90+ PC CDROM games on my System. )
Direct X 9
(As a Side note, I also intend to report this to Square-Enix as well. Hopefully it may correct the bug or at least lead to a solid Fix. I'll have to wait until I can get FFXI patched though. No way in heck I am going to do it over Dial up. I'll have to borrow a friend's high speed net connection for it. :/ )
I hope this post is of help to those of you suffering from this problem. Good luck.
Draconis
I finally fricking KILLED the Dissapearing Internet Connection Status Icon Bug that I had.
Ran a driver by driver install. From the ground up. Direct X 9 First, Nforce Drivers, Sound, Modem, Graphics.
Then installed the one suspect program. FFXI Online. More specifically the Program that is Playonline. What I found out was interesting. Originally I had installed it to my C:\ drive. Well, I went back and uninstalled it because I wanted everything on my D:\ drive for Gaming. Come to find out, after I installed it on the D drive, suddenly when I try and connect to the internet via Dial up connection, I do connect, but the same damn bug of my Modem status icon Vanishing popped up again.
To Explain this bug, what happens is you can create a dial up connection in network connections. Problem is, as soon as you dial it up and connect, Windows Swallows it whole. The darn thing ceases to Exist. Oh it'll dial up regularly all right if you have a shortcut on your desktop or know other means of acessing it like Internet options. But once you click that Initial connection, Network connections swallows that existing connection like a black hole. All available options of telling your OS to show the Modem connection status Icon Fail. It absolutley WILL NOT show it. Period. The only way to truly tell if you are connected and your speed, well, the one I know, is to hit Ctrl Alt Del and check Network connections. Pretty messed up if you ask me.
Sooo...Go to a system Restore point. Reverse it back after I uinstalled Playonline. Sure enough, reboot the system, check it out. Modem status Icon comes back. I should note here that the System Restore said that two files were changed and backed up. I do not however, know if these files were relevant nor if they pertained to the problem.
Okay....so I go back, Reformat/Reinstall all over again because I want to make 100% sure I have a clean foundation to work from.
( I don't like System Restore Points. They don't wipe out 100% of everything that was there that caused the problem. )
Reinstall Playonline on C:\
Test Modem. No problems. Reinstall FFXI on C:\ Test Modem, No problems. So far the Internet connection status Icon is staying put. Which to me, after about 6 months of not seeing my connection status, NOR being able to disconnect the darn thing by the push of a button, is a small but beautiful godsend to me right now.
-------------------------------
END of C&P
-------------------------------
I have as of yet not patched Playonline nor FFXI online. I do not know if it will kill the Modem status Icon, but seeing as the current situation has not done as such so far, I do not believe it will. (( yeah I know, go and Jinx myself why don't I. ))
Now I should note some important things here. For those of you who say " Why not just reinstall the drivers? "
I did, Repeatedly. More times then I care to count. I also did what is considered amongst the Tech Support industry two Dangerous techniques for an Average, ( Note that I said Average ) end user to do.
I dropped a Comm Bomb, and I did a Nuke & Pave. Both of these techniques pretty much gut and strip the communications package out and reinstall it completley. The Nuke and Pave technique just pretty much takes it a whole heck of alot further.
Some of it is very complex depending on how severe the problem is. Regardless, I performed both of these techniques multiple times and all times they went off flawlessly.
However, the Modem status Connection Icon still just WOULD NOT show up.
Now then, why the heck it makes such a HUGE difference to Playonline as to what particular Drive it is installed on my System when it concerns this bug, I have NO IDEA.
However, The problem is fixed. And for that I am fricking ecstatic.
I figured I would share this information with you guys, hopefully it may help.
My system Specs btw if anyone is curious:
-------------------------------------------------------
AMD Athlon XP 3200+ Barton Core Processor
Gigabyte 7N400 Pro 2 Motherboard with Nforce chipset
1 Gigabyte of PC 3200 Ram, Running Dual Channeled at
400 Mhz ( With Copper Heatspreaders )
Sound Blaster Live Value Card ( Yes, I know, I should be smitten down )
1 Western Digital 40 Gig Hard drive, 7200 RPM's ( OS Drive )
2 Maxtor 200 Gigabyte Hard Drives with 8MB buffer Cache, 7200 RPM's ( Data Storage and Video Game HDD )
US Robotics 56K Controller Based modem ( 100 Dollar modem. Designed for Internet gaming over 56k Connections. I moved from High speed Dial up to an area in the boonies where they have no High Speed. /cry )
1 LG 52X CD Rom Drive
1 Philips CDRW 2400 Series CD Burner Drive
ATI Radeon 9800 XT Video Card
(Thermaltake Giant Extreme III Video Card Cooler on the Card. As of yet to Be Overclocked. Difference of 7-8 Degree's in cooling compared to Stock Cooler. No, I'm not kidding. )
Windows XP Professional, Service Pack 1 ( not touching SP2. I hear it breaks too many games, and I have 90+ PC CDROM games on my System. )
Direct X 9
(As a Side note, I also intend to report this to Square-Enix as well. Hopefully it may correct the bug or at least lead to a solid Fix. I'll have to wait until I can get FFXI patched though. No way in heck I am going to do it over Dial up. I'll have to borrow a friend's high speed net connection for it. :/ )
I hope this post is of help to those of you suffering from this problem. Good luck.
Draconis
"