EVE-Online Patch Makes XP Unbootable

Nobo writes "CCP's latest major patch to the EVE-Online client, Trinity, comes with an optional DX9-enhanced graphics patch that dramatically improves the visual quality of the in-game graphics through remade models, textures, and HDR. It also has an unfortunate bug: the incredibly stupid choice of boot.ini as a game configuration file, coupled with an errant extra backslash in the installer configuration. The result is that anyone who installs the enhanced graphics patch overwrites the windows XP c:\boot.ini file with the EVE client configuration file, bricking the machine on the next boot. Discussion in a couple of forums threads is becoming understandably heated."

Insanely sloppy... but not without precedent

[RogueyWon (735973)]

Wow... if this story isn't a wild exaggeration, then this is about as unfortunate as a game-bug can possibly get. Of course, a reasonably savvy user could probably have an affected system working again fairly quickly without any data-loss, but my own experience suggests that such users will be in the minority.

The only gaming-related parallel I can think of relates to the uninstall programme bug for the 2001 version of Pool of Radiance. In that instance, attempting to uninstall the game (something many users would do not long after installing it, given the tedious and half-baked nature of the game) had a good chance of wiping the user's hard disk. I actually deliberately triggered this bug for fun myself when I decided it was time to wipe my old machine after I bought a new system. If anybody can think of any other examples on this kind of scale, please do share them.

I wonder if this is going to cause any unpleasant and potentially expensive legal repercussions for CCP, from users who have lost data while trying to fix the issue?

Re:Insanely sloppy... but not without precedent

[iCEBaLM (34905)]

At one point trying to uninstall Final Fantasy XI Online would remove hal32.dll.

Re:Insanely sloppy... but not without precedent

[gEvil (beta) (945888)]

At one point trying to uninstall Final Fantasy XI Online would remove hal32.dll.

That wouldn't be a smart thing to do, now would it, Dave?

Re:Insanely sloppy... but not without precedent

[by Anonymous Coward]

The deletion of the Boot.ini file will not cause any data loss. If you format your system to fix the issue then you will lose data. Anyone with the Windows XP CD can boot off of it and repair the OS. It is a simple procedure for the tech savvy folks and for those that are not tech savvy, most of them have friends that are.

This issue is going to leave CCP with a lot of egg on their face but realistically extended downtime would have been worse since the player base would have been screaming a 100x louder. This issue will peak higher in the media since it is a highly unusual problem but will die quicker then if the servers were down for 2-5 days.

The concern that I have is how did this get past the QA testers at CCP and into a production build?

Re:(catchy subject)

[Krinsath (1048838)]

More likely cause: The patch was tested but the patcher was not.

Don't forget that this is an issue with the the *patcher* that was not present in the full premium install from scratch, only the upgrade (which is probably the route most people would've taken, in fairness). It basically boils down to a simple typo in one version of the installer and rebooting to test the installer might not be part of their QA tests for the patcher.

Really what they should catch flak for is not a bad typo, but as the summary points out having a game file with the same name as a critical OS file. Boot.ini isn't a new thing, in fact it is on its way out with Vista, so there's really no excuse to claim you didn't know that Windows had such a file. It's been there since 1995 or so.

Re:Insanely sloppy... but not without precedent

[Fozzyuw (950608)]

I still can't figure out how this missed even basic testing where CCP should have caught this bug pretty easily.

The testers would have caught it but their computers didn't start when they tried to turn them on the next day so they could never identify it. =P

Ppffftt!

[morgan_greywolf (835522)]

Isn't this something should have been found in, oh, I dunno....beta testing?

Re:Ppffftt!

[Phisbut (761268)]

Isn't this something should have been found in, oh, I dunno....beta testing?

Oh, but it was found, by several beta testers. However, since none of those beta testers had a functioning computer after the test, they were all unable to send a bug report. Not having received any bug reports, the developers simply assumed that there were no bugs.

How is this possible?

[Jennifer York (1021509)]

Someone in their QA department needs to be fired. This type of mistake is simply unacceptable, and truly very difficult to believe.

What sort of test plan fails to catch BRICKING THE PC?

Re:How is this possible?

[vranash (594439)]

Obviously one with a really high uptime for Windows :)

Re:How is this possible?

[sayfawa (1099071)]

Say John, there's a funny thing with our new patch; after the dialogue telling the user that the install was successful and that they should reboot the machine, the machine doesn't actually reboot, it just shuts off and then hangs. What should we do?

Don't tell them to reboot the machine. Problem solved.

Re:How is this possible?

[Jugalator (259273)]

Bricking. That word will have became annoying to me by the end of 2008.

Re:How is this possible?

[MBGMorden (803437)]

I think it became annoying to me at the end of November. What's bad is it's usually not the geeks who fall in love with buzzwords.

Re:How is this possible?

[illumin8 (148082)]

BRICKING THE PC?

WTF is with you people? Ever since the Apple made iPhones "bricks", this erroneous use of the term has seeped into our technical vocabulary. People, it's not a brick if it's still usable. When a piece of electronics is really bricked, that means that the ROM is in such an unrecoverable state, that it can't even be flashed with a new working ROM, and needs to be either thrown away, or sent to a factory for repair.

Now, the term bricking is being applied to any piece of electronics or computer equipment that won't boot an OS.

It's not bricked if you can just reinstall or repair Windows and have it work again. It's bricked if you flash a bad ROM BIOS image and now you can't even turn the thing on.

Bricking?

[interactive_civilian (205158)]

Why does the summary say "bricking the machine"? Does the machine become a doorstop that cannot be fixed? Can you not (and this might even be more complicated than necessary, but as a rather inexperienced Windows user, this came to mind first) use a Linux Live CD to boot and edit the necessary files? I DNRTFA, but if it is just an errant backslash, it should be a piece of cake to fix.

Hardly "bricking" IMHO.

Re:Bricking?

[geminidomino (614729)]

As I mentioned in my previous post:

People with one machine and w/o a Linux live CD (probably 90% of windows users) would have a bricked machine barring any outside assistance.

No, they wouldn't. The term "bricked" has very specific connotations. Specifically, that it is not repairable without professional intervention which will probably cost more than the unit itself, thus turning it into a "very expensive brick."

A crashed OS is not a bricking, unless that OS is on firmware or something. If popping in a CD can fix your computer, whether or not you are too stupid to do it yourself, then it's not bricked.

Re:Bricking?

[gazbo (517111)]

Man, that's serious then. One would have thought that MS would make the Windows CD bootable so that users could gain access to some form of "recovery console".

Partially correct story

[NATIK (836405)]

Everything the newsstory says is correct, but the issue have been fixed and anyone updating now wont get hit by it.

It is still a momumental fuckup though and the one responsible needs to be kicked in the balls for that kind of stupidity.

It's not bricked!

[wiredog (43288)]

Dammit! When did "bricking" expand it's meaning from "unbootable under any conditions due to firmware (such as the BIOS) being improperly overwritten" to "Oops, have to pull out the rescue CD"?

Re:It's not bricked!

[halcyon1234 (834388)]

I think we need to start subclassing the term. It's bricked, but it's recoverable. So it's just a mild inconvenience. A nerf brick? Loose grout?

Eve's boot.ini

[splutty (43475)]

The boot.ini for Eve itself contains information about whether you have the "Classic" version or not. The patch that was released for the Classic version did not contain this problem.

The patch released for the "Premium" version does contain this installer error. The change made to the boot.ini is the line that contains this definition, and is changed from Classic to Premium.

It's a very logical problem, easy to fix if you know it, but also incredibly stupid...

Re:They both made errors.

[W2k (540424)]

Likely the users were running the game as administrators, and an administrator would have the necessary rights to overwrite any file on the disk. I don't see how this could be blamed on Microsoft. On Vista you'd get a UAC prompt for trying to write to C:\, but Vista doesn't use a BOOT.INI anyway, so no risk of breaking the system.

Re:They both made errors.

[Goobermunch (771199)]

Sad that so many games require Administrator access to run.

--AC

Re:They both made errors.

[00lmz (733976)]

It certainly is sad that some apps and games need admin privs to run, but this is an installation bug. Of course people are going to install programs as administrator...

Re:They both made errors.

[secPM_MS (1081961)]

There is nothing that Microsoft could have done to prevent this. Installation of applications to the machine requires administrator privledges, as does installation of drivers. On Vista, there will be a UAC prompt when you start installation and uninstallation, but the process will then run with the full administrator token. Admin's can do what they want on the box. On a *nix system such an installation / uninstallation error would typically nail the system as well unless it was run in a rather full jail, and I am uncertain that jailing the game would have adequately dealt with a process that might install new video drivers. Certainly, most users would have been slammed in either environment.

Microsoft is criticized for its slow release of patches and software. One of the major issues slowing down release is the exhaustive testing passes that software must go through, and they still occasionally miss something. The diversity of configurations in the field is astonishing. This is an issue Apple does not face, as they support an OS for ~ 2 .releases, say 3 years -- and they make all the HW, which limits the diversity. Microsoft supports their stuff for 7 to 10 years (the 9X and ME series were a bit less than this).