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Comments and opinions expressed on THE KNIGHT SHIFT are those of Christopher Knight and not necessarily those of subjects discussed in this blog, of advertisers appearing on it or of any reasonable human being. Any correspondence/irate letters/lawsuit threats/Nigerian e-mail scams can be sent to theknightshift@gmail.com.
So for the past several weeks my iTunes hasn't been up to snuff. iTunes starts up okay... but when it comes to the iTunes Store it did nothing but show a blank white page with "iTunes Store" printed in the center. And whatever has been the problem with that, it also has kept iTunes from properly updating my iPad. I'm still using Windows Vista (no jokes, please :-P)
I tried everything but nothing worked to make iTunes Store functioning on my computer. I even uninstalled and re-installed iTunes... three times! And still the iTunes Store wouldn't come up. When I ran the Diagnostics tool it gave me some crap about how iTunes Store couldn't make a secure connection.
Well, as of about an hour ago it's finally working again! It took me the better part of three days of actively addressing the issue and a whole wazooload of Google searches. Lo and behold the solution came from a YouTube user named audsmithl15, who posted it as a comment on a video demonstrating the exact same problem.
Here is what audsmithl15 came up with. I'm re-posting it here, for sake of anyone else who might be searching for the fix...
1. Go to C:\ProgramData\Apple\InstallerCache\AppleApplicationSupport 2.0.1
2. Right click
3. UNinstall
4. Go to C:\ProgramData\Apple\InstallerCache\AppleApplicationSupport 1.5.2
5. Right click
6. INstall
7. Restart PC
Took less than 10 minutes to apply the fix and after that, iTunes Store comes up fine!
Bigtime props to audsmithl15 on YouTube for hitting on the solution :-)
Well, you do now! But be of good cheer: I'm about to tell you how to fix that.
I've had StarCraft II for awhile now, but haven't played even anywhere close to finishing the first campaign. Among other reasons, I've been frustrated by what I have been certain is too slow performance for the high-end rig I've got it installed on. And yesterday, I finally set out to find out why (or if I was even right about that).
Turns out that StarCraft IIdoesn't like multiple CPUs all that well. Optimally it should be running on two cores, not three or four. So Yours Truly went searching for a way to bring it down to operating on only two processors. Lo and behold: it can be done! Start up StarCraft II from the desktop, then bring up Task Manager (usually done through CTRL+ALT+Delete), go to the sc2.exe process and right-click on it and look for "Set Affinity". From here you can specify which CPUs you want to run the game on and which ones to turn off.
I tried it yesterday and the game performed significantly faster than it had before.
But, there was one hitch: every time the game is exited, doing Set Affinity through Task Manager must be done all over again. Leaving the program causes CPU affinity to revert to the default four cores (or whatever is the number of cores on your computer).
This is the kind of problem that, I can sometimes be awake for days trying to solve. I just don't like it when I've a gut feeling that a technical issue can be resolved, given enough time and thinkin' about it.
Well dear readers, a short while ago I came across a fix.
Actually, good friend Adam Smith located the substance of the solution, so credit goes to where it must :-) If you're trying to get StarCraft II - or any program that might run faster on one or two cores instead of four or five or seven - downshifted from too much processing power, then PriFinitty is the tool you need. PriFinitty (currently at version 2.47) sets affinity for whatever executable programs you need to do it for, and it keeps the affinity settings in a profile that loads automatically whenever you launch PriFinitty (which can be set to load at startup). I set StarCraft II to use CPUs 2 and 3, ignoring the rest, and it worked beautifully! Then I exited the game, and re-launched it. The affinity settings were still binding just those two cores! So... color me impressed :-)
There is just one thing that I need to say about using PriFinitty with StarCraft II: you should have PriFinitty set affinity for both "starcraft ii.exe" and "sc2.exe". But there are more than one version of sc2.exe to consider: they're all in the Versions folder of the StarCraft II main folder. And then you'll have to look in the folders in the Versions folder that say "Base..." (my install has six of 'em currently). So, I'd recommend going into all of the Base* folders, and adding each sc2.exe to your PriFinitty profile and adjusting the affinity for each. Y'know, just to be on the safe side. I don't see how doing it to any extra sc2 executables is going to do any harm.
Then make sure that PriFinitty is running in the background with your profile and launch StarCraft II and prepare to take the fight to the Zerg faster than ever!
(And a tip o' the hat to Adam Smith for pointing me toward PriFinnity :-)
Last Tuesday, after I came back from Texas, I went to Greensboro to pick up my new computer at the store that I'd ordered it from. By the way if you're in North Carolina and want quality computer products and outstanding service, I would definitely recommend Intrex. This is the second system that I've bought from them and I've never been anything less than overwhelmed at their confidence and dedication. They've got stores from Winston-Salem all the way to Greenville, with two in Greensboro and several in the Raleigh-Durham area.
Anyhoo, I got this new 'puter as an investment in my new video production enterprise. That's what I've spent a lot of this past week doing: installing software, tweaking hardware and otherwise fine-tuning it to be the instrument that I need to have.
So forgive me if I'm a babe in the woods when it comes to Windows Vista, which I have never used before until now.
Actually I take that back. The first time I ever saw Vista up-close was over Thanksgiving, when my brother-in-law had it running on his laptop. Jonathan is a seminary student. He came close to crying and cursing like a sailor at how frustrating Vista is. Not that I could blame him either: I tried helping him with a technical problem on it that later turned out to be defective hardware. But that one fleeting bit of contact with Vista made me cringe, knowing that I'd probably be working with it on a regular basis soon.
So here I've been the past several days, trying to get my tried-and-true software working, without really paying much attention to just how radically different Vista is from every version of Windows that I've used up 'til now. I did great things with Windows 3.1. Windows 95, let me soar with the eagles. Windows 98 and 2000 and ME... meh. Windows XP was probably the most productivity that I ever got out of an operating system, not to mention the most stable. And so far, Windows Vista is very stable indeed...
But I just found out tonight that I've wasted dozens of hours of productive time, because of all the nonsense that Microsoft threw into this thing. There's one video production program in particular that I've got, that runs great on Windows XP. It should be working fine in Vista too. Except it kept locking up and giving me a "not responding" message. So tonight, after a few hours of investigating, I found out what was going on...
It's this "Aero" thing. That's the name that Microsoft gave to Vista's user interface. The thing that gives Vista that pretty "translucent" look.
Aero is a horrible resource hog!
In the fall semester of 1996, "Weird" Ed and I worked at a computer store on Elon's campus. This place has since become legendary whenever we recount our exploits: so much craziness happened in that place. "Chris come here," Ed told me one afternoon, "take a look at this." It was some student's brand-new (at the time) system running Windows 95. Every icon on the desktop was animated. And not "animated GIFs" either: we're talking actively rendered by Windows. "That's a waste of system resources," Ed said. He clicked on the Netscape Navigator icon and the little pilot wheel spun around wildly before finally opening the browser. Everything on the computer was like that. There's no telling how much faster it would have run were it not for worthless crap like that mucking up the works.
That's what Aero is like, only a hundred-score worse.
Yeah, I'll admit that Aero, when it's running, looks gorgeous. But I didn't buy this thing to oggle a beautiful desktop. I bought it to get things done. And Aero is a severe hindrance to productivity on a system built for resource-intensive use.
A short while ago I turned off Aero, and went for the classic Windows interface. And now, this machine runs like a beast! I've "blasted it through the walls" with all of my software, and everything is not only running fine but it's running about 100% better.
If you need to, here's how to turn Aero off on your Vista system...
- Click the Start button.
- Right-click on "Computer".
- Left-click on "Properties".
- Left-click "Advance system settings".
- Under "Performance" left-click on "Settings".
- Select "Adjust for best performance".
- Left-click "Apply".
- You can now "Okay" out and Vista will be running without Aero enabled from now on.
You can always follow these instructions to go back and turn Aero on again, but after seeing how much faster Vista operates without it, you'll be hard-pressed to come up with a legitimate reason why you would want that.
Otherwise, I'm probably still behind the learning curve, but I'm starting to warm up a bit to Windows Vista. If it just wouldn't bug me so much about whether or not I want to run the programs that I want to run, as this commercial for the Mac hilariously illustrates...
