Do You Run Norton, MS MSE, Bit Defender or AVG 8 ?

[Buddye]

These product prevent BOBII from loading files.

We recommend you try to disable or turn off these products. A even better solution for a gamer is to consider uninstalling and using another product.

See this link for products that are both free and effective solutions that 1000's of people use with confidence:

http://shockwaveproductions.com/forum/v ... php?t=9671

[Buddye]

Thanks to Patrickblue22 a new customer:

I'm running AVG 8 and BOB11 is running fine apart from I was having the issue where the flying bit was taking forever to load (freezing on the loading screen in a frame for about 20 - 30 minutes. I tried turning off the resident shield, along with all the other cures suggested in the forum. All to no avail. I then tried closing all the running avg processes (4 of them) in task manager. That did the trick, it now loads in around 30 seconds. It would appear that AVG 8 and BOB11 don't like each other at all.
Many thanks for all the help given on this forum.

[Bader]

I personally use the other great favourite: AVAST Anti-Virus Home Edition. It's an alternative to AVG and its free for home use.

It's brilliant and is fully BoBII compatible. You could give that a try instead.

See this thead:

http://www.shockwaveproductions.com/for ... php?t=9671

It's here:
http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html

[Trumper]

I believe AVG have just released another update and this seems to have cured my having to turn off resident shield on AVG 8.The version i have at the moment is V8 .0.138.
Hope this helps.

[patrickblue22]

I believe AVG have just released another update and this seems to have cured my having to turn off resident shield on AVG 8.The version i have at the moment is V8 .0.138.
Hope this helps.

Hi

I've now got the same version (V8 .0.138) and while not quite as quick loading as when AVG is turned off it's usable. With this updated version it takes around 2 minutes as opposed to about 45 seconds with AVG turned off.
All in all a reasonable result.

[stickman]

When I bought a new computer with Vista OS, that had Norton on it,
the very first thing that I did was to remove Norton.

I installed AVAST, which I like, as it is non-intrusive to games while running,
and after 2 years has not let any virus in, that I know of.

[JJB17463rdBombGroup]

I tried to run BoB WoV on my new quad core PC with a 2.5 Ghz AMD X4 Phenom 9850 BE CPU,8 Gigabytes of DDR2-800 RAM and a ATI Radeon 512 mb HD 4850 graphics card.I am running Windows Vista 64 bit Home Premium Edition.
I downloaded the latest patch 2.08,the latest DX 9.0 C and even tried the administator mode.
None of the controls worked in BoB WoV except if I chose the input device as mouse.
The Keyboard input device wouldn't work and the Joystick input device wouldn't work.
It was frustrating for me.
I was running AVG Free 8.0.169.
When I disabled AVG, the Joystick,Keyboard and Mouse finally worked all together in BoB WoV.
There is a free utility (called the Fusion Gaming Tool ) if you use an AMD CPU and ATI graphics card which disables non essential software to run games (or simulations).So far this is a beta version.However this is only for a AMD and ATI based PC.Somebody mentioned that it didn't work with Vista 64 bit ultimate though but this will probably be fixed when the final version is released.You can read about it here.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-fu ... ,6374.html

[Prem Holdaway]

If you are running AVG 8 there are a few things that need doing. These things you need to do in the initial install, if not you need to run the configuration wizard. In the profile called "allow all". You need to check the disable firewall notification when playing games, and in the "do this action box" set it to block. Also in the "block all" do the same as above. You will also need to do the same in any personal profiles that you have set up. And/or the default profile if you are using that one. You will then need to double click the firewall components in the main window and check the enable gaming mode. This will allow all games to work correctly.

Prem.

[PV]

Despite repeated dire warnings of end of support and virus definition updates, my AVG 7.5 continues to receive regular updates, so I'm not inclined to change it until they stop...

[Buddye]

McMick posted this on the Technical Froum. I thought I would put it into this thread as well so that players could find it easy. Many of us gamers love and use this as our virus protection as it is one of the best with respect to high performance games. A big thanks to McMick for taking the time write this information down for us.

There seems to be a lot of confusion about avast! Home Edition, so here's a guide on how to get it installed and registered. Let me state up front, however, that the free Home Edition is made for PERSONAL USE ONLY, so don't go putting it on your business computers or you will be a software pirate.

I can't speak for their website and how clear or unclear it is to people, but I think most who are confused are accidentally trying to get the avast! Professional Edition, which is for commercial PCs and costs $39 for a single license.

I have been a big fan of avast! since version 4 came out, and I believe it is the best anti-virus for Windows. Others will talk about AVG, or NOD32, or Kaspersky, and while all of those programs are excellent, they are either not as easy to use as Avast!, or take up more resources, or don't have a free home version. We needn't talk about McAfee or Norton/Symantec, for reasons that must be clear to anyone who's used them since around the year 2002.

OK, here goes:

1. DOWNLOAD THE INSTALLER

So the first thing you need to do is get the Avast! Free Home Edition installer on your PC. The easiest way to accomplish that is to download it from their website:

http://www.avast.com/

Once there, look at the top of the page and you will see a menu bar just below their grey banner with the "avast!" logo on it. The menu bar has various drop-down links that appear when you point at the toolbar buttons (products, download, purchase, support, viruses, company). If you have a slow connection, these may take a moment to appear, so be patient. Point at "download" and click on "Programs" in the drop-down menu. You will be taken to a page entitled "Download Programs" which will have a list of products available for download. The list font color is orange, so it should be pretty obvious. Click on the second link in the list, "avast! 4 Home Edition FREE Download". Be sure to click on that one, not the one above it, which is for Professional Edition.

Now you are finally on the right page to downlaod the software. The page is titled "avast! 4 Home Edition - FREE antivirus software - Download" so you know you're at the right place. Scroll down and you will see a list of links to download the program in various languages. To the left of each link is a Download button. The first link is for the English version, which most of you will probably want. When you click the Download button to the left, you will be asked if you want to save the file. Save it to a convenient location (the Desktop would be fine). In Firefox, the default behaviour in Vista is to download everything to a "Downloads" folder in your user folder. DO NOT CLOSE YOUR BROWSER YET. Now it's time to get a key.

2. GET A REGISTRATION KEY

While we're still on the avast.com webpage, go back up to the top and point at Support in the menu bar, then click on "FREE avast! Home Registration" and you will be taken to a page titled "Registration of avast! 4 Home Edition". Just below the title, there is a list of links with the heading "Please choose the right option..." and three links to choose from. The first one is for first-time users, "I'm a new user and I need a registration key for avast! Home Edition". For the purposes of keeping this article at least somewhat short, that's all we'll look at. Click on that link and you will be taken to the registration form at the bottom of the page.

Now choose your registration language (already set to English by default), then provide a valid e-mail address in the grey box. Note that you have to enter the same address two times. Then fill in a name in the Name box below that. A few boxes below this, pick your country (default is United States). YOU DO NOT NEED TO FILL IN ANY MORE THAN THIS UNLESS YOU WANT TO VOLUNTEER EXTRA INFORMATION. Check the box next to the statement "I understand that I have the right to use this program for non-commercial home use only, both conditions must be met as part of the EULA." The section below that is for leaving comments to the software team. Below this box is a "captcha" that must be filled out to start the download. Enter the 3 letters that you see in the box "letters above:". Finally, hit the Register button at the bottom. You will be taken to a page titled "Registration of avast! 4 Home Edition" which informs you that the registration was sent to ALWIL Software and that they will send a key to the email address you provided within 24 hours. In reality it is almost instant or at most five minutes.

3. INSTALL AVAST! FREE HOME EDITION

Open the folder that you saved the Avast! Installer to and run the installer (The name for the English version is setupeng.exe). Agree to the license, then in the Configuration window choose the installation option on that you want. I highly recommend MINIMAL installation, as the interface isn't skinned to look like a car stereo or whatever. Unless you use TheBat for your email, Minimal is the best choice. Click Next. When the installation is almost finished, you will be given a choice to have avast scan your computer for viruses on restart. That's up to you. If you accidentally forget to uncheck that option, you can just hit the ESC key when the scan starts to abort it. You should reboot your PC at this time.

4. FINISH UP AND REGISTER

When Windows restarts, you'll see two new icons in your tray, both little blue spheres. Both have letters in lower case and white, one has an "a" and the other an "i". You can right-click on the "i" and choose "Merge with main avast! icon" to hide it. It pertains to the VRDB generator which usually runs when your PC is idle or on screensaver. It takes "snapshots" of all your files so it can more easily clean them if they get infected.

Now is the time to check your email for the key. It will be sent from [email protected]. After you open the mail, you will see the key in between two lines of dashes, like this:

Your license key is:

---------- cut here ----------
W38441609H6000A1106-JDMSW011 <--NOTE: THIS IS NOT A REAL KEY SO DON'T BOTHER
---------- cut here ----------

With your mouse, highlight ONLY THE PART BETWEEN THE DOTTED LINES, right-click it, and click "copy".


After that, right-click on the avast "a" icon in your system tray and click on "About avast!" and a window will come up with a tree of information on it. At the bottom of the window is a button titled "License key...". Click on that and another window titled "Registration" will appear. Right-click in the box and click "paste", then click the OK button. Congratulations, you are registered for 14 months!

Alwil put together a video explaining the registration process a bit more visually:

http://www.avast.com/files/tutorials/insert_key.htm

It requires Flash Player 9 to view.

I hope this clears up the confusion for some of you. Alwil has NEVER sent me any unrequested email and to the best of my knowledge has never shared my email address with anyone.

I may attempt to make this shorter and more concise later on. It ran a bit longer than I thought it would. Seriously, this isn't hard to do, though it may look like it from the length of my post

[BoxMike]

AVG:s reign in my rig ended today. In 2 weeks development my version of 8.5 started messing seriously during gaming. After reinstallation of XPSP3 2 weeks ago I took a 3DMark06 'snapshot' for reference. Lately I noticed big formations of BoB2 causing true slide show and I ran 3DMark again: Drop was 1500 points, which is lot for a rig under 10 000 points. AVG would not allow messing with it's processes so I just uninstalled it and cleaned rest with CCleaner's Registry tool. After reboot new 3DMark run and got back those precious points.
Installed Avast, ran 3DMark and result was the same as without AVG. I dont know if Norton and AVG are any better due deep involvement but I vote for smoother play.
Thanks for tips and instructions
Rgds,
- box

[PV]

I got a great flurry of notices that my AVG 7.5 would no longer be supported as of April 12th (this is just about a year from the last great flurry of announcements of imminent demise), so I prepared to make some sort of decision around that date. But for the last two weeks, I've been getting notices that support has been discontinued, followed immediately by substantial downloads of new updates. Rather baffling, but so long as they keep updating it, I will continue to use it...

If at some point I'm finally faced with loading something new, I'll go to Avast rather than AVG 8.x ...

EDIT: As of May 3rd or so, AV database updates for AVG7.5 finally stopped, and I swapped over to avast quite painlessly following these instructions http://www.a2asimulations.com/forum/vie ... 17&t=12189

[Trumper]

My avg free is 8.5.409 and all seems well so far

[Buddye]

From Phantom:

This is a note from one of our players on MS MSE.

MSE was definitely crashing my BoB. You mentioned a time scale of several months which ties up with their last upgrade. Prior to that it was OK

When I uncheck "real time protection" and then hit "save changes" the whole box goes red and I get two bubbles telling me I'm unprotected (should I rush out and buy condoms? )

In the previous version you could switch off automatic updates but not in the latest.

The indicator in the notification area shows it's updating and as I said it's about 15 mins after switch on.

From Fish40:

OK, after a couple of tests, it certainly looks as though MSE is the problem. Loaded a mission and had a crash. Disabled MSE and was able to successfully fly the same mission. As was suggested, before I play the game I manually update MSE, and turn off Realtime Protection. I could even go the extra mile, and disconnect my network card from the internet altogeather. But the problem seems to be narrowed to one culprit.