mercoledì 5 marzo 2014

Origin login window not showing

Today I was trying to run Battlefield 3 but the only thing obtained was the small Origin icon in the bar and in the hidden icons area.

So I went to the log path to see what was going on :

C:\ProgramData\Origin\Logs\Client_Log.txt

In there all was looking fine until the last few lines:

  29     mar 5 12:16:15.851  Event     Origin::Client::LoginViewController::loadLoginPage                          6720      loadLoginPage[https://accounts.ea.com/connect/auth]
  30     mar 5 12:16:15.855  Event     Origin::Client::LoginViewController::validateOfflineWebApplicationCache     6720      Web application cache path: C:/Users/XXXXXX/AppData/Local/Origin/Origin
  31     mar 5 12:16:15.861  Event     Origin::Client::LoginViewController::show                                   6720      Show login window
  32     mar 5 12:16:17.103  Event     Origin::Client::LoginViewController::onUrlChanged                           6720      onUrlChanged: url = [https://signin.ea.com/p/pc/login]


It seems to say something like "I'm showing the login window" ... unfortunately the login window is not visible so what's going on? Then an idea came in my mind... maybe some issue with the video card? with the drivers? with the screen resolution or something like that? Well, some investigation and I found the problem:

The desktop screen COLOR DEPTH! incredible uh?

SOLUTION:
first close origin from the icon, right click, close, then :

1. right click on the desktop, Screen resolution
2. click link "advanced settings"
3. click the button "list all modes" (don't know exactly the text, I'm translating from my language)
4. be sure to select a resolution with 16.8 million colors (32bit), click OK, APPLY, OK

Try to start battlefield (or Origin alone) again and see if solved.

Remeber this is only one of the possible issue Origin has to start, there are a lot , including firewall issues, antivirus issues and others.

bye



martedì 4 marzo 2014

Disable Skype integration in Outlook.com (web mail)


*** Sorry, This is not working anymore ***

Hi,
do you hate the new Skype integration in Outlook.com like me?

For me Skype and the mails are two different things, I don't want to mix them up, if I want to chat or talk I open Skype, if I open outlook.com is because I need to write or read some mail end of the story.

If you think like me, then this is what I did :

open the file

%systemroot%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

go to the end and insert this line:


127.0.0.1 skypewebexperience.live.com

That line simply means, when sombody on this pc will search for the ip address of "skypewebexperience.live.com" return the dummy ip address 127.0.0.1 instead, and as for sure the skype service is not on that IP address nobody will answer and skype integration will not work.

Save the file, the effect is immediate.

The effect of this is that when outlook.com try to connect to that address (for skype integration) it will fail and no integration will be available, voilà problem solved

To be honest I'm just testing this now, so not sure if there is some coutereffect, but until now it seems good.
I also tried to start Skype client and it seems everything is working fine there.

If you want to get back to the original situation just open the file again and remove that line or comment it putting a # in front of the line and save the file.

(or, if it's not an issue for you, you can disconnect microsoft account from skype account and then login to skype using the skype account, this way in outlook.com you'll not see skype automatically connected anymore)

bye
Digger