This latest patch...

[Herbert Dypp]

I know they've made it so you can alt+enter at any time at loadup, but when I get to the Decline/Accept EULA screen, my game mouse pointer is locked in the top left of the screen. (this is in full screen mode and not windowed). If i press ctrl+alt+del, I can see the Windows TaskManager flckering 'beneath' the EULA but I cant do anything with it. At one point (with some random keypresses) I managed to get my windows mouse pointer on screen at the same time as the locked pointer, and then, with a few more random mouseclicks and keypresses the pointer somehow 'unlocked' and I could log in as normal.

Anyone else seen this or have a solution? If it helps I have winXP, Nvidia41.06, DX9

[Crymea]

I had that happen to me, and I just did 'alt-enter', and was able to gain control of the mouse pointer again (this was under winxp)

[Jullious]

Herbert, I have the same problem sometimes. Have you got a resolution yet? Alt-Enter does not always work.

[Sorgaine]

I had a very similar problem. When got to the login screen and clicked to log in, it froze up. I had to hard reboot my PC multiple time and then did a scan disk. The scan disk revealed numerous errors in the EQ files because they had a future date on them /boggle, so I acked scan disk to fix the error. It still didn't work.

Then Atom updated my clock. I disabled my Virus scanner and Firewall (which I have never once had to do to play EQ, regardless of what the tech support people have said in the past) and bingo it worked. So I really couldn't tell you which one was a fix... Perhaps try a scan disk, then disable any firewalls or virus scanners and try it?

[Herbert Dypp]

i've found that multiple stikes of alt+enter, alt+shift+r, ctrl+shift+r in any random order seems to work every time.

[Jullious]

/Sigh

One thing I have noticed is that every time EQ patches, my firewall won't let it past until I tell it that it is OK. But EQ won't let me out of it's window to let me bring up my firewall's dialog box window. But that didn't used to be an issue as I'd just run EQ in EQW so that I could ALT-TAB out. But now that isn't working anymore. Like Sorg I have to do hard reboots. This was very frustrating yesterday evening. Something strange is going on because it didn't work like it used too. I know EWQ is having issues with the lastest version of EQ. And as a last resort I used to go into my firewall software and manually tell it to let EQ through. But that was not working Monday either as it didn't recognize that EQ had been patched. I suspect that EQ is looping in on itself for an independant reason (buggy code?) and not due to anything on my PC itself, since it seems to be independant of the firewall, EQW, clock, etc. I'll keep my eyes open.

[Sorgaine]

Exactly. My firewall software pops up "Is it okay to let this program through" popup thing but it freezes up at that point. So now I have to turn it off before I even connect to EQ. I really don't like that... I hope they get it corrected soon!

[Herbert Dypp]

are you using ZoneAlarm or some other software firewall?

[Jullious]

I use zonealarm, it's exactly my price LOL. What I have to do is let EQ try and log in and fail because zonealarm is blocking it, because it's changed since I last authorized it. Then exit out of EQ, go into zonealarm and change the settings for EQ from ? back to OK to let through. Then I'm golden until the next patch.

Problem is, EQ won't let me exit anymore when it gets blocked. I have to do a hard reboot. And I can live with that except the freezup is happending before zonealarm recognizes that it has changed since I last authorized it. I can tell because zonealarm still has OK next to EQ.

So, I'm thinking its not zonealarm that is stopping EQ. EQ is not getting to that point yet for zonealarm to flag it as suspect yet. And since CTRL-ALT-DELETE and ALT-TAB don't work either I'm suspecting there is something wrong with the EQ code that is hosing the OS.

But who knows. It's working now. Until the next patch anyway.

[Sorgaine]

I use zone alarm as well.

[warlax007]

The easy fix for me is to right click the mouse.


Jeff

[Herbert Dypp]

the problem is with zonealarm, not EQ. after a patch the EQ files have changed date & size. ZoneAlarm is recognising this and warning you. Its only doing its job. If you upgrade to the Pro version you have more control and can tell it to ignore file changes like this.

Actually, I stopped using ZoneAlarm about a year ago, it may be that you can fix this in newer versions...

[Jullious]

Aye, when ZA recognizes that the date/file size has changed. But that is easy to work around as I just go into ZA and reauthorize EQ. The problem is EQ is freezing up (same old same old) but this time ZA still shows it as still authorized to pass. Very strange. That is why I suspect that EQ is freezing up before it attempts to pass the firewall. And why my normal fix isn't working.

You know, if I have to guess who is more likely to be buggered up, EQ or ZA, you know who I am starting with.

[Jullious]

Great, another patch. And again, the Win2K box will cooperate (with a lot of extra trouble than before) but the XP box has to be hard rebooted - and still ZA thinks EQ is AOK. I think I'll try telling ZA to change EQ from OK to ? and see what happens.

[PavelCursebreaker]

About the "mouse pointer stuck in the upper left hand corner" thing at the accept/decline screen, I've found that left-clicking the mouse twice frees the mouse up for me every time.