Fix Splinter Cell : Conviction Crashes, ATI Issues, Black Screen Problems & More

The long awaited next installment of Tom Clancy’s stealth video game franchise, Splinter Cell : Conviction has now been released to the public. Despite the game receiving somewhat negative reviews (i.e. only a score of 6.5 from GameSpot), fans of the series seem to be eager to try the game out. I’ve had the chance to play with a legitimate copy (PC version) of the game for several hours and I’ve got to say it’s not the most optimized game out there. Although it ran fine without any showstopper bugs, there were some FPS issues and slowdowns present on even higher end gaming rigs. Anyways here’s our routine troubleshooting article for Splinter Cell : Conviction – hopefully this will help you resolve any nagging issues you have with the game (note that most of the fixes mentioned are ATI centric).

Black screen at launch, blank screen, stuttering or game hangs at start up

SC : C is known to have several issues with ATI video hardware. If you are an ATI video card owner, it’s strongly recommended that you upgrade to ATI Catalyst™ 10.4a Preview hotfix release that addresses some of these issues. Quoted from driver release notes:

Splinter Cell Conviction - Resolves stability issues in the game when using a Windows 7 / Windows Vista / Windows XP based system with an:

  • ATI Radeon HD 3xxx Series of products

Splinter Cell Conviction - Resolves performance stuttering issues when using a Windows 7 / Windows Vista / Windows XP based system with an:

  • ATI Radeon HD 2xxx Series of products
  • ATI Radeon HD 3xxx Series of products
  • ATI Radeon HD 4xxx Series of products
  • ATI Radeon HD 5xxx Series of products

You may download 10.4a drivers from this page.

If you are an ATI card owner and if the above fix did not resolve your problem, you can try installing v10.5 drivers as specified in this forum thread. Please note that we did not test this solution.

Additionally, it’s imperative that you have the latest DirectX 9 monthly runtime installed if you are running the game in DX9 mode. You may download it from here.

Missing menu options and in game textures

If you are running into the issues with missing menu text, menu items or in game textures, try disabling Catalyst AI in Catalyst control panel. You need to do this in all applicable places (i.e. under the AI tab as well as All tab in CCC).

My screen resolution is not supported. What’s up?

This is not a technical fix but more like a UI issue. If you try to change the video resolution in Splinter Cell : Conviction, sometimes you may find the resolution that matches your display is missing from the list (for example some widescreen res). You might not notice it but you can actually scroll down the list of resolutions.

Cannot display video mode error – game starts up in a resolution unsupported by the monitor

If you get this error, you might have to manually edit the game configuration file and set a resolution compatible with your monitor. There is a detailed forum thread on UBISoft forums on how to do this – you may access it from here.

scc.exe stopped working error when trying to launch the game

Sometimes, the game might hang at launch when it tries to auto detect system components. If this happens, you can bypass the auto detection process, launch the game and manually adjust optimal settings yourself. Navigate to your game’s installation directory and rename the file systemdetection.dll to something else. Now launch the game – it will throw an error message but the game should launch instead of hanging.

This article is a work in progress – more issues/fixes will be added as they are discovered. Feel free to post any useful info as comments.

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TV-Dump – Direct Downloads And Online Streaming Links For TV Shows

We’ve featured sites that offer direct download links to TV shows as well as sites that offer free online streaming of latest TV episodes. How about a site that offers both? TV-Dump is a pretty useful resource that acts as a DDL repository and a streaming link index. Through this site’s dead simple user interface, you’ll gain access to the latest television shows just aired in the United States (in some cases older episodes as well) with the click of a button. You wouldn’t need to have any doubts about the video quality of a listed episode - screen captures are always included along with DDL/Streaming links themselves. That’s not all, TV Dump comes complete with an alphabetical list of indexed shows, a search feature, RSS feeds and even integration with social media and micro blogging sites such as Twitter.

TV-dump

At the time this post is being written, TV-Dump indexes over 1700 files. But a closer look at their Twitter feed suggests that they used to have much more – in fact over 5000 files. Unfortunately, it appears the site suffered from a hard disk failure and were forced to start over from scratch. Anyways new TV episodes seem to be getting added at a reasonable speed so it’s not a big deal. Furthermore as you can see from the screenshot below, they are in the process of adding some of the older missing episodes in addition to latest scene releases in a bid to make the index more complete once again.

TV_Dump Uploads

TV-Dump Features

One of the best things about TV-Dump is its user interface. The UI is pretty simple and gives access to all major site features without the user having to go through so many steps. Each indexed release has three icons next to its name; the magnifying glass, flash icon and the green tick. If you click on the magnifying glass, a series of screen captures from the uploaded episode will be displayed. If you click on the Flash icon, you will be taken to that episode’s streaming video page (note that in some cases this icon may be dimmed – this is when there is no streaming video feed available for that particular episode or if the video is currently being converted). Clicking on either the green tick icon or the release name will take you to a page on a one click hosting site where you can download the video file to hard disk.

TV Dump primarily uses two one click hosting sites to upload TV episodes; Depositefiles and x7.to. Of all the DDL hosts available these days, why go with these two? The answer may be found in their FAQ:

Q: Why only depositfiles?
A: Like T-Dump.org, depositfiles is simply superior in it's After testing nearly all stable major hosts Depositfiles.com turned out to be the best. Decent speeds for free user, super fast speeds for Gold Accounts and a large file size which enables TV-Dump.org to feature only 1 file downloads. All files bigger than 2GB are hosted at x7.to because of filesize restrictions at df.com.

Streaming video on TV-Dump is usually served via Videoweed. Quality was decent for the few episodes we checked out – some of the 720p uploads indexed however had no streaming option other than the DDL links.

TV-Dump is not a closed site and everyone is able to publicly access, watch and download content. You do not need to sign up or log in to enjoy the full site features. As for closing comments, this is a great resource if you are into downloading/watching TV online.

Site Name & Homepage: TV-Dump (http://tv-dump.org/)

Twitter Feed: http://twitter.com/tv_dump

RSS: http://tv-dump.org/feed/

If you liked TV Dump you may also like:

FilmBits Tracker – Download PAL DVDR, Blu-Ray Movie Torrents

After some time, here is a specialized movie torrent tracker for you BitTorrent fans. FilmBits is a private tracker that indexes untouched DVDs and Blu-Ray disks of latest movies and television shows. Based on SweDVDR’s codebase, FilmbBits boasts a clean look and feel, faster navigation and an overall well organized layout. Note that bulk of the DVDR and Blu Ray releases found on this site are those released for the Nordic region. However, English speaking users need not worry about this factor – almost all of the torrents have English audio & it’s only the optional subtitle streams that are changed based on region. In case you were wondering, most of the DVDR releases found on this tracker conform to PAL standard.

FilmBits

Although you don’t see BitTorrent invite forums being filled with invite requests for FilmBits and their discussion threads overflowing with queries about this tracker, it has in fact done pretty well compared with most other sites (especially newer ones) in its league. FB has so far managed to recruit 1600+ users and at the same time added over 2000 torrents to it’s ever growing index. Although the user count may seem a little low, seeder/leecher activity on torrents is pretty good on this site with most of the torrents having a longer than usual lifetime.

As said above FilmBits is full for DVDR and Blu Ray releases for Nordic region (both movies and TV shows). You won’t find many XViD rips here as the focus is mostly on untouched disks that come complete with multiple subtitle/audio streams, special features, full DVD menus, etc. Uploaded movies/TV shows include both scene and non scene releases. Once again, keep in mind that DVDR for the Nordic region does not mean it comes dubbed with a non English audio stream – it’s usually the optional subtitle streams that are new (you can usually check this on a torrent’s detailed descriptions page) .

FilmBits index

One big turn off for English speaking users however would be the site language – it defaults to Norwegian and cannot be changed at any point of time. You’ll be able to find your way without a translator but if worse comes to worse, use the auto translate option in Google Chrome as an aid.

Signups for FilmBits are currently open. Following notices (translated) are displayed on site homepage about the open registration:

2010-04-28 - People who are so stupid and makes more than 1 account and believe we do not detect this – they will only stay on this site until May 2.
2010-04-26 - Film Bits will hold a final open signup from 28 April to 2 May at: 23.59
2010-04-26 - Last time with open signup and freeleech on filmbits.net - signup closes Sunday

Right now there are plenty of free slots remaining so go ahead and check it out.

Site Name: FilmBits (http://www.filmbits.net/)

Signup URL: http://www.filmbits.net/freesignup.php

Settlers 7 Paths To A Kingdom Random Freezes & Crashes – How To Fix

Here’s a quick update on a very common problem many gamers seem to be having when playing recently released Settlers 7. According to several emails we’ve got, some players are experiencing freezes at regular intervals which makes the entire game play experience really frustrating. Since a lot of people who were getting the freezing issues were using a pirated version of the game, it was initially thought as a blunder made by the cracking group when trying to remove the DRM. However, this does not seem to be the case – according to feedback we received from several users who actually purchased the game, the freezes are present in legitimate version as well.

Autosave is bugged in v1.2 and below?

It appears that the game’s autosave functionality is broken in some way in Settlers v1.2 and previous builds and temporarily hangs when it tries to autosave - hence the freezes. For those who purchased the game legitimately, there is a very simple fix for this annoying issue - install patch 1.3. Patch 1.3 fixes the autosave functionality along with a host of other improvements which according to release notes should minimize other types crashes associated with the game as well. Of course, publishers have managed not to acknowledge the freezing/pausing issue directly in release notes and avoided using the word ‘freezing’ anywhere. (‘instead they’ve masked it as ‘rare crashes of the auto save function’). Quoted below are some of the bug fixes in v1.3:

  • Fixed rare crashes of the auto save function
  • Fixed a bug with the screen mode detection that prevented the game from starting
  • Fixed failure to unlock next campaign map
  • Various client side networking fixes
  • Various server side networking fixes
  • Various UI fixes
  • Fixes for Russian localization
  • Streets beneath bridges are no longer visible
  • Fixed inaccessible resource piles
  • Fixed rare failure to destroy and rebuild work yards in the vicinity of streets
  • Fixed bug with a street that was build into the terrain

Download

[Click Here] to download Settlers 7 paths to a kingdom 1.03 patch from Softpedia

Note: If you are using a pirated copy of the game, the above method will not work. You will either have to wait for a updated v1.03 fix from whatever release group (if any) that’ll pre it or simply buy the game and go legit.

How to improve visual quality & graphics appearance in Settlers 7?

Although unrelated to the freezes, we’ve received comments from folks who trash the game for ‘looking like shit’. Try tweaking with the following settings and see if it improves the visual quality – after changing every setting make sure to save configuration, exit the game and re launch so the changes are properly applied.

  1. Disable in game Anti Aliasing (AA). Additionally, disable AA if you have forced it from your VGA’s control panel. Try this and restarting the game first (before you move on to other fixes).
  2. Set ‘No’ Upscaling
  3. Disable depth of field.
  4. Update your video card’s drivers – if latest drivers do not work, try downloading and installing latest beta drivers (do this at your own risk).
    ATI Drivers: Download the latest ATI Catalyst drivers from this link: http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx
    NVIDIA Drivers: Download latest official NVIDIA drivers from this link: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
    Beta Drivers: Check here http://downloads.guru3d.com/

And as usual, update your DirectX to the latest monthly runtime before you do anything. Windows XP users may grab the latest runtime from here.

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Who Really Cracked UBISoft’s DRM? SKIDROW, Razor1911 Or DORMINE?

Notice anything wrong with the title of this post? It has too many names of release groups. Let that be a warning for you – this article features a lot of e-drama from the cracking scene :p. In one of our previous posts a couple of days ago, we quoted SKIDROW when they claimed to have cracked UBISoft’s new DRM. SKIDROW in their release NFO claimed to actually have removed the DRM as opposed to using a workaround or more specifically an emulated server environment. Although the P2P community questioned SKIDROW’s claims, they re-iterated their stance even when they released a CRACKFIX for Assassin's Creed 2. Now, several days later, SKIDROW finds themselves again in the line of fire – this time they are accused of stealing logged server responses used for the Emu server. At a glance, the accuser seems to be none other than DORMINE who did the lion’s share of work when it came to building the emulated server. But this isn’t exactly true.

It ain’t the REAL dormine!

Yesterday, the NFO Assassins_Creed_2_READNFO_ONLY-DORMINE was pre’d on scene channels. Initially it looked like a legit notice pre’d by the creator of the Emu server himself. However, this isn’t actually true. Here’s what the real DORMINE wrote on CS.RIN.RU forums (which have been his official home for quite a while):

I see someone has posted a "Assassins_Creed_2_READNFO_ONLY-DORMINE" nfo to the scene. Let me for the record state that I did not create that nfo, and don't know what the hell they're on about. Dormine isn't a group, it's just me.
Regarding this whole Skidrow thing, I don't really care about them using the values from here if it means the crack came out a week or two sooner since they didn't have to collect messages themselves. It would have been worse if they had extra values in there that they didn't share on the forum instead.

The flaming NFO

Be that as may, the NFO pre’d earlier trashes SKIDROW pretty badly. It even criticizes their cracks for other protections including SecuROM, SolidShied and Starforce. You can read the full NFO below:

BEGIN QUOTE - Assassins_Creed_2_READNFO_ONLY-DORMINE

First of all we would like to thank all people out there that helped us beating ubisofts DRM for Assassins Creed 2.

Now to the points of Skidrow which someone pasted us after the scene nuked their theft of our work.

1. You are true about how the orbit works BUT you did not even log a single value yourself. This is easy proofable to all people that would like to take the time and start logging from the very beginning. Alot of values, which you recieve while logging we merged in our database together into 1 or 2 lines Like 5 values 1 line but if you log them yourself, they will never look like the given ones from our value.db. Also there are some values which do not exist in your released version of AC2. They are russian only!

2. Of course we are not stupid and tagged our value.db. There are several values inside that you can never log because they simple do not exist. They are fake and used to tag our work from stealing. I will not mention which one but as a hint it will be transformed a greeting to ru forums as thanks for all our supporters there logging values.

3. The way you transformed the orbit is not good. If you want to play any orbit game like Silent Hunter 5 or Settlers 7 or SPlinter Cell you can not play them anymore even though you bought them. The Skidrow crack fuxks up all originals you want to play. How stupid is this "leading force"

4. Just for your info: Settlers 7 will be also tagged with values that you can never recieve from the orbit. You might understand how the orbit works but you will never understand how cracking works because you steal almost everything.

Let me proof this:

  • Securom cracks: These "cracks" you supplied had never ever the securom VM applied. They even still include the debug codes from the times before mastering
  • Starforce cracks: Your cracks are lame. They are made of russian cracks and often wrong rebuilt cause russian code is different to european code or you simple have access to another unproteced exe that was never protected by starforce.
  • Solidshield cracks: Your unprotected exes are super great

5. Steam cracks: Your steam cracks are done exactly the way of our russian RE forum. Its ok as its a tutorial but if there is something new your fix arrives directly after our forum serves the fix. Guess the rest.

6. next Ubisoft game: Oh yeah. Silent Hunter 5 without even testing! wow. Settlers 7 with incomplete values or will you wait till ours are complete?

So at final conclusion to the fuckers of Skidrow:

  • Stop fucking around the real crackers if you are not able todo the job yourself. Once the greatest cracking group on Amiga and now the stupiest group on PC that steals whatever they can catch.
  • Stop destroying a name you can not serve proper with your work
  • Stop releasing when you can not crack yourself
  • Stop talking about other groups work when you dont even understand it.
    • Reloaded dll's are simple rebuilt functions
    • Razor & Reloaded Securom cracks are not emu for the protection to be continued for all that the Skidrow fuckers do not understand.
    • Start thinking before typing bullshit in your nfos.

Greetings:

  • Trivium
  • ru forums for the help of logging ubisofts DRM values
  • woodman.com
  • Scene groups doing the work themself (if they exist)

END QUOTE

Razor1911 – WE did it properly

Albeit a little late, the latest scene group to join the UBISoft DRM crackfest is Razor1911, one of the oldest surviving scene groups who are still active after almost 25 years of operation. Razor1911 yesterday claimed to crack Settlers 7, another PC title protected by UBI DRM. RZR too hinted at SKIDROW possibly stealing server values and they claim to have released the first ever true crack for this notorious DRM. Quoted below are parts from their NFO pre’d along with Settlers 7:

BEGIN QUOTE - The_Settlers_7-Razor1911

Scene-related rants & stuff:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As far as previous 'cracks' of Ubisoft's new DRM system are concerned:

Both of Skidr0w's releases show us they haven't had a look (probably even didn't find) the actual protection code and everything hints on em using parts of publicly collected 'challenge/response' pairs. Luckily Assassin's Creed II is probably the only target ever where this approach of 'emulating' the server by a static lookup will yield any measurable success (due to a basic design flaw in an otherwise pretty neat idea of software protection). In fact, we considered this approach as
generally too unreliable and 'unworthy' of a scene crack, so we didn't care about doing it. Instead we opted for going for the arguably most challenging implementation of Ubisoft's new DRM first (emulating actual server-side game code). So here it is: The first Ubisoft DRM crack!

@RELOADED:
Congrats on your recent advances in automating your Solidshield VM cracks. We actually respect that. However, we wonder why you didn't go all the way and recompiled the fixed decompiler output to optimized native x86 code as we did as early as with Perry Rhodan (followed by Anno 1404).

Although we think there's not much merit to discussing technical details in .nfos (mostly because it's impossible for anyone lacking the skills and sources to fact-check these statements) we feel the need to preempt all that made-up "they-ripped-it-from-some-unprotected-tuvaluan-multi12-binary" bullshit that's sure to follow:

We invite anyone who is able to and interested enough in this to check the history of scene-released Solidshield VM cracks taking into account things like availability of possible alternate sources for the protected code fragments at the time of release, similarity to compiled code (i.e. 'copy & paste cracks' from differently protected or unprotected binaries), the rebuilt code's resemblence of the original VM instructions regarding sequence of mnemonics etc.pp. We're pretty confident (read '100% certain')you'll come to the conclusion that we were first with respect to rebuilding actual Solidshield VM code.

Nvm, 'mild respect'!

P.S.
Finally, there's a chance of the good ol' times coming back (when protections had to be dealt with on a per title basis by skilled individuals) and an opportunity of telling the sharpies from the fakers again. Thanks Ubi! (Yup, we're actually serious about this )

Razor 1911 Greetings
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To our demo division heroes: Your cracktro rocks (we expected no less :wink!

END QUOTE

So there you have it, different claims by different groups. Even though there are flame wars raging in the scene, this definitely isn’t a good time for UBISoft DRM. BY the number of workarounds, cracks, loaders bypassers, emulators, etc that are being built for this protection, it seems UBISoft has attracted a little too much attention and enthusiasm from the cracking community.

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PianoSheets Signups Open – Torrent Tracker For Sheet Music, Books, Tutorials & More

After an extended invite only period spanning across many months, Pianosheets (PS) have opened registrations to the public. PS is a very unique private tracker that indexes content not usually found on your average BitTorrent tracker. It tracks piano sheet music, tutorials, electronic books & books with audio plus other educational material that will probably be useful for all students of music. The site has been online for several years (see our previous post about PS made way back in 2008) and has a loyal user base making it one of the more active communities in the BitTorrent scene. It recently underwent a massive upgrade and is now powered by What.CD’s Gazelle codebase. If you are a musician or if you are a student currently learning/willing to learn music, chances are that you’ll find PianoSheets a pretty damn useful online resource.

Pianosheets 2

Last time we featured this tracker it only had 1500 active torrents. This amount has now risen above 6700. User base has also been strengthened and there are now over 4500+ active members registered on PS. For a niche private tracker that has been invite only during most of its lifetime, these statics are pretty good.

Like in most private trackers focusing on a niche category, content is king on PianoSheets. This tracker has some unique torrents you might not find elsewhere – piano sheet music as well as various books, educational material on a number of other musical instruments such as drums, guitar, harmonica, keyboards, organ, woodwind, etc are available for download. Magazines, lyrics, full scores, theory books, etc may also be found. A screenshot capturing part of PianoSheet’s torrent index and some of its torrent tags can be seen below:

Pianosheets Index TAgs

The ‘Collections’ section on PianoSheets makes it easier to discover related torrents. It’s a powerful usability feature that creates virtual torrent packs – something similar to ‘Collages’ found on most Gazelle based sites. This section is easily accessible from the top toolbar.

Signups for PianoSheets are currently open. This is the first open signup after several months so don’t hesitate to make full use of it. As said above musicians and music students should find this tracker useful.

Site Name: PianoSheerts (http://www.pianosheets.org)

Signup URL: http://www.pianosheets.org/register.php

If by the time you read this post signups have closed, an invite may be found on their official IRC invites channel

Server: irc.p2p-network.net

Channel: #ps-invites

Direct Link: irc://irc.p2p-network.net/ps-invites

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Self Helpless – Indie Movie Released Exclusively On BitTorrent

You hear about movies being leaked via BitTorrent all the time – scene and P2P groups make sure that these are all shared online, whether movies makers and distributors like it or not. Of course, right now there aren’t many publishers who embrace BitTorrent as a distribution medium. However, there are folks who willingly share their work via BitTorrent at no cost at all. Makers of Indie movie Self Helpless belong to that rare segment of movie producers – they have released their independent movie via BitTorrent and encourage torrenters to share it  with as many people as they like. For those who are not into BitTorrent, an online streaming version is available for free through NinjaVideo.

Self Helpless

Here’s how Adam Jaroszewski, a co-director and co-writer of Self Helpless, explained their decision to release the movie on BitTorrent:

Instead of fighting downloaders we're embracing them. Basically we want our movie to spread far and wide because we know that the community supports art and content it truly enjoys. We're confident there's a large audience for Self Helpless, and we want to give people the chance to check it out.

By our estimation, the Self Helpless torrents and streamed video on ninjavideo have been viewed about 5000+ times in its first 5 days. And the community is starting to show some support. Being avid downloaders, it seems pretty damn clear to my team and me that bittorrent is here to stay and will be playing a major role in the future of content distribution. This is true irrespective of what the current powers-that-be want. We're sort of confused as to why more content creators don't get this and adapt, but I'm betting they eventually will.

Given below are download links and other resources related to Self Helpless. By all means, download it, watch it and share it with your friends :)

Torrent Download: http://www.mininova.org/tor/3191913
Streaming Link
: http://www.ninjavideo.net/video/64177
Official Web Page: http://www.selfhelplessmovie.com/
HD Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQHoKDXA9UU

Special thanks to Adam Jaroszewski for letting us know.

Docs Torrents Invite Giveaway 01 – E-Book and E-Learning Tracker (100 Invites)

Back in last December, we featured an article on the return of Docs Torrents. It didn’t take a lot of time for Docs to return to their former glory – the site has once again became a great resource for documentaries, E-Learning material and Ebooks with a rock solid user base and a content rich torrent index. When we last featured this site – it was open for public signup. However registrations closed somewhere around the 24th December 2009 and the site has since been invite only (invitations are scarce even for high rankings members and there is no open signup on the horizon yet). However thanks to Docs Torrents sysops, we have 100 free invites to give away to our beloved readers. If you missed out on the open signups a few months ago, here’s another chance to get in.
UPDATE: We have received over 100 requests. Please do not send any more emails – this giveaway has now concluded.

Docs Screenshot

Before we move on to the invite giveaway, here’s a little rundown on what Docs has to offer. If you are looking for E-learning content such as educational E-books, tutorials, test engines, sample papers, etc you’d feel at home on this tracker. Docs will also cater to those who are looking for infotainment content such as premium documentaries and other related videos both in standard definition and HD. Activity on this tracker is pretty great with over 24000 registered members and 3800+ active torrents. By the way if you have a look at tracker stats, there are around 10500+ disabled users. In other words you don’t fuk around on Docs - follow the rules, be active or get banned.

Docs has a great looking AJAX based layout which is fast, uncluttered and easy to navigate. It looks a lot similar to the layout of Freshon.TV and LastTorrents (if I am not mistaken, all three trackers have the same codebase) and gives a user friendly feel.

Docs Torrents Index

If you are waiting for Docs Torrents to open signups, don’t hold your breath. This is what was posted on the site when it went invite only about 5 months ago:

Starting today, the sign-up is closed for... like forever.
Some invitations will be given in a few months. Please don't start asking yet WHEN or HOW MANY.
Until then... take good care of your accounts.

This is where our invite giveaway comes in. We have a limited number of invites at our disposal which we as usual will be giving away free for our readers. All you have to do is to send us an E-mail with the following format:

  • Subject of the E-mail should be ‘Docs Invite 01’. We use an automated software to filter the mails so don’t get this wrong.
  • In the body of the mail, please include
    1. Link to the profile page on a private tracker of your choice– for example http://docspedia.org/user.php?id=2447424
    2. A current (should not be more than 1-2 days old) screenshot of the same profile page you linked to above. Screenshot should be un-cropped and un-edited.
  • Send your email to invites[dot]filenetworks[at]gmail[dot]com

The invitations will be given away on a ‘first come, first served’ basis. That is, first 100 E-mail requests that meet all of the aforementioned requirements will be responded with a free invite( please allow one week for the email to receive). If you applied through the open signup last December and got disabled for some reason (inactivity, etc), please do not request another invite here.

Once you receive the invite code, please go to the signup URL below to create an account.

Signup URL: http://docspedia.org/signup.php

We have over 12K visitors a day and we know that 100 invites are not going to be enough for our entire reader base – please understand that our supply of invites are limited and this is all we can offer right now. However we will be conducting additional giveaways in the future so keep checking back if you didn’t receive one in this round. Advance notifications on upcoming giveaways are sometimes communicated via our Twitter feed – you may get access to this information if you follow us on Twitter (or you can keep an eye on the Twitter widget on right sidebar of this blog – this always displays the last Tweet from our feed). Instant blog updates may also be received by subscribing to RSS.

DirectX 9.0c February 2010 Standalone, Offline, Redistributable Installer Download

This is not exactly a new update but since there seem to be many folks out there who are unaware of this release we thought of posting it here. As of 25/4/2010, the latest available DirectX 9 end user runtime is version 9.28.1886 or better known as ‘DirectX 9.0c February 2010’ edition. Most people seem to overlook DX runtime updates but according to my experience, having the latest runtime can avoid a lot of crashes, freezes and other hiccups when running latest games. If you don’t believe it, go through our PC game troubleshooting articles and see how many comments say “updating DirectX fixed it for me” :p. So if you are using a Windows XP powered computer to play latest PC games, you should strongly consider this update.

directx-logo_thumb%5B3%5D[1]

If you try to download the latest runtime from Microsoft download center, you will by default be prompted to download the web installer. The web installer has one main advantage and a disadvantage. Advantage is that it will only download the files that need updating - your download size could vary between 20kb to 90mb. Disadvantage is that you cannot save the downloaded files to HDD and run the installer later (or reuse it on a different machine such as your home PC or another computer on the network).

If you know where to find it, Microsoft releases a separate version of DX runtime for developers. This is a fully redistributable, standalone copy of DirectX that may be installed anywhere, anytime and as many times as you want (seen the DXSETUP folder that usually comes on the game DVD?). You not need to have an internet connection to install this version as it does not download components on the fly.

Download

We have included download links to both standalone and web installer of DX9 below. Choose whichever you prefer most.

[Click Here] to download DirectX 9.0c February 2010 Web Installer

[Click Here] to download DirectX 9.0c February 2010 Standalone/Offline Installer

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KillaWaves (KWS) Invites On IRC – Tracker For Drum & Bass, Old School & Jungle Music

If you are looking for high quality music downloads, here’s a torrent tracker you’d be interested in. KillaWaves (better known as KWS) is a Gazelle based private BitTorrent tracker that specializes in Drum and Bass (DnB), Oldskool, Jungle, Ambient, Techno, Garage and Dubstep music. Launched just a few months ago, KWS is still a pretty young BitTorrent tracker – however it has already made a name for itself when it comes to high quality music album rips. It recently underwent a domain name change is now accessible from the URL http://killawaves.org. Ever since it’s launch, KWS has remained an invite only community and has never once opened its doors to the public – however, interested music fans can easily get free invites from the site’s official IRC channel.

KillaWaves

KWS’s relatively silent entry into the BitTorrent scene several months ago hasn’t gone unnoticed by music fans. Although never opened for public signups, KWS has managed to recruit a user base strong enough to keep the torrents alive. Speaking of torrents, KWS is dead serious when it comes to audio quality and only only V0, 320 and FLAC formats are allowed on this tracker. Although they are selective of quality, the number of indexed torrents does not seem to be affected. As of 4/19/2010 KWS tracked over 3100 torrents spanning across 2400+ albums by ~1400 artists.

As mentioned above KWS primarily tracks music related to DNB, Jungle, Ambient, Downtempo, House/Techno, Break, Dubstep and Garage music. Available music releases include latest albums released in 2010 as well as popular hits released back in early 1990s. As we mentioned earlier, quality of music uploads is taken very seriously on KWS – site rules indicate “All torrents must be of a bit rate no less than the VBR preset, V0. Therefore, only V0, 320 and FLAC are allowed onto this tracker. When uploading FLAC, you can easily convert it to both 320 kbps and V0”. A screenshot of KWS interface which captures several releases and category icons can be seen below:

KWS index

Note that KillaWaves makes extensive use of Gazelle’s Collages feature (which is renamed ‘Labels’ in this iteration). All new torrents are automatically added to a label and thus users are able to browse entire music collections released by a particular music label at any point of time.

KWS is closed for signups and would probably remain closed forever. Interested users can gain access to the tracker by going through the IRC interview. You will be asked a few questions about audio quality, general knowledge of BitTorrent, etc.

Server: irc.killawaves.org
Channel: #Invites
Direct Link: irc://irc.killawaves.org/Invites
Newbie to IRC? Never fear – it’s not remotely complicated as it sounds. Read this brief tutorial and you will be all set.

Note: Once on the channel, do as the topic says. There may be delays due to staff not being available on channel sometimes. This may be caused by various reasons such as time zone differences, etc so please be patient.

Special thanks to KWS staff for the support given.

SceneFlux – Scene Release Blog With Auto Uploader & Auto Poster

Release Blogs that automatically post scene releases seem to be quite popular these days. SceneDDL, XLDR and NewSceneFiles are some of the well known names in this arena and this post is about a promising new entrant; SceneFlux. SceneFlux is a feature packed release blog that posts detailed information and download links for scene released material including movies, music, games, TV shows, games, etc at lightning speeds. From posting articles to uploading releases to one click hosting services, everything on this site is fully automated. Detailed posts that even have images and screen captures are featured on the homepage and TV releases and MP3 albums have their own sections along with sorting and searching functionality promoting ease of use and discoverability.

SceneFlux

Launched only a few months ago, SceneFlux has so far uploaded over 4000 releases. That’s 4000 blog posts spanning across 300 pages. As said above this process is fully automated - this is what SceneFlux’s owner told us about how the script and the site works:

The script RARs the release, uploads it to RS and Uploadjockey (UJ links are then extracted into the website), and posts them to the website. NFO, SFV and screenshots from the sample are taken and displayed in the site. As well as show/album/movie information and size, number of files, pretime (which usually is around 5 minutes when the auto is on...we use scene FTPs as source, not torrents). All those steps are displayed on the website in real time (main page and upload queue page).

That’s not all – SceneFlux has an IRC channel irc.sceneflux.net #sceneflux (irc://irc.sceneflux.net/sceneflux) which announces the release as soon as it is finished downloading and therefore enters the queue, as well as a permalink that will show the status of the upload (with links updated in real time) and the usual show/album/movie data. Also, the site is AD FREE, therefore we need donation to survive...as we need upload servers to create the links, and not just index them as any other ddl blog.

As I said, UJ links are automatically extracted to the website so at the end, we upload to:
Rapidshare.com
Megaupload.com
Hotfile.com
Filefactory.com
Depositfiles.com
Sharingmatrix.com

The uploading progress is indeed displayed in real time on the web interface. You can even see a sneak peak of which releases will get uploaded next if you visit the ‘Upload Queue’ Page.

SceneFlux Upload Queue

If you are a fan of TV shows and MP3 music albums, chances are that you’ll like SceneFlux’s dedicated pages for TV releases and its MP3 Archive (accessible from the top toolbar). These pages make it easier for you to find a release – for example the TV shows page allows users browse for listed shows by name/alphabetical index/genre, search for a specific show and even offers links to additional information about the show (which usually points to TVRage, IMDB and TheTVDB). Similarly, the MP3 archive page makes music more discoverable with the addition of many usability features.

While SceneFlux already has several great features up it’s sleeve, there are plans to add more. We’re told that many additional features such as a request system based on newsgroups are in the making. If you would like to check the site out, use the link below to visit their homepage – signup, registration or log in is not required, even to download.

[Click Here] to visit SceneFlux homepage

Special thanks to SceneFlux owner for the heads up.

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SKIDROW Beats UBISOft DRM, Denies Hacking Claims

This is probably old news but since we’ve been covering the ‘UBISoft DRM’ sage from the beginning, here’s another episode. As you may already know, UBISoft recently introduced a new Digital Rights Management (DRM) system to thwart piracy of their PC games. This controversial DRM which required users to be connected to the internet whenever they played the game, was initially a success with pirates not being able to hack illegitimate copies of UBI’s newer generation titles such as Assassin's Creed 2. However, the DRM was not the impenetrable shield UBISoft expected it to be – some innovative folks from a well known Russian underground community soon found a way to emulate the authentication server. If the emu server wasn't enough, the warez scene has now joined the party with what looks like an actual crack (and not a workaround) for this much hyped protection.

ubisoft skidrow
Image: An allegedly fake screenshot of UBISoft’s web page which was earlier posted on several prominent news sites – SKIDROW denies any hacking attempts on their part. 

If there was a race between P2P and scene for a working pirated version of AC2, then P2P won that battle a long time ago with the Emu server. It was not a true crack and did not circumvent the protection (merely bypassed) but the method did seemingly work. However for those who were waiting to witness the real downfall of UBI’s DRM and see it get cracked into oblivion, SKIDROW’s release should be great news. SKIDROW claims to have cracked the protection and if what’s said in the NFO is correct, they are not using an emulation method at all. Quoted below is the release NFO:

While we worked on this release, we noticed that several news webpages, forums, blogs etc. posted information, including a
screenshot of a Ubisoft server attack message, which showed our group name.

First of all, that picture is a fake, nor would any member of Skid Row cause such riot, as we're only here to compete with
our game release competitors, nothing else. Neither do we encourage anyone to take such actions, no matter how much we agree, that DRM's like this one, are only hurting those that do want to buy the game or have bought it.

Another point is those news medias, we mentioned before, post anything these days, no matter if it's a joke or not. Beware what you're posting, just because you want to prank someone. This release is an accomplishment of weeks of investigating,
experimenting, testing and lots of hard work.

We know that there is a server emulator out in the open, which makes the game playable, but when you look at our cracked content, you will know that it can't be compared to that. Our work does not construct any program deviation or any kind
of host file paradox solutions. Install game and copy the cracked content, it's that simple.

Since we don't want to see cheap imitations, we protected our work with a solid shield. Not because we want to deceive the majority, like certain people out there, but because we have in the past been an open book of knowledge for our competitors.

Real cracking is done by The Leading Force

I haven’t tried the crack myself but as per comments on gaming forums, it all works sans a few unlockable items. That means one thing – from a small release group who stuck to releasing budget games a while back, SKIDROW has come a long way (plus they release some cool cracktros from time to time – now that’s old school :p ). They were one of the first groups to have a go at UBI’s new protection with a crack for Silent Hunter 5 (although a buggy one) and in the end they seem to have succeeded. Anyways now it would be interesting to see UBISoft’s move – will they update their DRM and patch its holes in Splinter Cell Conviction? Or will the Scene/P2P get the better of it?

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The X – Brand New Private Tracker From ScL Crew

Long time readers of this blog are probably familiar with the rise and fall of Scenelife (or ScL), the elusive general/0day tracker that finally shut down for good several weeks ago. While ScL is no more, the crew behind the tracker have not been silent - They’ve been preparing for the launch of ‘The X’, a next generation general/0-day torrent tracker based on the brand new (and yet to be made public) SCTBDEV codebase. The X tracks scene and P2P releases related to almost every category on the planet ranging from movies to music. And unlike many other new entrants to the BT scene which initially track only a handful torrents, The X is kicking off it’s operations with more than 15000 active torrents in the database.

Just like ScL used to be, The X does not allow it’s members to post screenshots, logo, full tracker name or URL in public. We have been told by staff that these measures are taken purely for security reasons. For those interested in getting a sneak peak of this tracker, there’s a full HD trailer online. Yeah you heard correct – a trailer for a BitTorrent tracker :p


To watch this video in larger resolutions, view it on YouTube from this link.

As we said earlier, you don’t often see General/0Day trackers being launched with over 15k torrents. Hell, most sites do not index that many torrents even after being online for a year. But The X does indeed track over 15500 torrents at this point and more are being added at regular intervals. Most of these torrents have 1 seeders each but they appear to be seedbox hosted and have pretty good download speeds (or at least the ones I tried had). Note that the 15000 torrent count is without any pornographic or adult content – XXX torrents are banned from this tracker and from its forums – The X is a family friendly site.

To prevent a lot of members signing up and then becoming inactive the tracker (a common problem in both new and old BitTorrent sites), The X enforces tougher than normal activity rules. Both download and upload are counted when weighing the activity of a member and forum posts and comments are also taken into account. A snatch policy is currently in the works as well and we are told that users would be required to make minimum of 3 snatches per month in order to survive on this tracker. Additionally, The X has a unique user class system where promotion requires not only a minimum ratio but a maximum ratio as well. For example, quoted below are the requirements for one particular user class promotion:

Must have uploaded atleast 25 GB, downloaded at least 15GB, have a ratio above above 0.9, and a ratio not more than 4.5, have made 15 forum posts, and 5 torrent comments.
The promotion is automatic when these conditions are met. Note that you will be automatically demoted from this status if your ratio drops below 0.9 or goes above 4.5.

Note that having a higher ratio than what’s specified in the FAQ will not get you any warnings or get you disabled. An excessively high ratio would only be a barrier in user class promotion. Either way, it’s strongly recommended that you read the FAQ and Rules in full the first the first time you log into this site.

How to get into The X

As we always say, no private tracker blog post would be complete without a way for our readers to get into the site. Thankfully, The X is not one of those uber l33t trackers you’ll have to trade your ass to get in. The site has an official invites IRC channel and you will easily be able to obtain an invite provided that you pass the short interview process. Invites channel details are as follows ( once on the channel, please follow instructions on channel topic ) :

Server: irc.p2p-net.eu
Channel: #x.interviews
Direct Link: irc://irc.p2p-net.eu/x.interviews 

Newbie to IRC? Never fear – it’s not remotely complicated as it sounds. Read this brief tutorial and you will be all set.

Special thanks to SceneLife crew who gave us a heads up on this story and let our editors have a look around the tracker even before it was launched.

winPenPack – Great Portable Software Collection For Your Flash Drive

Over the years, portable software have become immensely popular among all demographics of computer users. Portable applications do not require installation, do not pollute system registry with junk data and do not leave traces of usage in system memory or hard drive. You may have come across portable software collections such as ‘PortableApps Suite’ – winPenPack is another one such apps suite which groups together a number of portable software in an easy to use package. It comes in many flavors such as 'School, Web, Personal and can prove to be extremely useful for students, professionals and even for those who are using it at home for personal use.

winPenPack

winPenPack is not a new piece of software – it’s been online since 2005 and has been improving and expanding over the last 5 years. By 2010 it has evolved into a massive collection of portable software with over 50 apps now included in the suite. winPenPack includes two types of software; true portable apps and X-software. Some of the apps included in the suite are real portable builds and do not require external assistance to run. Then there is X-software – these are not special portable builds but portability is achieved by running them in a forced mode. This is easily done through X-Launcher, a freeware utility developed by winPenPack crew. This way you get to run non portable software such as Miranda IM, Notepad++, OpenOffice.org, VideoLan, etc in a ‘virtual’ portable mode.

winPenPack suite comes in several different versions:

  • 2GB – The version with the most number of portable software. Almost everything is included.
  • Essential – Minimal version of the suite which includes only the essential apps.
  • Game – Includes portable games
  • School – Includes applications geared towards students – great for use at school, university, etc.
  • Web – Applications required for web surfing, instant messaging, etc
  • Personal – Set of applications for those who are using the suite at home

A detailed list of applications included in winPenPack plus a comparison of different versions of the suite (as listed above) can be found here. All of these apps are integrated into the winPenPack launcher through which you can launch them with the click of a button.

Download

winPenPack suite and all of the software included in it are free.

[Click Here] to visit winPenPack download page to download winPenPack, individual software, launchers and more

BitTorrent Tracker For Mac & iPhone Apps - Save The Coratee (STC) - Invites On IRC

For several months, there have been numerous requests from our readers to feature on this blog a private BitTorrent tracker that dealt specifically with the Apple Mac platform. Although you could find Mac software on general trackers and on some of the specialized apps trackers, almost all hard core Mac fans from novice to power users would like the idea of a specialized tracker filled with software for their beloved operating system. Save The Coratee (STC) is one such site which is a must have for all Apple Mac, iPhone or iPod users. This ratio free private tracker indexes software, games, tutorial videos and even books and magazines for both Mac OS and iPhone. Although closed for public signup, interested members can easily gain access to this tracker through STC’s official IRC invites channel.

Save The Coratee

Launched nearly 2 years ago, STC is currently one of the most stable Mac trackers on the net. As of 19/4/2010 it has 3600 registered (enabled) members and ~4800 active torrents uploaded to the tracker. The site is based on a heavily customized version of Gazelle codebase and has a ton of great usability features as well as added functionality (for example the ‘Coratee’ points system). According to site administrators, a new and improved version of STC based on Gazelle RC2 is currently in the works.

Anyways let’s get back to the most important aspect of STC; content. As mentioned earlier this tracker is full of software and games for Apple Mac OS X. But that’s not all – tons of apps & games for Apple’s famed iPhone are also indexed. Other additional torrent categories include Books/Magazines, Music, Audiobooks and E-Learning tutorials. In short, this tracker is a godsend for Apple fanboys :) There are some torrent packs indexed on STC but it’s the Collages feature that adds real value in this department – it creates a number of additional ‘virtual’ packs by grouping related torrents together.

stc index

Another great feature everyone will love is how STC binds similar torrents together in its main index. Powered by Gazelle’s advanced grouping features, STC makes it a breeze to find even older versions of indexed software (see above screenshots for an example).

As mentioned earlier, SaveTheCoratee is a ratio free private tracker. Instead of ratio, the site uses an innovative bonus points system based on ‘Coratees Saved’ as a currency. You can read all about it their WiKi article located here (and it’s highly recommended you do this before doing anything else once you join). Currently there are multiple ways for users to earn points on STC:

  • You are given 1 point per downloaded gigabyte.
  • You are given 10 points per torrent uploaded.
  • You are given 1 point per 10 hours spent seeding per torrent.
  • You are given between 1 and 100 points based on how long you have been seeding vs. possible time.
  • You are given 1 point per torrent snatch.
  • Manual Bonus - Given at the discretion of staff and is non-negotiable. Points can be given or taken away.

STC is currently closed for signup – and it’s unlikely that it’ll open registrations anytime soon. However if you are looking forward to get into this tracker, you can easily obtain an invite through the official IRC invites channel. You will need to provide profile links from at least two other private trackers that you are already a member of. Invite channel and server details are as follows:

IRC Server: irc.savethecoratee.org
Channel Name: #invites
Direct Link: irc://irc.savethecoratee.org/invites
If you are a beginner to IRC, we suggest you read this brief tutorial.

STC Homepage URL: http://savethecoratee.org
Twitter Page: http://twitter.com/coratee

Special thanks to STC administration and staff members for the support given.

tpsBB Launches Ratio Free Tracker, Teams Up With DDR and DUS Release Groups

We’ve featured tpsBB several times on this blog but in all those cases it was introduced as a direct download link forum. However, this site has expanded and it is now more than simple DDL forum. In addition to one click hosting download links section in their forums, tpsBB now has a fully fledged BitTorrent tracker. It’s a ratio free private tracker that is integrated to the forum and it is likely to track exclusive tpsBB encodes including high definition content as well as TV scene releases. For those hearing about tpsBB for the first time, it’s a site run and maintained by non scene encoder group NHanC3. Along with exclusive releases by NHanC3, you can find HD content released by P2P groups CCnSS, AQUA, PRODJi, WHIZZ, ASCo and more.

tpsBB_thumb%5B5%5D[1]

Once you register and log into tpsBB, you’ll notice that there is now a new section called ‘tpsBB torrentz’ above the usual ‘tiRG Downloads section’ (this is where DDL links are indexed – read more about it here). If you browse ‘tpsBB torrentz’ you’ll notice that it is a forum based torrent index categorized by movie and TV release types (alternatively, you can directly access the BitTorrent tracker through the ‘Tracker CP’ drop down menu on topmost toolbar). Some of the thread names suggest that this tracker will soon begin tracking exclusive releases by tpsBB internal encoder teams (NhaNc3 ,CCnSS, etc) which have up to now been made available only via one click hosting sites such as RapidShare.

However, make no mistake – tpsBB’s tracker is still very young and is currently no match for their own DDL section which is rich with content and gets updated more regularly. As of 18/4/2010 there are only around ~75 torrents but strong user participation (some of those torrents have 200+ seeders) suggest that the tracker will definitely develop into something solid.

tpsBB torrents

Meanwhile there is more good news for existing members of tpsBB. They seem to have partnered with two Indian P2P release groups, DDR and DUS, and plans are afloat to upload a lot of Bollywood stuff in addition to the already popular Hollywood movies that are indexed. Quoted below is a recent message sent by the site administration:

Dear tpsBBians,
As promised we are back with tpsBB tracker & Rapidleech is back working again.
tpsBB is badly in need of uploaders [Both torrent and Direct downloads]. People who are interested can PM me. Uploaders will be provided with exclusive tpsBB seedbox accounts.
We recently had some downtime because our database was hacked.We lost data for at least a week. Now everything is secure and backed up.
Kindly donate to keep the tracker alive. It costs 300$ /month for the servers and the admins have been paying it from their own pockets.
Talks have been going with bollywood release groups DDR n DUS & they are ready to release on tpsBB. tpsBB will be having Exclusive Bollywood and Hollywood stuffs including Micro High Definition encodes.
tpsBB is a ratio free tracker for now. So make the most of it.

By the way, older members of the tracker would be glad to know that recent downtime issues now seem to be resolved and the site looks stable now. If you are still not a member of this forum and want to check it out, registrations are currently open.

Site Name: tpsBB (http://www.tpsbb.com)

Registration URL: http://tpsbb.com/register.php

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Updated R5 Movie Release Dates For May, June, July & August 2010

Back in December 2009, we posted a list of R5 movie DVD releases scheduled to be out in the year 2010. Since DVD release dates tend to get changed ever so often, only some of the movies in that list were released as planned. For those interested, here’s an updated and revised list of R5 DVD release dates for the months of May, June, July and August 2010 (note that these release dates too are subject to change). Some of the movies in the list have already leaked online with their sources being DVD Screeners, DVD for Region 1 (R1), DVD for Region 6 (R6) etc. This list was originally posted in SCC forums by user PooPy. We are merely quoting his work here so full credit goes to him.

May

  • Extraordinary Measures - May 13
  • Greenberg - May 13
  • Kick Ass - May 13
  • It's Complicated - May 18
  • Alice In Wonderland - May 25
  • The Back-up Plan - May 27

June

  • Everybody's Fine - June 1
  • Preacher's Kid - June 1
  • Date Night - June 10
  • When In Rome - June 15
  • Valentine's Day - June 15
  • Wolfman, The - June 22
  • Lovely Bones, The - June 29

July

  • Marmaduke - July 1
  • The A-Team - July 8
  • Green Zone – July
  • She's Out of My League – July
  • Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang – July
  • Invictus - July

August

  • Knight Of The Day - August 5
  • Predators - August 12
  • Unthinkable - August 19
  • Cop Out – August
  • Clash of the Titans (2010) - August

The R5 (DVD for Region 5 ) format was first introduced to reduce DVD movie piracy in areas such as Russia, Indian subcontinent and Africa. R5 DVDs are usually released before other regions and this has made them a popular source for online movie leaks. As it stands right now, if you know the R5 release date of a movie you can pretty much guess when that particular movie will leak online.

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BioTorrents : BitTorrent Tracker For Scientists To Share Research Data & Software

In our 3+ years of being online we have posted about nearly 1000 private torrent trackers. Among these, there were only a handful sites such as GameUpdates that dealt with 100% legal, legitimate content – all the others had a mix of both legit and pirated releases. BioTorrents is one of those rare private trackers that focus only on legal content. It’s an innovative new niche site that highlights yet another legitimate use of BitTorrent – sharing of scientific research data including large datasets and even open access software. In other words, it’s a huge data repository that can be accessed by hundreds and thousands of scientists and students worldwide.

BioTorrents

A brief introduction to BioTorrents and an explanation as to why they opted for BitTorrent technology to power their data transfers is given on the site’s ‘about’ page (quoted below).

BioTorrents allows scientists to rapidly share their results, datasets, and software using the popular BitTorrent file sharing technology.

All data is open-access and any illegal filesharing is not allowed on BioTorrents.

We encourage researchers and organizations to share their data on BioTorrents as an alternative to hosting files through FTP or HTTP for the following reasons:

  1. Using BioTorrents can allow researchers to download large datasets much faster.
  2. BioTorrents can act as a central listing of results, datasets, and software that can be browsed and searched.
  3. Data can be located on several servers allowing decentralization and availability of the data if one server becomes disabled

BioTorrent’s existence itself is a very good answer to the turds who keep on harping ‘BitTorrent = illegal downloading’. This site does not host any illegal content and all of the software and data distributed are either public domain or have ‘sharing friendly’ licenses such as Creative Commons (CC), GPL and so on. BioTorrents has its own private torrent tracker (biotorrents.net/announce.php) but all of the indexed torrents are tracked by OpenBitTorrent as a backup measure. In case anyone was wondering, the site is built on TBDEV tracker script.

Note that this is still a very young tracker that is less than a week old. I don’t think it’s got much publicity yet except for an article on Ars Technica and being featured on isoHunt’s Twitter. The site currently tracks around 30 torrents and has 150+ members. These numbers will without a doubt improve as the news spreads in the science community.

BioTorrents Index

As for the content, BioTorrent currently tracks torrents related to the following categories: Bioinformatics, Chemistry, Genomics, Metabolomics, Metagenomics, Miscellaneous, Papers, Password Protected, Phylogenetics, Physics, Proteomics and Transcriptomics. I have to say none of the uploads made much sense to me (since I am no scientist) but I can understand how BitTorrent technology can help reduce bandwidth costs and allow greater accessibility for content – some of those torrents are huge.

Signups for BioTorrents are currently open. If you are a scientist or a student of science, you might want to check the site out.

Site Name: BioTorrents (http://www.biotorrents.net)

Signup URL: http://www.biotorrents.net/signup.php

How To Fix Nokia Phones Not Getting Detected In PC Suite/OVI Suite After Update

I’ve been using Nokia OVI suite to connect my Nokia N86 8MP mobile device to the PC for quite some time. Since I had not updated OVI suite in a while and the app had been complaining about new versions being available, today I let the built in auto updater run. After the update was completed and system was restarted, I ran into a strange problem. The phone was not getting detected properly in either OVI suite or PC Suite. Initially OVI suite gave the error message ‘Please change the USB mode on your phone’ (or something like that) and wanted me to switch the connectivity mode to ‘PC Suite’. Problem was that it was already set to PC suite mode. Then I tried removing the device from OVI suite and re-adding it but the results were far worse this time.

Now the phone was not getting detected properly at all – OVI suite identified it as ‘S60 Handset’ and kept complaining about a connection made with an unsupported USB mode. PC Suite did not seem to recognize the phone as well. However I could browse the device’s internal memory as well as memory card contents using ‘Portable Devices’ section on Windows' 7’s my computer. After searching online for a solution (and having found that nothing seemed to work in my case) i decided to try a simple fix which had helped me resolve a similar issue with a different, older phone model – reinstalling the Nokia connectivity cable driver. After I reinstalled the cable driver and re-connected the mobile device to PC, it installed all the drivers for my phone model from scratch and everything returned to normal :)

Note that I ran into this bug after updating from an older version of OVI suite to the latest version (v2.1.1.1 with connectivity driver 7.1.27.0)  on a Windows 7 operating system. If you run into a similar issue – here are step by step instructions on how to reinstall the connectivity cable driver.

nokia reinstall cable driver

  1. Disconnect your phone from PC if connected.
  2. Open Control Panel and go to ‘Programs and Features’
  3. From the list of available programs, choose ‘Nokia Connectivity Cable Driver’
  4. Click on the ‘Change’ button on top toolbar.
  5. In the setup dialog box that pops up next, choose ‘Repair’ and select ok. Wait for setup to complete.
  6. Restart the computer if prompted.
  7. Now connect your phone to the PC. Driver installation should complete and both OVI suite and PC suite (hopefully) should detect your mobile properly now.

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10 DDL Forums To Download Lossless Music, HD Movies, TV Shows, Classic Films & More

As promised, here is our second DDL forum roundup which includes summarized information about direct download link sites featured on FILEnetworks Blog in the past couple of months. This month’s update focuses more on high definition movies, Television shows, scene released MP3 music, Lossless music and eBooks. Since there is always high demand for exclusive content, we have included several forums which have their own internal P2P encoder groups (and thus a lot of unique releases) as well as some pretty huge forums with thousands of members and user generated content. Updated sites statistics, registration URL, a brief description and a link to full site review is available for all forums featured in this article.

While all of the mentioned sites are currently open for registration, we request our readers to have a look at the full site review before registering. Full review has all the information you need including screenshots, content details, internal encoder group info (if any) and will help you decide if you really need to become a member of a particular site or not. Hopefully this would reduce forums getting filled with would-be-inactive members who signed up just because they can :p

Note: Most of sites specified below requires registration. In almost all cases, download links are only visible for registered users.

HDMania
HDmania 
Site Name: HDMania (http://www.hdmania.org)
Registration URL: http://www.hdmania.org/registration_rules.asp
Stats: 62000+ members
Description: One of the largest and most content rich direct download link forums for high definition content. From TV shows to movies to HD trailers, this site has tons of content including some untouched HD uploads.
Full Review: [Click Here]

HD-UNIT3D 
HD-UNIT3D
Site Name: HD-UNiT3D (http://hd-united.com)
Signup URL: http://hd-united.com/register.php?
Stats: 12800+ members
Description: A great forum for high definition movie and TV releases. Includes a lot of unique, exclusive encodes by P2P release group UNIT3D. Releases are available in several different qualites including 720p, 480p and m-HD (Micro-HD).
Full Review: [Click Here]

x264-BB
x264-bb
Site Name: x264-BB (http://x264-bb.com/)
Signup URL: http://x264-bb.com/register.php
Stats: 33000+ members
Description: Another great HD content forum with lots of unique releases by internal encoder groups. Please refer to the full review for more details on x264-bb exclusive releases. Indexes m-720p, m-864p, m-HD, m-DVD and other releases.
Full Review: [Click Here]

ev0.in
ev0.in
Site Name: ev0 (http://www.ev0.in/)
Signup URL: Signup not required
Stats: 9800+ TV release uploads
Description: ev0.in is an excellent resource for direct download links of TV episodes. Each episode is uploaded to multiple one click hosting sites and downloading is actually a one click process with no registration required.
Full Review: [Click Here]

ShareBus
ShareBus 
Site Name: ShareBus (http://sharebus.com)
Signup URL: http://sharebus.com/index.php?act=Reg&CODE=00
Stats: 112000+ members
Description: ShareBus is one of the best places on the net to find and download AFR releases (Advanced Filesize Regulation which focuses more on quality rather than file size – explained in detail in full review). It indexes both new and old movies including English as well as foreign films.
Full Review: [Click Here]

musiCORE
musiCORE 
Site Name: musiCORE (http://0day.musicore.net/)
Signup URL: Optional - invite may be obtained from http://0day.musicore.net/invite.php
Stats: Unknown, thousands of music albums
Description: musiCORE indexes download links to scene released music albums and has great pre times as well as better availability of files (since they use a file spreader service to upload each release to multiple hosts) than most other similar sites that are around.
Full Review: [Click Here]

FLAC Share
flac share 
Site Name: FlacShare (http://flacshare.net)
Signup URL: http://flacshare.net/register.html
Stats: 18000+ registered members
Description: FLAC Share is a private community that offers verified one click hosting links (RapidShare, Megaupload, etc) to download English music albums encoded in lossless file formats such as FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec).
Full Review: [Click Here]

0DayMusic
0DayMusic 
Site Name: 0DayMusic (http://0daymusic.org/)
Signup URL: Signup not required
Stats: 340+ pages of music releases, each page lists about 300 albums.
Description: 0DayMusic is one of the largest scene MP3 music album indexers around. The site is updated daily with tons of new albums which seem to be auto uploaded to Uploading.to one click hosting service.
Full Review: [Click Here]

FlazX
FlazX 
Site Name: FlazX  (http://www.flazx.com)
Signup URL: http://www.flazx.com/register.php
Stats: Actual stats unknown - hundreds and thousands of books indexed
Description: FlazX is an excellent forum for direct downloads of Information Technology related EBooks. It behaves differently from your average DDL forum so we recommended that you read the full review. If you run into any problems with this site including not being able to find download links, check the comments in review for possible solutions.
Full Review: [Click Here]

tpsBB
tpsBB  
Site Name: tpsBB (http://www.tpsbb.com)
Registration URL: http://tpsbb.com/register.php
Stats:
Description: tpsBB is another DDL forum run and maintained by non scene encoder group NHanC3. tpsBB indexes download links to a lot of encodes by NHanC3 as well as few other groups such as CCnSS, AQUA, PRODJi, WHIZZ, etc. Please read full review for more details.
Full Review: [Click Here]

What’s the best download manager for use with DDL Forums?

We strongly recommend you use JDownloader. This download manager is optimized for handling multiple one click hosting site links (commonly found on forums listed above) and includes a host of other features that will make your life a lot easier. The software is  free and comes without adware. To read more about JDownloader and download it for multiple operating systems, refer to this article.

Need more links?

In case you didn’t read our previous DDL forums update, you can go ahead and have a look at it now. Most of the sites featured in the last update are still open for signup. In addition, you can see our latest reviews in the DDL Forums section accessed from here.

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