If you missed the last time PTN opened external invite applications, there is no reason to worry. They are open once again and probably will remain open thought the entire weekend (sitewide 2X upload is enabled at time of this post as well and will remain so for another 12 hours). As you might already know, PTN is a ratio free movie/TV/OST tracker with lots of packs and exclusive torrents. Unlike many other private Bittorrent sites, PTN does not focus entirely on the content – it’s community based tracker where everybody knows everybody.

As of (31/5/2009), PTN currently tracks over 5200 torrents and their userbase comprises of 2200+ registered members. Content on this site includes Movies, TV shows and official Soundtracks. This is definitely one of the best private trackers for movies packs – there are over 200 of them. PTN layout is easy to use and is packed with nice little extra features such as arcade, blackjack, pirate galleries, pirate’s notes box, gold system with 2x, 3x, 5x gold and random category bonus, three separate browse pages for movies/TV/OST, requests system, staff picks and so on.

Being a private community, PTN is almost never open to public signups. You can however get into this tracker through an invite from an existing member, via tracker recruitment threads on various Bittorrent forums or by filling the external invite application form that is occasionally available (such as right now) at a special URL. PTN invite application was explained and discussed in some detail in our previous review of the site. We suggest you read the comments to that article which includes responses by users as well as PTN Staff.

Site Name: PTN

Invite Application URL: http://*********.***/comeandplay.php (do not use ‘www’ in the address)

Note: PTN tracker rules prohibit displaying full tracker URL in public so only the location of the invite application was given (../comeandplay.php). Do not ask for full tracker URL or post it here.

Read the rest of this article...

PTN ratio free movie tracker – Invite applications open again

Popular General/0day tracker CZTEAM (formerly known as CZONE) has opened free signups for the last time. Once registration closes down this time around, the only way into this great general tracker would be via invites from existing members. The previous open signup of CZTEAM was speculated to be the last as well. This decision however was changed after 5000 users were disabled due to breaking tracker rules/being inactive. Following notice regarding the open signups is quoted from CZTEAM homepage:

After lots of requests from our beloved users and after about 5k accounts disabled due to breaking the rules we decided to give one more chance and UNLOCK the gates for the last time.

Therefore call you friends and give them the news: The Last FreeSignup on CZTeam has STARTED!

Remember to read the rules, faq and be active on the tracker. Inactivity leads to the deletion of your account.

The countdown has begun....

Everything that there was to be discussed about CZTEAM tracker was discussed in our recent review of the site (You can find screenshots of the tracker there as well) so it will not be repeated here. In addition to the information already posted, let us tell you this – don’t break rules or cheat on CzT (or on any other tracker for that matter) - the staff will hunt you down and disable your ass.

Site Name: CZTEAM (http://torrents.czteam.ro/)

Signup URL: http://torrents.czteam.ro/signup.php

Read the rest of this article...

CZTeam General/0Day BitTorrent Tracker – The Last Free Signup Has Begun

Final build of Windows Vista Service Pack 2 (update KB948465) ) was released to the public by Microsoft two days ago. I’m not sure if it’s available via Windows Update yet (i don’t use the service) but direct download links for SP2 final are now available. Some of the notable features included in Service Pack 2 include Bluetooth 2.1 feature pack, Blu-Ray media record support, Windows Search 4.0, better streaming capabilities for HD audio and video, a sh1tload of security and reliability updates and many other smaller fixes and enhancements. Both 32-bit 64-bit editions are available.

Although Vista SP2 Final was officially released to the public on the 27th of May, leaked versions have been available on BitTorrent trackers as early as the 13th of May. Warez scene group ZWTISO (ISO division of Zero Waiting Time) even released SP2 integrated untouched versions of Vista ISOs way before the official release.

The effects of installing SP2 on a pirated (cracked) version of Vista is not known. It does not seem to include the hotfix that can detect and disable some BIOS emulation cracks (KB94510). This update has been available on Windows Update for some time but the full list of Vista SP2 features available on Microsoft TechNet does not include kb94510 in the list. I guess pirates are pretty safe in this case.

Anyway you need to have Vista Service Pack 1 installed before you install Service Pack 2. Also, you need to uninstall any pre release builds of SP2 before the installation.

Download

Following are direct download links that point to files hosted on official Microsoft servers. No 3rd party links are included. Vista SP2 standalone installer size is around 350MB.

[Click Here] to download Windows Vista Sp2 x86 (32-bit) Standalone Installer

[Click Here] to download Windows Vista Sp2 x64 (64-bit) Standalone Installer

Read the rest of this article...

Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Final Direct Download Links

Many BitTorrent users would agree with me when I say that TTi.nu (The Internationals) was one of the best General/0Day trackers that were around. TTi was one of the many private trackers hosted in Sweden which was once considered a safe heaven for file sharing. However. The Pirate Bay’s defeat in court changed everything and TTi too were caught in the storm – they decided not to index any copyrighted material and become a ‘legal only’ torrent site. Needless to say this wasn’t a very popular decision among the site’s users. However the good news is that normalcy has returned to TTi – they are now tracking scene releases and zero day material  just like in the good old days.

As we reported earlier, this change was on the cards for some time. Public signups,which were open since TTi became legal only, closed on the 28th of May and by 29th Requests and Offers features of the tracker had been implemented again. And by today (30th of May), TTi has begun tracking releases made by scene groups. All former torrent categories have returned and it’s expected that TTi will go on to become that great general tracker with tons of packs and exclusive releases it used to be in no time.

Image: Old torrent categories have returned to TTi 

As for new registrations, they are closed : “Update: Signups are now CLOSED! You can still invite people though, but who knows for how long? “. If you’ve been reading FILEnetworks Blog, you might have already created an account on TTi when you had the chance - we warned in advance that signups would close soon (in our previous article). There is no reason to believe that this tracker would open its door to the public in the near future. They already have a 20K+ user base and it hardly ever opened up when it was in full swing anyways. Finally best wishes for the ‘new old TTi’ from TEAM FILEnetworks.

Related Articles

• TTi.nu – back to the good old days?
• Download Legal Music Torrents from TTi Tracker
• SoftMP3, SweDVDR and DarkSide trackers to shut down, TTi policy change

Read the rest of this article...

Scene releases return to TTi torrent tracker

Sweden’s private tracker community which collapsed like a pack of cards following TPB’s defeat in court, is definitely recovering. Trackers such as SwePiracy, PirateTorrents and SceneHD have already returned with the likes of TTi.nu set to return to normalcy soon. In the meantime, two very popular trackers, SweDVDR and SoftMP3, have released their source code to the public so that new tracker admins may use the source to build their own trackers (see related URLs section at the bottom of this article for download links). This article discusses DVDRSOURCE, one of the very first private torrent trackers to use SweDVDR’s source code.

Just like SweDVDR (now defunct), DVDRSOURCE is a specialized untouched DVD-R tracker. You can find DVD5/DVD9 versions of popular movies and TV shows along with original menus, languages, subtitles, bonus DVD features and soundtracks. As mentioned above DVDRSOURCE is a Swedish tracker; Interface language is Swedish and lots of indexed DVDRs are those released in the Nordic region. This doesn’t mean this is a useless tracker for English speaking users – most indexed DVDRs have English audio with optional Swedish subtitles (NORDiC tag usually does not mean they are dubbed). You can double check this by going to the torrent description page and checking under the ‘Audio’ section which usually mentions spoken languages.

DVDRSOURCE might use SweDVDR’s source but it still is a brand new tracker that has to build the torrent index as well as the user database from scratch. They’ve only been online for four days and the progress so far has been quite amazing. As of 30/5/2009, DVDSOURCE has 1850+ registered members and 70+ torrents (they seem to have got quite a lot of publicity in a very short time). Almost all of the torrents are of course very well seeded.

For those who wish to check this tracker out, good news is that DVDRSOURCE is currently open for signup. You can easily create a free account and a confirmation email is not even needed (use the translation below if you don’t understand Swedish). It still has a long way to go but who knows, this could be the next SweDVDR!

Site Name: DVDRSOURCE (http://www.dvdrsource.org)

Signup URL: http://www.dvdrsource.org/signup.php

Signup page translation:

Swedish	English
Önskat användarnamn:	Desired username
Kön	Gender
Ålder	Age
Lösenord	Password
Skriv lösenordet igen:	Repeat Password

As for the interface, clicking on ‘Nytt’ will take you to the torrent index (aka browse page). Rest is self explanatory.

Related Links:

• SweDVDR source code download: http://mintorrent.se/t5ibSa/swedvdr_source_rar
• SoftMP3 soure code download: http://mintorrent.se/EOA1vz/SOFTMP3_rar

Read the rest of this article...

DVDRSOURCE – New untouched DVDR tracker based on SweDVDR source

If you were wondering whatever the hell happened to PTFiles, here is an update. As you may already be aware, the domain http://ptfiles.org no longer points to the BitTorrent site – it just leads to a parked page with lots of irrelevant keywords. There is however little reason to worry – PTF is alive and well. Both the site and the tracker can now be accessed using the new URL http://ptfiles.net. User database and the torrent index has not been affected by the move – all data including torrents and user ratios are intact. If you were not an old member of PTF, you can still check this site out – signups are currently open.

PTF IRC channel now carries the following topic:

ATTENTION WE HAVE A NEW DOMAIN

ptfiles.org is now ptfiles.net. Please edit the announce url in your clients to reflect new URL or redownload the .torrent file for any torrents you may be seeding/leeching

THANK YOU :)

If you have never heard about PTFiles (formerly known as Phoenix-Torrent) before, it’s a promising General/0Day tracker with a great community. You can read more about site features and view screenshots in our PTF review which can be found here.

Site Name: PTFiles (http://ptfiles.net)

Signup URL: http://ptfiles.net/register.php

IRC Channel: irc://irc.p2p-network.net/phoenix-torrents

Read the rest of this article...

PTFiles not shut down – Site online at new URL

Note: This post has been bumped to the front because StB closed signups just 1-2 hours after the article was originally posted. This time around signups will remain open for 24 hours.

Although we usually post about at least one private torrent tracker everyday here at FILEnetworks Blog, it’s been ages since a specialized mobile torrent tracker was featured. When it comes to mobile trackers SyncTheBits (StB) is as good as it gets. From its humble beginnings back in 2008, StB has grown on to become one of the largest BitTorrent sites (in terms of content) for mobile content currently in existence. From appz/games for popular mobile platforms such as Symbian, Java, iPhone, PalmOS, BlackBerry etc, StB even tracks mobile optimized multimedia including re-encoded movies and TV shows.

As of 28/5/2009, StB has an active user base of close to 1800 members. Inactive accounts are very frequently disabled on this tracker – the admins seem to want very active members for the site. SyncTheBits currently tracks a little over 3000 active torrents. This is a pretty huge number, specially for a private tracker that focuses ONLY on mobile content.

Speaking of content, StB is no longer the mobile appz-only tracker it was back when it was started. The site has further expanded and it now tracks mobile optimized movies, TV shows, E-books and other media as well. The following screenshots will probably help you get a better understanding of what can be found on StB:

Image: Category icons at StB

As you can probably see from the above screen, there is a category titled ‘Packs’ in the list. The packs section contains over 40 torrents – all exclusive torrents unique to StB.

Image: Part of the torrent index at StB

StB is closed for signups most of the time. However the good news is that public registrations are currently open. Even better news is that free leech and double upload has been enabled for all indexed torrents (global freeleech and 2X upload). We do not know for how long open signups will stay open so get in while you can.

Site Name: SynctheBits (http://syncthebits.com/)

Signup URL: http://syncthebits.com/signup.php

Categories:

• BlackBerry Apps
• BlackBerry Games
• E-Books Fiction
• E-Books Non Fiction
• iPhone Apps
• iPhone Games
• Java Apps
• Java Games
• Misc
• Nintendo DS
• StB Packs
• PalmOS Apps
• PalmOS Games
• PSP Games
• SymbianOS Apps
• SymbianOS Games
• Windows Mobile Apps
• Windows Mobile Games

Read the rest of this article...

SyncTheBits – BitTorrent tracker for mobile applications, games, ebooks & other media

About two days ago we conducted a free invitation giveaway to the specialized HD torrent tracker Awesome-HD (AHD). We received close to 400 requests within 48 hours but could only invite around 100 members since we had a limited number of invitations at our disposal. If you were one of the readers who submitted for an invite request and still haven’t been invited, here is some great news. Awesome-HD has opened its doors to the public for 48 hours – anyone who is interested in becoming a member of this tracker can now create a free account.

Following notice is posted on the site homepage regarding open signups:

The next 48 hours we open our doors for everyone interested in high quality High Definition encodes.
Open registration closes on Friday at 23:00 (UTC + 2 hours)
Your Awesome Team

In the meantime the number of registered users at AHD has rocketed past 4400 members – this figure was hovering around 3000 just two days ago.

Anyways we have covered pretty much everything about AHD in our previous article (including screenshots and content details).If you need to know more information about AHD, we strongly recommend you read our previous article.

Site Name: Awesome-HD (http://awesome-hd.com)
Signup URL: http://awesome-hd.com/register.php
Stats: ~4500 users and ~180 torrents
Full Tracker Review: Click Here

Read the rest of this article...

Awesome-HD now open for free signups

Some of the best games I’ve ever played in my life were released  for the MS-DOS platform (Prince of Persia 1, Dangerous Dave 1 to name a few). These games were so good that they can still be enjoyed now, even in 2009. Unfortunately, modern operating systems such as Windows Vista does not include full support for legacy OS such as MS-DOS. DOSBox is an application that can really help you in such cases – it’s an MS-DOS emulator that’ll allow you run all your favorite DOS games and applications on operating systems without native DOS support (Windows Vista, Linux, Mac OS X and a number of others).

Now we’ve posted about this application here on this blog before - Reason why we are mentioning it again is the release of DOSBox v0.73. This release includes a number of new features, enhancements and bugfixes and is a must have upgrade for any new old or new old DOSBox users.

Most noticeable changes:

• Support for more graphics modes and cards.
• Improved Vista support.
• New OPL emulation cores.
• Sound fixes and improvements for Mac OS X.
• Lots of compatibility fixes.
• Lots of cdrom detection improvements.
• Lots of memory (EMS/XMS) improvements.
• Various fixes and enhancements for the recompiling core.
• Support for evdev.
• Lots of DOS fixes.
• Slightly faster!
• More stable.

Download

[Click Here] to download DOSBox 0.73 from the official download page (includes separate installers for multiple platforms including Linux, Mac OS X and Windows)

[Click Here] to read our tutorial of DOSBox if you are a beginner at using this application

Read the rest of this article...

DOSBox 0.73 – Play DOS games on Windows Vista, XP and other operating systems

About two weeks ago we posted an article about TorrentVault – a decent general/0day tracker with lots of TV torrents. Since signups were open only for a very small amount of time many of our readers were not able to get in. If you missed out on this tracker earlier, this could be your lucky day. TorrentVault is having a three day long open signup exclusively for readers of FILEnetworks Blog. Although TorrentVault is reaching their maximum user limit threshold, we’ve been told that each and every new signup through the promotional link will be given a new account regardless of the user limit.

Site Name: TorrentVault (http://www.torrentvault.org)

Special Signup URL: http://www.torrentvault.org/FileNetworks_limitedPromosignup.php

Stats: 11300+ active torrents

Since most of the information about this tracker and its content were posted in one of the previous blog posts (which is only two weeks old as of 28/5), we won’t repeat the same here. For a a mini review, screenshots and user opinions about TorrentVault, read the previous article which can be found here. We strongly recommend you read it if you are interested in becoming a member of this tracker.

Special thanks to – TorrentVault administrators/staff

Read the rest of this article...

TorrentVault – Limited promotional open signups for FILEnetworks readers

Who hasn’t got a FaceBook account these days? Besides being a useful social networking utility, it could be a real time waster if you get addicted. Due to this very reason, most workplaces and educational institutes prevent users from accessing this service. faceoffIM is a useful little software that’s ideal for FaceBook addicts who want to access the service from office or school without getting caught. It’s basically a standalone FaceBook chat client with limited FB browsing features. The software comes complete with a ‘panic button’ as well as an interface that resembles internal systems at most workplaces.

Developer Description

faceoffIM is a free, standalone application designed to let you use facebook chat, without a web browser having to be open. Ever been mid-conversation with a friend but your boss/teacher came along and you had to quickly close your web browser, leaving your friend wondering why you suddenly went offline? With faceoffIM, at the touch of a button your conversations will instantly hide, but all still be open for you to continue whenever you are ready.

Features

• Quick-hide "panic button"
• Full tabbed chatting for as many conversations as you like.
• System tray icon which lights up upon new messages.

Download

[Click Here] to download faceoffIM 0.9.4 beta from official server (requires Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 to run)

Read the rest of this article...

faceoffIM- Use FaceBook at work or school without getting caught

Bitme.org is considered by many as the world’s best E-Learning torrent tracker. With over 18500 torrents in the index and 19000+ registered users, its also one of the largest E-learning trackers currently in existence. Apart from the usual flurry of daily new torrents, Bitme has recently added an entirely new category to the site titled ‘Math’. As the name implies, this category is all about Mathematics related stuff. You can find mathematical ebooks, tutorials (including video tutorials), test preparation kits and many more torrents in this section.

The following is quoted from a news post on site regarding the new addition:

May-24-09 - New Category

BitMe now has another new category that we hope will help members.
BitMe is happy to announce the MATH category...
yeah MATH!!!
Thanks to Yabood for the MATH category image.
also the category college lectures was using the TTC image, so the category has been renamed to match... you should now see TTC in the dropdown lists for that category.
enjoy
//BitMe staff

The ‘Math’ category is already seeing some serious activity with around 40 torrents being added in a single day (most of these packs and collections):

So there you have it - If you are a student, teacher or someone who has an interest in the field of mathematics, you now have a new reason to chase for a Bitme invite (the site is almost never open to the public).

Related Articles

• Free Textbooks educational tracker - download coursework, exam papers, lectures & more
• Bibliotik – BitTorrent tracker for magazines, ebooks, novels, audiobooks & more
• PureTorrents – Download text book torrents and academic eBooks

Read the rest of this article...

BitMe E-Learning Tracker – Now with mathematics ebooks, tutorials and DVDs

We are a a little late in reporting this one but here goes. Veteran scene group Razor1911 (RZR) have released a cracked version of popular life simulation game The Sims 3. The same title was earlier leaked by RELOADED (RLD) but speculation was rife that it was a beta, pre release copy of the game. According to Razor1911’s NFO, RELOADED’s release is indeed a pre release beta version of the Sims 3. The same has been stated by Electronic Arts, the game’s publisher. However, from what I have so far observed, there are no drastic differences between the two leaked versions of the game.

The main difference between RLD and RZR versions seem to be that RELOADED’s is the Digital Download version of the game while Razro1911 is the version distributed through physical media (it is mentioned in the EULA). There is a small version number change in the two releases as well - RZR seems to carry a newer build number. Additionally, RELOADED’s release contains the SecuROM DRM (which they have cracked) while RZR version only contains a DVD check (which too has been cracked).

The following is quoted from the Razor1911 NFO:

Reloaded release is not final.

If you compare the file located in:
x:GameBincode_version.txt you will get these informations
Razor1911: description=Version: 0.DL-0.0.11195  Changelist: 625803
Reloaded:  description=Version: 0.DL-0.0.11190  Changelist: 624575

If you compare the versions of TS3.exe you will get these infos:
Razor1911: 0.0.0.11195 (April 30. 2009 04:55:28)
Reloaded:  0.0.0.11190 (April 23. 2009 07:53:19)

And in the greetings section of their NFO, RZR have mentioned “Playing beta games is like having sex with a condom!” - a phrase clearly aimed at the RLD release. Despite version number changes and protection changes, game content in both the releases seem to be more or less the same. But is the RZR version really the final version of Sims 3? Who knows - It’ll only be confirmed once the game is officially released on the 2nd of June. 

Getting back to EA’s comment on leak by RELOADED, this is what they told AFP several days ago:

It's not the full game. Half of the world — an entire second city — is missing," said spokeswoman Holly Rockwood in a statement.

This statement is sort of misleading – as far as I know the second city will be available as DLC – it’s not bundled with regular copies of the game unless it’s a pre order special edition. I don’t think it has anything to do with piracy or leaked copies (then again I might be wrong).

Related Articles

• Pirates crack The Sims 3 DRM two weeks before official release
• Solutions for The Sims 3 crashes, graphics, sound and missing object issues

Read the rest of this article...

Razor1911 cracks The Sims 3 Final – Leaked RELOADED release a beta?

If you are a fan of movies, music and TV shows from Middle eastern countries, you’ll love this news. Two popular Arabic trackers, Arabfilms and Arabic series have opened public registrations for a short time. These trackers are usually invite only and you need to become a VIP in order to get in when signups are closed. Arabfilms specializes in Arabic movies and music while it’s sister site Arabic Series specializes in TV shows from the middle east.

Although both these trackers are of Arabic origin, there is an option to change interface language to English (click on the English flag icon on the top left corner of page). Content however is mostly in Arabic languages.

Arabfilms

Site Name: Arabfilms (http://www.arabfilms.org)
Signup URL: http://www.arabfilms.org/signup.php
Stats: 8200+ torrents and ~11000 users
Description: If you are a fan of Arabic movies, you’ll love this site. If you are looking for English movies, don’t bother to signup. For more information about this tracker refer to our previous article located here.

Arabic Series
 
Site Name: Arabic Series (http://www.arabseries.org)
Signup URL: http://www.arabseries.org/signup.php
Stats: 9400+ members and 2700+ torrents 
Description: Primarily a TV series tracker, Arabic Series focuses on shows from middle eastern countries (includes Egyptian, Syrian, Moroccan and other Arabic drama series).

Read the rest of this article...

Arabic Series and Arabfilms – Arabic (middle eastern) BitTorrent trackers open for signup

If you are a long time reader of FILEnetworks Blog, you probably are already familiar with the name Awesome-HD (AHD). AHD is a specialized private HD torrent tracker run by  ex-HDBits.org encoder EuREKA. This tracker gained huge popularity in the BitTorrent community within a very short period of time – however various problems with the site’s implementation resulted in frequent downtimes and internal server errors which prevented users from logging in. Although AHD made several attempts to resolve these issues within the old source (XBTIT), it was only with mild success. They have however now migrated to the Gazelle codebase and guess what – no more annoying errors.

Migration to gazelle has not only resulted in an error free site but it has given AHD a whole new polished look. Apart from the usual Gazelle features such as tagging, advanced search, knowledge base, etc AHD has added several customized features of their own. This includes bookmarks, torrent notifications, improved requests system and more. Site navigation speed has also been improved.

Awesome-HD currently has over 3000 members and tracks close to 150 torrents. Note that the migration to Gazelle appears to have reset both the user database as well as the torrent index – AHD had over 6k members before migration. All old users have been invited to the new AHD – to compensate the loss of ratio they have been given 50GB free upload credit as well as 3 invites.

Speaking of the content on this tracker – it’s all about High Definition (HD) movies and TV shows. Almost all the included releases are x264 encoded Blu Ray movies. Another interesting fact about Awesome HD is that it seems to focus a lot on non-scene/p2p releases unlike many other sites. Expect to find a lot of releases by p2p groups such as ESiR, CtrlHD, BTT, DON, iLL and of course EuReKA on this tracker. Following is a screenshot showing part of AHD’s torrent index:

Public registrations for this tracker are currently closed. However we believe that a lot of our readers are already members of AHD since two open signups for this site were posted here before. Anyway if you are still not a member and want to get in, AHD admins have been kind enough to give 100 free invites exclusively for FILEnetworks Blog readers. To obtain one follow the steps below:

UPDATE: Within 6 hours of posting this article, we got over 200 invite requests for Awesome-HD. We have now sent out 102 invites on a first come, first served basis. Please do not make any more requests.

1. Create a new email message with the subject ‘Awesome-HD’. In the body of the message clearly specify the E-mail address you want the invite sent to (write the email message in the format address@provider.com – do not use the address[at]provider[dot]com notation as you did in previous giveaways.
2. Send the email to ahd.filenetworks@gmail.com 

Good Luck!

Note that it may take us some time to manually send you the E-mail (maybe even 2-3 days since I'll be away for most part of today - LST). Have patience and please note that we only have 100 invites at our  disposal – do not be offended if you didn’t get one this time around. If you managed to get in, respect tracker rules and try to be an active member :)

Read the rest of this article...

Awesome-HD now on Gazelle (100 free invites)

Yay! a new issue of Game Scene Charts Magazine is out. About time too – considering that the last issue was released way back in March which is a little over three months ago. This is issue number 30 of TGSC and is titled the ‘February, March and April 2009' edition’ – game release statistics for three months are included in this issue.. If you don’t know what TGSC is, it’s a monthly coded magazine (a small standalone program that integrates magazine content, background music and a user interface) which ranks warez groups in the gaming scene – yeah, pirates have magazines too.

A typical TGSC issue comprises of the following articles:

• Editorial – Comments from the editors on this month’s issue
• Monthly Chart – Group statistics and rankings based on the number of PC Game ISO/DOX releases for that particular month (in this case December 2008)
• Monthly Overview – Editorial with news, updates and other information surrounding the PC game scene for that particular month
• Group of the month – A list of best ranked scene groups, sorted by month
• Group release stats – Comments about specific groups and their releases for a particular month
• Yearly stats – Group rankings and points earned for the current year
• Yearly overview – Comments by editors on how this months group performance has affected yearly performance
• Group of the year – A list of best ranked scene groups, sorted by year
• All time stats – All time group release statistics 
• All time overview – Comments on how this month’s performance has affected a group’s overall ranking

According to this issue, the following groups have come on top for the months of February, March and April:

• February 2009 – 1. RELOADED, 2. ViTALiTY, 3. PROPHET
• March 2009 – 1. BAMBOOCHA (A German group), 2. PROPHET, 3. CPY
• April 2009 – 1. PROPHET, 2. 0x0007 (German), 3. SKiDROW

In the meantime group RELOADED leads the all time statistics with a whopping 2000+ points – ViTALiTY follows second with 1600+ points. More information can be found inside the magazine.

Download

[Click Here] to download Game Scene Charts Issue 30 from Netload.in

[Click Here] to download Game Scene Charts Issue 30 from Depositfiles

Read the rest of this article...

The Game Scene Charts Magazine : Issue 30 (February, March and April 2009 Edition)

One by one, private torrent trackers that went down following TPB’s defeat in court are starting to re-emerge. PirateTorrents, SceneHD and Swepiracy have already returned and by the look of things life will soon be back to normal at the popular General/0Day tracker TTi.nu (The Internationals). Unlike most other Swedish trackers which received legal threats from Swedish anti-piracy agency, TTi did not shut down. They however removed all torrents pointing to copyrighted material and became a ‘legal only’ torrent site. This decision however disappointed many of the site’s users – if you are one such member who miss the ‘old TTi’, here is some good news.

Quoted below is a post which can be found on TTi’s news section:

A new era is on the way!
Dear users,
For about a month now, TTi has gone through some rather rough changes. Due of the major turbulence around the Pirate Bay trial, trackers shutting down etc. it has not been safe running a Sweden-based site. Even though many of you have been very disappointed, we have seen a major increase in the number of users and the "new TTi" with legal material has been very warm welcomed by you guys and we are of course very stoked about this!
It's not that we also miss the old TTi, we are all sad that it had to be this way, but it was either that or shutting the tracker down completely, something that we will never do!
The donations to the site has been far from 100% for quite some time now, and we feel very sad about this since we want to keep the site alive, but if no donations comes in, there will be no TTi in the future..because of this, we have decided that we will return to the old TTi again (with all that it means). We will not give you any detailed information about this, due of security reasons, but the site will return to it's old way, but with some major improvements such as better security, better site and a new design! We will keep you updated on this matter along the road!
BUT if we will be able to do this, the donations cannot be as low as they are now. The new improvements will cost money, and for this we need your help! If you want the old TTi back, we would really appreciate if you would help us and donate to the site, so that we will be able to work faster so that the old site can come back faster!
And as stated above, please don't ask us about what we are going to do with the site, you will be informed about this along the way to the new old TTi!
You can talk and discuss it HERE!
best regards,
//
TTi Staff

Some additional info can be found on the forum thread about the news item:

* Those who left us will of course NOT be given their stats back. If you left us and did not believe in us, tough luck!
* The registrations will be closed when we have reached a good number of users (you will be given info about this when the limit is about to be reached)
* Remember that we ALSO have a iPod Touch competition, and the money from that competition will also go to the new old TTi, so by competing, you will sort of donate to the site aswell, but you can win an awesome mp3 player at the same time! (see NEWS for all the details!)
* The shop will not be opened yet

As you may already know, signups for TTi were opened immediately after it went ‘legal only’ (Signups almost never opened back when it was a 0day tracker). Expect the registrations to close once the site returns to its normal form. If you were an old member of TTi who gave up on the tracker or a new user waiting to experience the new ‘old' TTi’, signups are still open.

Site Name: TTi (http://www.tti.nu)

Signup URL: http://www.tti.nu/signup.php

Related Articles

• Download Legal Music Torrents from TTi Tracker – Signups Open

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TTi.nu – back to the good old days?

You probably already know about the General/0Day tracker BitShock (BSk) which has already been featured several times here on FILEnetworks Blog. This post however is about Games BitShock (gBSK), a separate project run by the same crew behind the general tracker. As the name implies, Games BitShock is a specialized games BitTorrent tracker that indexes PC and console games. gBSK isn’t exactly a brand new tracker – it was first launched back in 2008 but the site didn’t stay online for long. Now, in May 2009, Games BitShock has returned. It seems to have been rebuilt from scratch and things are looking much better for the site this time around.

Currently there are over 3100 registered members on Games BitShock. Over 375 games torrents have been added to the tracker since 27th of April (in about a month’s time). These are pretty good statistics for a start up tracker – gBSK in this case no doubt had a lot of help from it’s big brother BitShock.org.

Speaking of the content on this tracker, it has PC, Console and Mobile games (majority PC games) indexed. Almost all new releases in the past 2-3 months as well as some great classic titles are available for download ( check out Jazz Jackrabbit collection and Classic 3D Shooters *MEGA PACK* :P ). There are a lot of torrents ending with ‘gBSK’ tag on Games BitShock – such torrents are non scene p2p uploads probably not found on most other sites. Following is a screenshot of depicting part of gBSK’s torrent index:

 

By the way, somebody (staff or an admin) here must really like the Grand Theft Auto series – there are a lot of GTA torrents and the default site theme is also based on a GTA title.

gBSK still has a long way to go in order to challenge well established trackers such as Blackcats Games and BitGAMER. However, the start so far has been great – remember that all popular trackers start small. For example Appz BitShock, another tracker in the BitShock family, too started out with only a handful torrents - today it’s one of the largest software trackers in the world. So let’s hope the trend continues and gBSK too becomes a leading games tracker in the future. If you are interested in getting an account, registrations are open – all new users get 2GB free upload upon joining.

Site Name: Games BitShock (http://games.bitshock.org)

Signup URL: http://games.bitshock.org/signup.php

Categories:

• Gamecube
• Games/Appz
• Linux
• Mac
• Mobile
• Nintendo64
• Oldies
• Pack
• PC Rips
• PS2
• PS3
• PSP
• PSX
• Trailers
• Wii
• Windows
• XBox
• XBox360

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Games BitShock – New games torrent tracker from BitShock crew

Yesterday we talked  about AutoUnpack – a tool that can help you immensely when it comes to extracting multi part (split) archives. If you are too lazy to even do that, check this software out. ‘VLC UnRAR’ is a plug-in for popular VLC media player. Once installed, this cool plug-in will let you watch movies inside multi part RAR archives (without extracting them first) using VLC media player. In short, it adds capabilities of a RAR player into VLC. Apart from individual movie files, VLC UnRAR supports RAR archived DVD images as well. This plug in is free and supports multiple platforms including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and FreeBSD.

The plugin seems to support multiple versions of VLC media player. I tried it on VLC media player 0.9.8a and it worked well during the short time I tested it. The official page however lists some known issues and troubleshooting information – in case you run into problems check this out.

Features (quoted from developer page)

• Completely FREE with full source code.
• Supports multi-volume RAR archives with full support for seeking
• Supports RAR archived DVD images!
• No external programs or special launch scripts needed
• Simple plugin that works with any VLC installation, no separate RAR player needed
• Platform-independent, binaries available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and FreeBSD
• No pre-extraction of files, data is read directly from inside the archive when requested

Download & Walkthrough

[Click Here] to download VLC UnRAR Plugin 2009 03 07 – Direct Download

[Click Here] to download the latest version of VLC Media player

[Click Here] for a short installation guide on how to set up the plugin

 

Thanks to our reader ‘Me’ for mentioning this tool in the previous article.

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VLC UnRAR plugin – Watch movies in RAR archives without extracting them first

Great news for fans of cartoons and animations – CartoonChaos (CC) is having open signups this weekend (23rd and 24th May). CartoonChaos is a private BitTorrent tracker that tracks all sorts of cartoons, both old and new. Contrary to popular belief, CC is not a general kids tracker – this site is about cartoons and cartoons only (other general kids content are tracked by TorrentKids, CC’s sister site). This tracker has been around for a while (exactly 1 year old as of today) and it’s probably the first specialized cartoon only tracker to hit the BitTorrent scene. It’s a small community but CC could easily become a second home to you if you are a lover of animation.

As of 23/5/2009, CartoonChaos tracks over 1100 active torrents. It appears that CC’s administration prefers a small community of dedicated, active members –  it’s closed for public registration most of the time. The small size of the user base has its advantages but this has also caused some of the indexed torrents to be seeded only by 1 seeder or become inactive (dead). As of now CC’s user base has exceeded 900 members and is expected to increase further following the open signups.

As we previously mentioned CartoonChaos is all about cartoons. From kids toons to adult cartoons you can find pretty much everything here. CC does not only track scene releases – it has some great user uploads which are not usually found on other private trackers making it a really specialized site. Pack on CartoonChaos can be found in the ‘Complete Sets’ category. Torrents in this section usually comprise of full seasons packs of popular toons – almost all of these are on free leech (denoted by the gold coin next to torrent name). Following is a screenshot of some of the releases found in the ‘Complete Sets’ category:

As mentioned at the start of this article, CartoonChaos is open for public registrations during this weekend. Following is an announcement posted on the site regarding open signups:

We'd like to welcome all our new users to our Open House Weekend! That's right for this weekend only we're opening our doors so spread the word because after that they'll be closed again!
New users please take 5-10 mins and read our RULES! As on most sites accounts are judged by ratio and activity - anything you snatch you need to seed for 7 days (168 hrs) or until you reach a 1:1 ratio.
You'll also notice that our torrents are also all free leech (see the gold coins) this will remain until June so enjoy and seed until you bleed!
Also you are free to upload as long as you follow our UPLOAD GUIDE which has a link on the torrent uploading page. Have a read before you try and upload anything, and if you have any questions just ask staff or post in the forums.
Once again welcome and please treasure your new accounts as with most things in life second chances are few and far between!
CC Staff

Also, don’t forget to check out the various themes on CC – they have a ton of these based on popular cartoons. 

Site Name: CartoonChaos (http://www.cartoonchaos.org)

Signup URL: http://www.cartoonchaos.org/index.php?page=signup

Categories:

• Kids Cartoons
• Mature Cartoons
• Banned
• Animated Adverts
• Educational Toons
• Animated Movies
• Anime Movies
• Anime Series
• Animated Adverts
• Theme Tunes
• Sound Tracks
• Complete Sets

Other sites similar to CartoonChaos that are currently open:

• ChildBytes – Children’s Torrent Tracker Signups Open
• TTOKTV –The Tao of Kids TV - Children's TV torrents
• AnimaTooniC Tracker – Download Anime, Cartoon and Comic Torrents (Invites on IRC)

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CartoonChaos cartoon torrent tracker – Open house weekend

Let’s face it – almost all of you pirates download movies, games and other scene/p2p releases from the internet. In doing so, you may have noticed that most of these scene and p2p releases are archived as multi part RAR files with extensions such as r01, r02, .001, .002 etc. You can of course use WinRAR to extract any one of these files which will extract the entire archive, automatically decompressing all other associated files. However there are a lot of options that WinRAR does not offer in this scenario. This is where AutoUnpack comes in – a tool designed specifically for unpacking multi part RAR, 7z, zip and TS archives.

For example, you can instruct Autounpack to monitor your torrent (or usenet) downloads folder. Immediately after a torrent download is finished, the software will extract the downloaded release to a destination folder of your choice. You can also instruct Autounpack to delete the archive files (an option is there to prevent deletion of .NFO files) once extraction is complete. This however is a big no-no if you use private torrent trackers - torrent client would not be able to seed the downloaded files and you will be hunted down for hit and running by tracker staff :)

AutoUnpack can also be used to batch decompress a large number of multi part archives. Say you have 20 movies downloaded all waiting to be unpacked – doing so individually would be a real pain in the @ss. Move all subfolders with movie archives under a single parent folder and give the parent folder location to Autounpack (as the source). The software will unpack each and every multi part rar archive under the parent folder, including those inside subfolders.

In addition to extraction, AutoUnpack is capable of repairing damage archives. Although this software will not magically recover catastrophically damaged files, it’s always a useful option to have. For a complete list of features of AutoUnpack, see the developer website.

Download

AutoUnpack is a free software. It’s less than 10MB in file size so downloading should no be a problem even if you have a low bandwidth connection.

[Click Here] to download the latest version of AutoUnpack from official download page

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AutoUnpack – Repair and unpack multi part RAR files (.001 files, .r00 files & scene releases)

Over the past two years, we have featured close to 500 private tracker reviews here on FILEnetworks Blog. Some of the trackers mentioned (such as Walve BTSound) were really unique and focused on specific file format/types. Today we discuss about another such tracker; AVCHDBits. This is a relatively new BitTorrent site which specializes in HD movies - mainly movies in AVCHD format and MKV (Matroska video file) format. AVCHDBits is actually a few months old but it suffered from a nearly three week long downtime. The site has now been revived under a new management and things are looking positive for this tracker.

During the rather short time it’s been online so far, AVCHDBits has managed to build a community of 2400+ members. Although the user database has not been affected, the downtime and switch to new management seems to have reset their torrents index. It currently tracks only around 150 torrents – new torrents however are being added daily.

As we mentioned in a previous paragraph, AVCHDBits tracks a lot of movies in AVCHD file format (If you are wondering as to what this file type is, AVCHD is a high definition (HD) video recording and playback format which uses MPEG-4/H.264 for video compression and Dolby Digital audio). In addition there are several movies which are in MKV format. A lot of movie torrents on this tracker are based on BD5 and BD9 source disks (BD9 and BD5 are lower capacity variants of the Blu-ray Disc that contain Blu-ray Disc compatible video and audio streams contained on a conventional DVD optical disc. BD9 uses a standard 8152MB DVD9 dual-layer disc while BD5 uses a standard 4482MB DVD5 single-layer disc - Wikipedia).

Refer to the following screenshot to get a better idea about the content on this tracker:

 

At the time this post is being written, AVCHDBits is open for signup. We don’t know for how long it will remain open so if you have any intentions of joining this site do it ASAP. New members to AVCHDBits are richly rewarded – everyone gets 2 free invites, 2.5GB upload credit and 200 free bonus points upon signup. In addition, the site currently records only 50% of your total downloads (something like half-freeleech).

Site Name: AVCHDBits (https://avchdbits.net)

Signup URL: https://avchdbits.net/signup.php

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AVCHDBits tracker - Download AVCHD and MKV movie torrents (BD5/BD9)

I hope you guys can all remember MovieX, the huge forum based tracker that faced some degree of controversy over leeching from the BitTorrent community. Despite controversies and legal issues, MovieX had a huge community of over 400000 member and tracked 50000+ torrents by the time it went down. I don’t know exactly what caused MoviesX to shut down (they had their donations stolen which may have been the final nail in the coffin) since I wasn’t an active member of the site. However now, after several month of downtime, the domain www.moviex.info redirects to a new site – SceneDirect.

SceneDirect is apparently a new private torrent tracker specializing in movies, TV shows and games. We don’t really know the connection between the old MovieX and the new tracker – perhaps there is no connection at all despite the same domain. However, SceneDirect is growing at a rapid pace. The site has only gone online on the 7th of may and there are already ~3600 registered members and 400+ torrents on the tracker. Forums, IRC channel and a bonus system has already been enabled and all torrents are on free leech as of now.

Although SceneDirect looks more like a General/0Day tracker, they seem to be focusing only on TV shows, movies and games. SD, HD and DVDR movies/TV series and PC/console games (individual torrents as well as packs) are available for download. Following is a screenshot of part of SceneDirect’s torrent index:

It is too early to tell whether SceneDirect will go on to become a successful private torrent tracker. Like all new BitTorrent sites, it’ll have to face the test of time. In the meantime registrations are open. You can check it out for yourself by registering for free.

Site Name: SceneDirect (http://scenedirect.org/)

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

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SceneDirect game and movie BitTorrent tracker – the new MovieX?

Well the game isn’t even officially out yet but we are already seeing trainers being released for The Sims 3. This perhaps has something to do with the recent leak. Shortly after the game was leaked by RELOADED, the DOX division of Razor1911 (RazorDox) released a new money trainer for The Sims 3. This will no doubt be hugely popular given the number of people who have already pre ordered/downloaded the game and hundreds and thousands that’ll purchase the game once it’s released.

The trainer does only one thing – it adds money to the player’s account (virtual money in the Sims world that is :) ) whenever CTRL + F2 is pressed at the in game buy menu. Of course, to enable this hack you need to have the trainer running in the background simultaneously with the game. I personally have not tested this trainer, however comments on various online forums suggest that it works flawlessly. As for where to download the trainer, we do not link to any trainers directly nor host them. You can check the GameCopyWorld page for The Sims 3 for more information.

Related Articles

• Solutions for The Sims 3 crashes, graphics, sound and missing object issues
• Pirates crack The Sims 3 DRM two weeks before official release

Read the rest of this article...

The Sims 3 Money Trainer Released

Yesterday we featured a new private HD torrent tracker named HDME which apparently became very popular among our readers (judging by the number of hits to that article). Today we present another fairly new private torrent site, this time a tracker that specializes in DVD-R and HD movies & TV shows; DVDtreasure. There are a lot of untouched DVD-5/DVD-9 and Blu Ray movie/TV torrents on this tracker. DVDTreasure has Polish origins but that doesn’t mean English speaking users should worry – there are plenty of English releases available as well.

DVDTreasure currently tracks close to 1600 torrents. The exact number of users on this tracker is not known yet – it must be a decent number because most of the torrents are alive and relatively well seeded. It appears that DVDTreasure indexes both scene and p2p releases including a lot of exclusive torrents. This includes movies, kids content, TV shows, music, boxsets, software (video editors and utilities) and specials. Video files on this tracker are of excellent quality – most of them are either in DVD-5, DVD-9 or Blu Ray formats.

As mentioned above this is a Polish tracker. If you do not speak Polish the first thing you should do is to change site language to English by clicking the English flag icon on top left corner of the page. Also note that most of the DVDR torrents on this tracker are tagged with PL or PLSUB tags. However this does not mean that such torrents have only Polish audio. Since full DVDRs have multiple audio streams, usually both English and Polish streams are included. Make sure you view torrent description and check the available audio streams before you download anything.

Registrations for DVDTreasure are currently open. If you are looking to get into a full DVD/Blu-Ray tracker, check this site out – it’s a rather unknown and underrated tracker with decent content. All new users get 8GB free upload credit upon signup.

Site Name: DVDTreasure (http://dvdtreasure.eu)

Signup URL: http://dvdtreasure.eu/signup.php

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DVDTreasure – BitTorrent tracker for DVD5, DVD9 & Blu-Ray movie torrents

Terminator Salvation is a third person shooter game developed by GRIN for the PC, PS3 ands XBOX 360. It’s loosely based on the upcoming movie of the same name. The game was officially released to the public on the 19th of May but the launch has apparently gone to hell due to a serious error with the game’s installer. InstallShield installer that’s responsible for setting up Terminator Salvation on end user PCs seems throws an error (in almost all PC versions of the game) every time when setup is run; thus preventing gamers from installing or playing this title.
UPDATE: Included a possible fix to manually extract files. See end of article.

Incidentally, a Clone DVD (untouched DVD Image) of Terminator Salvation has leaked on the internet right on the game’s release date -  it was leaked by warez scene group GOW (Gods of War). In fact, I was going to post an article about the leak when I saw a large number of comments flaming GOW for pre’ing another non working release. A lot of people were getting the message An error (-5006:0x80070002) has occurred while running the setup upon executing the installer. However what GOW released was a copy of the original game’s image  - they did not crack the DRM (SecuROM) embedded into the game.

Since the error couldn’t have anything to do with a file modification, I just did a search on Termination Salvation official forums. Apparently a lot of legitimate users were getting the same error. This means that the InstallShield installer in both the leaked and legit versions of the game is royally screwed. I’ve seen comments by people who even formatted their systems and reinstalled Windows to get the game working. Well you don’t need to change your configuration since it’s an internal error with the game. However below is a possible fix you can try to manually extract game files, bypassing the installer:

How to manually extract game files

1. Download InstallShield Cabinet File Viewer from this link.
2. In your Terminator Salvation installation disk, there should be a file named data1.hdr. Open this file with InstallShield Cabinet File Viewer.
3. Go to View—> Components
4. Extract all files located inside grinexes, grinexesvistaonly, USR_bundles, USR_video, USR_root and context file related to your preferred language (Extract to a destination of your choice – for example to a folder called “ Salvation”)
5. Go to the extracted location and create a new subfolder named data. Inside data create three subfolders named videos, cutscenes and movies. Move all extracted .bik video files to the videos folder you just created. Also, move all .fcl, .bundle and .lhd files inside the bundles folder (rename Bundles folder to bundles if it starts with an uppercase - or the game will crash).
6. In the end the structure of your folder (created in step 4) should look something like below:

7. Run TerminatorSalvation.exe to run the game. (make sure you rename the Bundles, Videos and Data folders so that they start with lowercase letters. Also you might try rebooting the machine and launching the game if you made any changes to the files/structure. )
- Thanks to JBeckman, streetunder and Newty182 on NFOHUMP for all the help

Update 2: Checked the official forums again and they are recalling defective copies of the game:

Unfortunately a defect occurred during replication of the PC version of Terminator Salvation, which does not allow end users to install the game. The Xbox 360 and PS3 are not affected and function properly. We have recalled all PC copies of Terminator Salvation from retail in North America and are currently in the process of replicating new copies. The new copies will be on store shelves in a few days. A replacement plan for all end users that purchased the defective units is currently being set up. Details to get a replacement copy will be announced shortly. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused the end users that purchased the defective copy.

If the above method does not work for you (if it crashes at logo screen with access violation error), I guess you’ll have to wait for an updated release.

Note: The process above does not circumvent the game’s DRM. If you are using a pirated copy do not ask for instructions on how to get the game working on this thread – we are not a warez blog.

 

If you liked this article, don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS feed. Also don’t forget to check our private trackers section which includes up to date information about private torrent trackers and open signups.

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Terminator Salvation installer error – how to fix

It’s always interesting news when a new BitTorrent tracker is launched. Given the increasing popularity of HD movies and TV shows, it’s even more interesting news when a new specialized HD tracker is launched. Today we are going to talk about one such site; HDME.eu. HDME is a new private torrent tracker for HD movies and TV shows. Although the site is pretty new (two and a half months old), it definitely has already shown a lot of promise. If you are looking forward to join a new HD tracker, you might find this article interesting.

Although it’s been a mere 2.5 months since HDME has gone online, the site has already attracted over 4500 registered users. Its torrent index currently comprises of 370 listed torrents – movies and TV shows in HD formats (720p, 1080p, 1080i, Bluray, etc) mainly. It appears that HDME indexes both scene and p2p released HD content rather than being limited to non-scene only or scene-only. In addition to the usual torrents, there are already a good number of packs (30+ torrents out of ~370 total torrents) on this tracker. The following screenshot captures part of the torrent index of HDME:

One some private HD trackers, I’ve found it a little hard to maintain a good ratio. However users of HDME should have no problems because "Packs", "HD-DVD" & "Blu-ray" categories are on permanent freeleech. Also it must be said that HDME has one of the cleanest and most organized layouts I’ve seen on a private tracker. It’s a subjective claim but I’m sure most of you will like the interface as well.

Registrations for HDME are currently open. New users get 5GB free upload credit upon signup. If you are looking for a HD tracker, check this out. It’s a start up tracker but there is a lot of promises IMHO.

Site Name: HDME (http://hdme.eu)

Signup URL: http://hdme.eu/signup.php

Categories:

• Anime
• Appz
• Bluray
• Documentaries
• HD-DVD
• HQ Music
• Misc
• Movie 1080i
• Movie 1080p
• Movie 720p
• Music Videos
• Packs
• Playstation 3
• Sports
• TV Series 1080i
• TV Series 1080p
• TV Series 720p
• XXX

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HDME – New BitTorrent Tracker for HD Movies and TV Shows

Over the past month or so, several new text book trackers have joined the BitTorrent scene. Initially we featured PureTorrents, a new textbook/academic torrent site that’s registered some rapid growth. Then a few days ago we introduced you to Bibliotik – a new library tracker with text books, ebooks and more. Today we are going to talk about Free The Textbooks, a fairly new site for college texts, coursework, exam papers, etc. Slowly but surely, these sites are slowly beginning to fill the large gap left behind by the demise of Textbook Torrents, world’s largest textbook tracker at one point.

A short intro to Free the Textbooks! is given via the following notice, which is posted on site homepage:

Making the large scale theft of exam papers and textbooks so much easier. It might take a while, but we intend to become the biggest educational file sharing site full stop. You can help us by seeding.

Although this is a fairly new start up tracker just a few months old, it already has close to 1500 torrents indexed. There are both public and private torrents indexed – torrents tracked by FreetheTextbook’s own BitTorrent tracker as well as external torrents tracked by public trackers such as that of TPB’s. Obviously, ratio is calculated only for internal, private torrents.

The content on this tracker mainly comprises of text books, coursework, exam papers, children’s books, documentaries, lectures etc (see categories below for more information). The screenshot below captures some of the torrents indexed on Free The Textbooks!:

Although the content is pretty good, Free the Textbooks definitely needs more users; most of the indexed torrents have 1 seeder. This is a common problem for more new Bittorrent sites and hopefully this will be rectified as the tracker gains more popularity over time.

Registrations for Free The Textbooks! is currently open. If you are interested in text books/academic material, check this site out.

Site Name: Free the Textbooks (http://www.freeetextbooks.com)

Signup URL: http://www.freeetextbooks.com/account-signup.php

Categories:

• Childrens' Books - Colouring Books - Learning Books
• Coursework - A Level - GCSE - IB - University
• Documentaries
• Exam Papers - A Level - Computing - GCSE - IB - IGCSE - KS!/KS2/KS3 - Miscellaneous - O Level
• Lectures - Biology - Chemistry - Maths - Physics - Politics
• Textbooks - A Level - Accounting - Archaeology - Architecture - Art - Biology - Chemistry - College - Computer Science - Criminology - Economics - Education - Electronics - Engineering - English - Geography - Geology - History - IGCSE/GCSE/High School - KS1/KS2/KS3 - Languages - Law - Literature - Maths - Medicine - Miscellaneous - Music - Philosophy - Physics - Politics - Psychology - Religion
• Vocational - CBT

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Free Textbooks educational tracker - download coursework, exam papers, lectures & more

How long could we go on without posting about a Romanian General tracker? Not very long apparently. I don’t know much about the legal climate over there but they sure do have tons of private BitTorrent trackers. MazeTorrents is another General/0Day tracker that is based in Romania. This tracker has been around for some time and has managed to establish a small community of users of its own. The site interface has changed for the better since I last visited it several months ago and registrations have been opened to the public since the 18th of this month for an indefinite period of time.

MazeTorrents (MzT) currently tracks a little over 2250 torrents. The number of users on this tracker is unknown (has an Alexa ranking of ~375000). In most aspects, MazeTorrents is your average general tracker. They however do have some nice packs in addition to the scene and p2p releases which can be found almost on every tracker on the planet:

Packs unique to MazeTorrents are designated by the tag ‘MzT’. However, it’s unknown if all these packs are exclusive to MazeTorrents or if they are taken from other private trackers. The reason why I say it is that I found some packs ending with the tag ‘TL’ (i.e. Best.Film.Oscars.Pack.1970-2008.XViD-TL) – these are exclusive packs found on TorrentLeech.

Either way registrations for MzT are currently open – we however do not know how long they will stay open. All new users get 2GB free upload credit as well as 1 new invite.

Site Name: MazeTorrents (http://www.mazetorrents.net)

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

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MazeTorrents signups open

You should probably be familiar with our troubleshooting articles by now- every time a major PC title is released we post an article with possible solutions to various known issues with the game. This time around it’s The Sims 3. One specialty in this occasion is that the game has not been officially released so far – in fact, it won’t be so for another two weeks. So naturally this article is a ‘work in progress’. We’ll be updating it as we discover new problems/solutions for the game.

Is the leaked release of the game a demo, a beta or the full & final version?

Let’s not kid ourselves here – a pirated version has been out and many people are downloading it. But is the leaked release the final version? Well, nobody really knows for sure – not yet anyways. Several people have reported missing objects, missing textures, missing regular features from other Sims games, game shutting down at random intervals and several other (minor) problems such as not being able to get married ( can’t marry a Sim in game). As for the missing objects/features there can be three explanations –

1. This is the final version of the game and EA pulled out some objects to be included in later revisions of the game - You can always count on EA to do something like that. Don’t forget that Sims 3 will have tons of DLC and other expansion packs just like previous Sims titles. And remember, this game’s release was pushed from 2nd February or 2nd of July purely for marketing campaigning.
   OR
2. This is a beta or a review copy of the game and RELOADED have made a blunder by releasing it as the final version.
   OR
3. SecuROM DRM triggers built into the game are still in tact – As most of you probably know, this game is protected by SecuROM DRM by Sony. SecuROM API permits developers to insert checks at various points in game, which if triggered could make the game unplayable (ex- GTA 4 drunk camera, Mirror’s Edge slowdown, etc). It’s possible that RELOADED missed one or more such checks and it’s affecting game play performance.

If you ask me, I'd say the first explanation is most likely what happened. Anyways I could be wrong – if I find more information about this the article will be updated. Note that after reading the above it may sound like the game is unplayable or very buggy – it is not. There are no major showstopper bugs present in the game as far as I know apart from a few isolated problems.

What software and drivers do I need to get optimal system performance with minimal crashes?

Although there are reported crashes, there does not seem to be major, common ones that render the game unusable. Most of the crashes seem to be specific to certain hardware/software/driver configurations – we can only give general advice to minimize the possibility of crashes in this case.

1. Update DirectX – If you are using Windows XP, please update to the latest DirectX monthly runtime. This will get rid of all the ‘missing dll file’ errors and will reduce the possibility of in game crashes. Latest monthly runtime can be found here.
2. Update Video card drivers – Both NVIDIA and ATI have recent video drivers out – you should always try updating to the latest official driver version available for your hardware for best performance. If anything goes wrong, the option to rollback to previous release is always there.
   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
   For Beta ATI/NVIDIA drivers for Windows 7, XP and Vista, check out this page: http://downloads.guru3d.com/
3. Update sound card and motherboard drivers - Click Here to download 3DP Chip for Windows Vista/XP – This program will automatically detect your hardware (video card, sound card and motherboard) and find available driver updates.

Note that this article is a work in progress – more troubleshooting information will be added as we get more info. Gameplay issues will also be addressed once the official version is released.

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Solutions for The Sims 3 crashes, graphics, sound and missing object issues

Group RELOADED have kicked EA in the nuts again. EA keeps releasing games bundled with controversial SecuROM DRM and .. well, RELOADED just keeps cracking them. The highly anticipated strategic life simulation game ‘The Sims 3’ has been cracked and leaked on the internet two weeks before the game’s official North American release date. While it’s quite normal for games to be available online on or 1-2 days before release date, two weeks is quite an early leak. Folks over at EA must be fuming over this especially given that Sims 3 release was postponed from 2nd of February to 2nd of July purely for marketing purposes.

This is not the first time RELOADED cracked a Sims title (several Sims 2 expansion packs were released by the same group) and definitely not the first time they cracked a SecuROM protected title published by EA (Red Alert 3, Godfather 2, and the list goes on). RELOADED’s release which is ~4.9GB in file size consists of a full DVD ISO of the game, a cracked exe as well as instructions on how to apply the crack. Anyway it’s not known if there are any SecuROM triggers built into the game and whether or not RELOADED managed to remove all of them. The game however does seem to call home (go online) to validate the serial at random intervals.

By the way, scammers and spammers on various BitTorrent/one click hosting networks are already cashing on the game’s popularity to spread their crapware. For example The.Sims.3.Crackfix-RELOADED which promises to fix a slowdown during the game’s sex scenes is actually a fake containing a pron video :)

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Pirates crack The Sims 3 DRM two weeks before official release

Staff and administrators of any private BitTorrent tracker would hate to have inactive members and tracker collectors registered on their sites. Collectors are those who sign up on many torrent sites just because they can, with no real intentions to actually use the tracker. This is mostly done for the pure purpose of bragging online. When it comes to a community based tracker such as ScL, such users would be avoided like the plague. If you are a rather inactive member of ScL tracker – your account might just deleted in a dew days. The upcoming ‘cleanup’ will crack down hard on inactive members, including those who aren’t contributing to the forums and torrent comments.

The information about the upcoming cleanup was sent to all members via a mass PM two days ago. If you still didn’t have the time to read it, a part of it is quoted below:

In a week or so ScL will perform a massive user base clean up. If you have the following stats you will be DISABLED
0 - Download
0 - Upload
0 - Forums posts
0 - Torrent comments
Others close to these stats will be reviewed. It is noted that if you are disabled due to this cleanup help in our #support channel of IRC,
will NOT be given, as you already have been giving the opportunity to be a part of this community and be active.
With this cleanup we hope to improve the quality of our userbase. Cause we do not run this community for collectors and inactive members but for those who actually use it.

This is a perfect example of why you shouldn’t become a tracker collector. By signing up for a site that you do not intend to use, you are using up a slot in the tracker’s user limit and thus blocking another would be active user from joining the site. That is not very cool now, is it?

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ScL cleanup to crackdown on inactive members and collectors

This is probably old news but I didn’t notice this until now – FYI this was released on the 14th, four days ago. Still Life 2, an adventure game published by Microids has been cracked by Italian release group CPY. What’s interesting about this release is that this game was protected by TAGES + Solidshield + Activation + Custom protection; the same anti piracy measure that prevented pirates from cracking Chronicles of Riddick : Assault on Dark Athena for nearly a month after the game’s release. TAGES + Solidshield is generally considered as a very time consuming, difficult protection to crack.

However group CPY seems to have had no trouble with the protection as they’ve managed to release a cracked English version of the game just a day after it’s official Europe (EU) release date. It is not known if the TAGES version embedded into this game is the same as that included in Dark Athena. It is also not known if CPY’s crack is based on the recent Dark Athena crack by Darkcoder. Either way the game seems to work just fine – a full DVD ISO of Still Life 2 as well as the modified executable (apparently void of protection) is included in CPY release.

CPY is a veteran release group that’s almost 10 years old. Their recent achievements include the release of some Steam protected titles including The Maw.

Read the rest of this article...

Pirates crack Still Life 2 - another TAGES SolidShield protected game

Here is some good news for those looking forward to get into the ratio free movie torrent tracker PTN. PTN is one of those secret private torrent trackers that does not prefer much publicity. Not many know of its existence and site rules prohibit users from declaring the full tracker name or URL of PTN in public. Public invitation giveaways, invite trading and selling is also prohibited. So how does one get into this excellent tracker? This is where the external invite applications come in.

Before we move onto invite applications, let me tell you a little more about PTN. This tracker is around 1 years old and currently has a user base in excess of 2000 members. The torrent index comprises of an impressive 5200+ torrents – movies, official movie soundtracks (OST) and some TV shows. Both high definition and standard definition video files are featured. There are a large amount of exclusive releases on this tracker – close to 200 movie packs and around 100 full TV season packs.

Let’s now move onto the hot topic – what are the invite applications? PTN hosts an invite application at a special URL which can be filled and submitted by external users. If the staff thinks the applicant is good enough – he/she will be invited to the tracker. There are however a few things you should bear in mind before you apply. If you are a tracker collector/trader who just want an account on every private tracker (but not really use it), chances are that you wouldn’t survive for long on PTN. This is a community based tracker – you need to be an active member if you are to keep your account. So don’t even think about applying unless you really intend to use the site.

Also note that being ratio free does not mean you can hit and run. PTN rules indicate “Seed back what you download to at least a 1:1 ratio or at least try to. if it's impossible for you to seed to 1:1 then you must seed for at least 3 Days within 7 days of completing the torrent.”. Make sure you read the rules in full before you do anything on this tracker.

Note that we have not included the full site URL in this post – only the location of the invite application is given. This is to respect PTN tracker rules. Please do not post the full URL here or ask what it is – you won’t hear it from us.

Site Name: PTN

Invite Application URL: http://*********.***/comeandplay.php (do not use ‘www’ in the address)

Invite applications will only be online during this weekend.

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PTN tracker invite applications open today and tomorrow

You’ve got to be kidding me – another leaked Windows 7 build from Microsoft. Just after a week MS opened Windows 7 Release Candidate Build 7100 to the public, a post RC version carrying build number 7127 has hit BitTorrent sites across the world. The importance of this release is that this could be one of the few builds between RC and the actual RTM (release to manufacturing) build of Windows 7. Microsoft has already mentioned that there will only be one RC build of Windows 7 – in other words RC1 will be the last public Windows 7 release before the RTM.

So does this mean build 7127 is the RTM vision? Hell no. This seem to be an internal build that is post RC1 and pre RTM. It carries full version number 7127.0.090507.1820 and seems to be mainly a bugfix release.

We will not link to the leaked build of Windows 7 as usual. However, if you want to download the now officially public Windows 7 Release Candidate (build 7100) from Microsoft, you can get it from here.

Read the rest of this article...

Windows 7 Build 7127 post RC build leaked on BitTorrent

One by one, Sweden based private torrent trackers that went down after TPB trial are now beginning to resurface. Popular general tracker PirateTorrents came back online a few days ago and to the delight of many members Blu Ray and HD movies/TV tracker SceneHD (SHD) too has now returned. SHD was undoubtedly one of the best trackers for scene released HD content at the time it was forced offline. Although it was known in advance that PirateTorrents would return, SceneHD was though to be ‘lost forever’ and the site’s return came as a bit of a surprise.

The following message is now displayed on SHD homepage:

SceneHD.org has arisen from the ashes!
Also, the browse page has been updated so that you can choose what type of torrents to display yourself.
Just click on New, Requests or Both respectively to display whatever you want!

Good news is that both torrents index and the user database of SHD seem to be intact in the reincarnated version of the site.

There are undoubtedly a lot of FILEnetworks Blog readers who are members of SceneHD as we have posted about open signups of this tracker before. As for new members, the site is currently closed for registrations and it’s not known when it’ll open up again (if it does open, we’ll update as usual).

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SceneHD and PirateTorrents return after downtime

A decent General/0Day tracker has opened signups after a while – TorrentVault (TV) is a private tracker that indexes (and tracks) movies, music, games, ebooks, TV shows and torrents from other general categories. This is not the first time TorrentVault is featured here on FILEnetworks Blog – the site has undergone many improvements since our last mention of it and has even managed to double its active torrent index in just a couple of months. Site interface also has a more polished look with a new set of category icons that were added recently.

Torrent Vault now tracks a whopping 11300+ active torrents – more than double the number it tracked by last December. As mentioned above there are torrents from all sorts of categories including a lot of TV shows. It looks as if the torrent index of SceneFeed was merged with TorrentVault when the former apparently shut down few weeks ago (SceneFeed was a specialized TV tracker and also the sister site of TorrentVault). Anyways TorrentVault now tracks almost 4000 x264/XViD TV episode torrents and close to 250 full season packs.

It’s not only TV torrents you can find on this tracker. Almost all major scene and p2p releases are indexed. Download speeds are pretty good and pre times are also decent. Below is a screenshot showing several indexed torrents on TorrentVault:

 

TorrentVault has opened registrations for new members after about 3 months. Signups may close any moment so get in while you can. All new members get free 5GB upload credit upon registration.

Site Name: TorrentVault (http://www.torrentvault.org)

Signup URL: http://www.torrentvault.org/signup.php

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TorrentVault – Private tracker with lots of TV torrents and general content

Yahoo! Messenger just got updated to a new build – and as usual there is no changelog depicting what changes/new features were introduced in this build. v9.0.0.2160 seems to be a minor update with just bugfixes as I've not noticed anything drastically different over the previous build. Anyway upgrading to the latest version is highly recommended in order to avoid security vulnerabilities and to obtain optimal performance. We’ve included direct download links to the standalone, offline, redistributable installer of Yahoo! Messenger below – there is no need to mess with web setups anymore.

Download

All download links point to official files – no 3rd party links are featured.

[Click Here] to download Yahoo Messenger 9.0.0.2160 Final directly from Yahoo! official servers

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Yahoo! Messenger 9.0.0.2160 Offline, Standalone Installer – Direct Download

Ever since I heard about Bibliotik about 3-4 months ago, I’ve been visiting the site at least once a week to see if it had been launched. Initially I was even able to create an account there as registrations were open long before official launch. Then the beta was closed to the public and no visible improvements could be seen for the next few months. I even wondered if the project had been abandoned - how very wrong I was! Bibliotik has finally gone live after a long beta testing phase and it’s been well worth the wait. The end result is a one of a kind BitTorrent tracker that combines Magazines, textbooks, ebooks, comics, audiobooks, journals and even scholarly articles.

It’s only been a week since Bibliotik has officially gone online and there is already an impressive amount of 250 active torrents indexed. More torrents are being added every day. From what it looks like, the site runs on a heavily modified Gazelle source. Whatever it is, the interface and layout just works – it navigates faster, presents a lot of detailed information on the indexed torrents and integrates additional features such as Collections (something similar to packs – it groups related torrents together), Requests, Authors, Artists and Publishers. Oh and note that this is a project by the same crew behind the popular classic movies tracker Cinematik – they sure do know how to run a BitTorrent site.

Once Bibliotik grows into a decent size, the need for several trackers for comics, educational content, audiobooks and text books will be eliminated. Also, the BitTorrent scene has been needing a magazines tracker for so long – Bibliotik somewhat fills this gap too. To get a better idea on the content on this site, see the screenshot below (also note the amazing detail of indexed torrents):

And now the burning question - how does one get into this tracker? It’s currently closed for public registrations but getting a Bibliotik account is not that hard. Currently there are 3 different ways to do this:

1. Via the recruitment thread on Cinematik – Over the course of the last few months FILEnetworks Blog has given away over 525 invites to Cinematik tracker in our invitation giveaways section. If you have an account at Cinematik, read this thread and send a PM to the specified user with your email address saying you want a Bibliotik invite!
2. Via the IRC invites channel – You should be familiar with IRC invite channels by now and the good news is that Bibliotik has one. The channel name is #bibliotik-invites on IRC server irc.brokensphere.net.
   Direct Link: irc://irc.brokensphere.net/bibliotik-invites
   If you are an IRC noob, read this article.
3. Via the recruitment thread on What.CD – The popular music tracker What.CD hosts a recruitment thread to Bibliotik in their popular Invites section in the forums.

Whatever you do, make sure you specify your E-mail correctly (“IF WE DONT GET AN EMAIL ADDRESS we WILL IGNORE YOU! (Same goes for you suckers who spell Bibliotik wrong.”) ). Good Luck!

Site Name: Bibliotik (http://bibliotik.org/)

Categories:

• Applications
• Articles
• Audiobooks
• Comics
• Ebooks
• Journals
• Magazines

Related Articles:

• PureTorrents – Download text book torrents and academic eBooks
• Gigapedia – E-Book download site (RapidShare, FileFactory, MegaShare Links)
• AnimaTooniC Tracker – Download Anime, Cartoon and Comic Torrents – Free Invites
• Comic Torrent Tracker (CTT) – Download comics for free
• 6 sites you can use to download fiction, novels and other E-Books free of charge

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Bibliotik – BitTorrent tracker for magazines, ebooks, novels, audiobooks & more

Rapelay is a game that can give a heart attack to those who advocate against video game violence. The game puts you in the shoes of a Japanese sex freak whose sole purpose in life seems to be to molest females in public places. Earlier on in the game, one of his molestation attempts goes awfully wrong and he lands himself in jail. From there on the objective of the game is driven by revenge – to rape not only the girl who had him arrested but her mother and her sister as well. Unsurprisingly, the game is now banned in the UK and popular E-store Amazon.com has stopped selling copies of the game online.

Even though the plot and gameplay might sound a little odd to you and me, this is just normal stuff for developer Illusion. Illusion is a Japanese game developer who is  associated with the development of many sex themed Japanese 3D anime hentai games such as Rapelay. I don’t think the bans matter for them anyways – they only intend the games to be sold in Japan. However, online pirates (even those living outside Japan) might get to play this game for free despite bans and barriers thanks to scene group Tibak. Tibak have released a cracked version of the game online along with a patch that converts in-game language to English. The patch is also able to make the game ‘uncensored’. Oh and by the way this game is protected by SecuROM DRM, which group Tibak seems to have removed or bypassed using a loophole in v1.03 update of the game.

The leaked version of the game by Tibak has now made its way into private and public BitTorrent trackers, one click hosting sites and almost every other public download locations you can think of. From what I saw so far the game is being downloaded by a fair amount of people.

Rapelay is known to sometimes crash on Windows Vista 64-bit edition. If this happens set the compatibility of main executable to Windows XP SP2.

Note: Please do not post download or torrent links to cracks/key generators or anything of that sort here. We are a news blog only – not a warez site.

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Pirates crack RapeLay - the controversial video game that’s banned in UK

If you’ve been following BitTorrent news lately you might remember the recent shut down of private torrent trackers hosted in Latvia. Several large private torrent communities including outlaw.lv and danger.lv were forced offline by Latvian authorities. Out of these trackers Outlaw.lv displayed the following message soon after it went offline “Economic Police has shut down our project. Outlaw LV will be back in a new way and with a new mission”. And indeed they have returned, this time as ‘New Outlaw’. This is good news not only for Latvian torrenters but for BitTorrent users across the world as Outlaw has plenty of English content and scene releases as a General/0day tracker.

From site statistics it’s apparent that new Outlaw has retained both the user database as well as the torrent index of the old site. It’s still one of the larger private trackers with 53000+ users and 13700+ torrents. As we mentioned earlier non-Latvian users need not worry about the language – you can choose between English, Russian and Latvian languages from the signup page itself. The same goes for content tracked by Outlaw – apart from a few localized releases in Latvian and Russian languages (stay away from Movies_LAT and Movies_RUS categories), the majority of the content comprise of English scene and p2p releases.

In addition to usual torrents available on most general/0day trackers, Outlaw has a good number of exclusive packs (movie, TV and PC game packs mostly). Following screenshot captures some of the 0Day packs available on this tracker:

Signups for new Outlaw are currently open. Interestingly, new users also get a whopping 99 invites upon registration. Check it out!

Site Name: Outlaw (http://newoutlaw.org)

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

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New Outlaw – Latvian BitTorrent tracker returns

Several days ago we posted an article about ArenaBG – a huge General/0day torrent site with no mandatory ratio requirements. Since then, our E-mail inbox began to get flooded by emails from many readers asking how to actually connect to ArenaBG’s BitTorrent tracker. Apparently a lot of users were getting tracker offline errors, not allowed or timeout errors when trying to download torrents from the site. We contacted TSL (MilenK), staff at ArenaBG tracker to know what’s up and he was kind enough to come up with both an explanation as well as a well written guide to solve this common problem.

Begin Quote:

The main reason users outside Bulgaria can't download from ArenaBG is because the announcer block their IP's. We had a lot of troubles with fake peers that used to overload our machines and that's why we block everybody outside Bulgaria. This was about 2 months ago. After that we start our work over the code and we didn't stop. One by one different countries gain back access. Until we finish our job, the only way for users from "blacklisted" countries to use our site is to set their .torrent client to communicate with the announcer through proxy server.

To solve this problem, configure uTorrent client as below:

1. from Options menu choose Preferences and from pop-up window go to Connection.
2. There on the bottom half of the window you will see "Proxy Server" menu.
3. Choose "HTTP" as type of proxy server and enter the IP and the port of the proxy (see below for a list of proxy servers)
4. In boxes bellow, DO NOT check "Authentication" and "Use proxy server for peer-to-peer connections"(you need proxy only to connect with arenabg' announcer. Checking the last one will overload the proxy server and it will stop working).
5. "Resolve hostnames through proxy" should be checked by default - leave it that way.
6. Restart the client.

You can use some of the following proxy servers:

• 78.130.203.228 port:8080
• 78.130.160.81 port:3128
• 78.130.160.78 port:3128
• 12.2.122.106:80
• 196.27.25.242:80
• 196.27.25.242:8080
• 195.242.79.21:80
• 195.242.79.21:8080
• 207.34.202.2:3128
• 200.30.0.60:80
• 207.136.80.204:80
• 208.143.128.5:8080
• 207.61.27.149:8080
• 203.134.67.3:8080
• 204.200.106.20:8080
• 202.225.130.10:8080
• 196.27.0.30:8080
• 195.114.64.78:8080
• 204.112.61.48:8080
• 63.71.28.2:8080
• or choose one from http://proxy-list.org/en/index.php

The countries that have access for now are Germany, Egypt, Croatia, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Austria, Pakistan, Great Britain, India and Turkey. For last three countries, there could be some regions that still do not have access, but they are not more. However, USA will be the last one to gain back access, because the biggest fllo is from there.

End Quote. – Guide written by TSL, edited by TEAM FILEnetworks

So there you have it – thanks to the excellent guide by TSL your ArenaBG tracker problems should now be solved. Happy downloading!

CAUTION: Once you configure uTorrent using the above method note that it will connect to each and every BitTorrent tracker (not just ArenaBG) through the specified proxy address. Some private torrent trackers prohibit the use of proxy servers – make sure you undo the configuration changes made to the client before connecting to such trackers or you may get banned for violating rules.

Related Articles

• ArenaBG tracker – Now with 0-Day appz, music and a brand new interface
• Zamunda – Huge private tracker with no mandatory ratio rules (signups open)

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How to solve ArenaBG tracker timeout and offline errors

NVIDIA have made another driver release today with ForceWare v185.85 (WHQL). There are some many major features included in this ForceWare version including CUDA 2.2, expanded GPU hardware acceleration even for relatively low end units, a new PhysX system software version (v9.09.0408) and many bugfixes. Also, if you are struggling to play recently released Chronicles of Riddick : Assault on Dark Athena and experiencing slowdowns with the game, give these drivers a go. Why? NVIDIA promises up to 25% performance increase for Riddick with ForceWare 185.85.

ForceWare 185 release notes

• Adds support for the new GeForce GTX 275 GPU.
• Adds support for CUDA 2.2 for improved performance in GPU Computing applications. See CUDA for more details.
• Expands GPU hardware acceleration for the NVIDIA Video Encoding library to GPUs with less than 32 cores. Applications using this library include CyberLink PowerDirector 7, Nero Move it 1.5, Loilo SuperLoiloScope MARS, and CyberLink MediaShow Espresso.
• Accelerates performance in several 3D applications. The following are examples of improvements measured with Release 185 drivers vs. Release 182 drivers (results will vary depending on your GPU, system configuration, and game settings):
  • Up to 25% performance increase in The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
  • Up to 22% performance increase in Crysis: Warhead with antialiasing enabled
  • Up to 11% performance increase in Fallout 3 with antialiasing enabled
  • Up to 14% performance increase in Far Cry 2
  • Up to 30% performance increase in Half-Life 2 engine games with 3-way and 4-way SLI
  • Up to 45% performance increase in Mirror’s Edge with antialiasing enabled
• Automatically installs the new PhysX System Software version 9.09.0408.
• Supports GeForce Plus Power Pack #3. Download these FREE PhysX and CUDA applications now!
• Numerous bug fixes. Refer to the release documentation notes.

Download

All are direct download links that point to files hosted on NVIDIA servers. No 3rd party links are added.

[Click Here] to download GeForce Forceware 185.85 Windows XP 64-bit WHQL

[Click Here] to download GeForce Forceware 185.85 Windows XP 32-bit WHQL

[Click Here] to download  GeForce Forceware 185.85 Windows 7 64-bit WHQL

[Click Here] to download GeForce Forceware 185.85 Windows 7 32-bit WHQL

[Click Here] to download GeForce Forceware 185.85 Windows Vista 64-bit WHQL

[Click Here] to download  GeForce Forceware 185.85 Windows Vista 32-bit WHQL

Related Articles

• nHancer 2.5.1 – Easily customize and unlock advanced options for NVIDIA GPUs

Read the rest of this article...

NVIDIA Geforce ForceWare Drivers 185.85 for Windows 7, XP and Vista

Some owners of XBOX and XBOX 360 gaming consoles choose to install mod chips to their hardware. Well you don’t just install mod chips for the hell of it – you do it because it’ll let you play downloaded XBOX/X360 games from the internet and not only genuine/legitimate titles. If you are one of those souls who downloads games for XBOX console online (in other words, ‘pirate’ them), you might find this article useful. Here we list three private torrent trackers that specialized in XBOX and XBOX360 games – good news is that two of these are currently open for signup.

1. XBOX360Hungary
 
Site Name: XBOX360Hungary (http://xbox360hungary.org)
Signup URL: http://xbox360hungary.org/regisztracio.php
Stats: 1240+ users and 211 torrents
Description: This is a Hungarian tracker that specializes in XBOX360 games. Interface language is in Hungarian and there is no option to change it to English. However the actual indexed content (games) are English releases.

2. XBOX 360 Torrents
 
Site Name: XBOX 360 Torrents (http://360.kicks-ass.org)
Signup URL: http://360.kicks-ass.org/signup.php
Stats: 114 users and 24 torrents
Description: XBOX 360 Torrents is a private tracker that just started up. It’s only been 8 days since this site has come online so nothing much can be said about it at this point.

3. XBOX-SKY
 
Site Name: XBOX-SKY (http://bt.xbox-sky.cc)
Signup URL: http://bt.xbox-sky.cc/register.php (Currently closed)
Stats:  1000+ torrents and unkown number of users (possibly over 30k)
Description: IMHO this is the mother of all XBOX trackers. We included it last because the site is currently closed for public registrations. However, open signups are frequent (they just had one today as well) so check back from time to time and eventually you’ll get in. 

Other specialized games trackers you can find XBOX games on (sites that are currently open) include SeedGames and GameAccess. Also note that most General/0day trackers index newer X360 scene releases as well.

Read the rest of this article...

3 private trackers to download XBOX and XBOX 360 games

When The Pirate Society (TPS) suddenly went offline for about 10 days without notice, I bet most of you thought the site had been shut down for good. Well you’ve all been proven wrong – TPS is back up under a new host . The site has been restored without much data loss (in fact only two days of user accounts and forum threads lost) and now runs on a blazing fast new server. If you still don’t know what TPS is, it’s a popular file sharing forum with private tracker news, invite giveaways, member only seedboxes, reviews and even tracker recruitment. So what actually caused the downtime that had so many members worried?

We were contacted by N3V3R, a SysOp on TPS and according to him it seems that their former host was completely retarded. A more detailed account of what happened is posted on this forum thread by Soopy (SysOp), some of which is quoted below: 

On May 1st Serverbeach put our account under 'investigation' and disabled us because they don't support 'tracker type' websites. This of course was bullshit and we were already upset with the performance of the server, so instead of waiting for this investigation to end (still hasn't btw 5/11) we decided to grab a new server from a different provider.
When we ordered the server the company put us on back order because they had to wait for their hardware provider to give them their supplies, so that took a lot longer than expected.
Passwords were not compromised and the site is still secure. being disabled was a real shocker to us and quite unexpected so we werent exactly setup to transfer over to an entirely new server, but we did the best we could in shortest amount of time. just be glad TPS is back up and running
And finally, the backup we had to install was from April 28th. this was before open sign ups so all those new users...gone. but the doors are currently open (5/11) to allow those users another chance to hop back in.
Please feel free to leave ServerBeach bad feedback wherever possible.
TPS Staff

The move was probably the best for TPS as staying with a host who didn’t know the difference between a BitTorrent tracker and a BitTorrent news forum could only have lead to more trouble for them in the future. If you need more information about TPS I suggest you read our previous review (somewhat outdated) of the site which can be found here. Oh and TPS is currently open to the public, both to completely new members as well as to those who lost their accounts due to server migration.

Site Name: The Pirate Society (http://www.thepiratesociety.org)
Signup URL: http://www.thepiratesociety.org/register.php
Invites Channel: irc://irc.p2p-network.net/thepiratesociety-invites (when open registrations are closed)
Stats: ~5200+ members and ~13000 threads

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The Pirate Society – Back online after downtime with open registrations

From the response we got for our older posts about ratio free private trackers, it’s apparent that such sites are hugely popular among readers. With SceneRTorrents and Seedit shutting down, the past few weeks hasn’t been good for no ratio sites. However today we are going to talk about a brand new ratio free private BitTorrent tracker – Scenelive. Scenelive is a general/0day tracker that is only about a week old. Good news is that you won’t have to beg for invites to join this site - at least not now. Why? They are having their first ever open signup and have enabled free public registrations for a limited time.

For a tracker that’s only a week old, Scenelive has shown some impressive growth. They already track over 500 torrents and have a user base of 600+ members which includes 14 uploaders. As for the content, majority of the currently indexed torrents comprise of scene releases. There aren’t many packs around – however they do have a separate category titled ‘Packs’ which may be an indication that more Scenelive exclusive packs are going to be added to the tracker in the coming days. Following are some of the torrent categories you may find at Scenelive:

IMHO scenelive has a great interface – the left panel + top toolbar layout doesn’t have many gizmos but it’s easier to navigate and is not cluttered at all.

Coming back to the ratio-free aspect of this tracker, there are some minimum seed time requirements that still apply although a global ratio is not calculated:

Welcome to SceneLive, we are a No Ratio tracker but that doesn´t mean you don´t have do seed please seed your torrent for: 60 hours or 1:1 (upload=download)..

1 Hit&run = 1 Warn 
3 warns = Ban

Hope you enjoy your stade here

And the following is quoted from Scenelive’s rules section:

Seed at least a 1:1 ratio, or at least try. If it is impossible for you to seed 1:1, then you must seed at least 60 hours within 10 days after completion of the torrent. It is not necessary to follow those hours!

I don’t understand what they mean by ‘It is not necessary to follow those hours!” but the idea is pretty clear – being ratio free is not your ticket to conduct hit and runs.

As we said above Scenelive is currently open for new registrations. If you are looking for a new ratio free private tracker and a growing community, check this site out.

Site Name: Scenelive (http://www.scenelive.org)

Signup URL: http://www.scenelive.org/live/signup.php

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Scenelive – New ratio free general/0day private tracker

If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past 1-2 years, you may have noticed that there are a lot of web 2.0 applications appearing on the internet at a rapid pace. Most of the web applications that I have come across run from within a web browser. But how cool would it be if you could run Yahoo Mail! interface as a separate desktop application and not from within a browser? This is where Prism comes in. Prism is a new project by Mozilla labs which is capable of separating web applications from the browser and running webapps as separate desktop applications. Where applicable, Prism can be used to even to run web applications offline.

Main Features

• Access web apps from system taskbar or dock
• Tray icon and dock menus
• Associate applications with browser links
• Rock solid web app stability
• Run applications automatically when your computer starts
• Minimize to tray
• System tray icon and dock badges
• Popup alerts

Download

As with all software from Mozilla Labs, Prism comes free of charge. This software however is still in beta test stages (beta 1 actually). Be warned that you may run into undiscovered bugs or glitches.

Prism comes in two flavors – the standalone application and the FireFox extension. Download whichever version you prefer:

[Click Here] to download Prism FireFox Extension

[Click Here] to download Prism Standalone web application

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Run web applications offline with Mozilla Prism 1.0 Beta 1

If you like action sports and extreme sports, here is some good news. ExtremeBits (XB), a private torrent tracker specializing in extreme sports related content, has opened public registrations after 5 long months. Although you may not have heard of it, this is a well established tracker that’s been around for a while (it was featured on this blog several months ago back in 2008). In addition to the large collection of sports related torrents that you might not find elsewhere, ExtremeBits has an excellent community of members and a nice, clean interface.

With over 3100 active torrents, ExtremeBits has one of the largest sports torrent indexes currently around. It tracks a lot of video clips, TV shows, DVDs, magazines,etc related to extreme sports events. In addition to these, you can also find sports related movies, DVD covers, soundtracks and even graffiti here on ExtremeBits. Popular extreme/action sports featured on this tracker including Skateboarding, Skiing, Rally, Surfing, Kayaking, Climbing and Street Racing (See categories below for more info).

As mentioned above ExtremeBits has a clean layout which comes complete with cool category icons. The interface also allows easy one click rating of indexed torrents via the voting option (available to power users and above). Torrents can also be sorted according to the ‘hype factor’. The screenshot below captures some of the torrents indexed on XB:

ExtremeBits, being a private torrent tracker, was closed to the public for the last 5 months. They have however now decided to open their doors to new members:

Signups open - posted 2009-05-04 00:04:01

Dear users, as per result of the latest poll, we have now re-opened our signups after 5 months of closed shop. Signups will only be open on Saturdays and Sundays. Tell your friends!

Note that they are only open during the weekends. Since we are late in posting this, there may only be a few hours of open signups left. If you couldn’t get in – don’t worry and consider this post a heads up. Signups will be open the next weekend as well.

Site Name: ExtremeBits (http://www.extremebits.org)

Signup URL: http://www.extremebits.org/signup.php

Categories: BASE jump, BMX, Climbing, Covers, Fiddy/MiniMX, Graffiti, Homevid, Inline Skate, Kayaking, Kiteboard, MC, Misc, MotoX, MTB, Music, Paintball, Parkour, Quad/ATV, Rally/4x4, Skateboard, Ski, Skydive, Snowboard, Snowmobile, Streetrace, Surf, Tv, Wakeboard/W.Ski

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ExtremeBits – Extreme sports torrent tracker (videos, TV, magazines, movies & more)

When certain software are installed on your system, they sometimes add startup entries so that components of the application get started whenever Windows is booted up. Startup entries are also used by malicious programs to get themselves initialized every time the computer is started. Most of the time you wouldn’t be notified when a new startup entry is added, even when it’s done by a legitimate software. However, having unnecessary programs configured to run at startup could seriously affect system performance. Autoruns is a free software that could help clean up your startup programs list and thereby help increase system performance.

Autoruns is not only capable of examining entries in the startup folder (comon anyone can do that) – It also scans several registry locations such as Run and RunOnce to which startup entries are usually added. Note that the first time you run AutoRuns it’ll list loads of Microsoft services and stuff most of which are actually components of Windows. To filter out startup entries added by 3rd parties click on Hide Signed Microsoft Entries option.

Download

[Click Here] to download the latest version of Autoruns from official page (link auto updated with latest build)

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Find what programs are configured to run at startup with Autoruns 9.5

It’s about time we had another collective open signup update. As you may already know here at FILEnetworks we try to post at least one new private torrent tracker review/intro every day. This post is a recap of what was posted here in the past 2-3 months. It summarizes updated information about 15 private torrent trackers that were previously posted here but are still open for free public registration. We get new readers all the time and sometimes even regular visitors may miss out on some articles – we hope this post will help you catch up on open signups that you missed out the first time around.
UPDATE: Article updated with The DVD Club (TDC) open signups.

The DVD Club
 
Site Name: TheDVDClub (http://www.thedvdclub.org) 
Signup URL: http://www.thedvdclub.org/signup.php
Stats: 5580+ users and 1330 torrents
Description: The DVD Club (TDC) is an excellent untouched DVDR and Blu-Ray movie/TV show tracker. This is a highly sought after tracker and signups usually open only for 3-4 a year – otherwise you need an invite to get in. Check out our full review of TDC to see how cool it is.

PureTorrents
 
Site Name: PureTorrents (http://puretorrents.org)
Signup URL: http://puretorrents.org/account-signup.php
Stats: ~4500 torrents and 1875+ members
Description: PureTorrents is a text book and academic E-book tracker. We’ve been monitoring this tracker ever since we featured it here on FILEnetworks and its progress has been nothing short of astounding. They’ve added 3000+ torrents in the past month and their membership has skyrocketed close to 2000 from a mere 175. Excellent stuff indeed. For full review look here.
IRC: irc://irc.puretorrents.org/PureTorrents

GameUpdates
 
Site Name: GameUpdates (http://www.gameupdates.org)
Signup URL: http://www.gameupdates.org/signup.php
Stats: 2250+ torrents
Description: GameUpdates is a private tracker for all PC game related extras including update patches, mods, add-ons, demos and trailers. It really is a unique tracker. For full review including screenshot refer to this article.

GameAccess
 
Site Name: GameAccess (http://www.gamesaccess.net)
Signup URL: http://www.gamesaccess.net/signup.php
Stats: 250+ torrents
Description: GameAccess is a new and promising specialized PC and console games tracker of Polish origin. Tracks PC game RIPs in addition to full games. Full review + screens can be found here.

AlfaScene
 
Site Name: AlfaScene (http://www.alfascene.ro)
Signup URL: http://www.alfascene.ro/signup.php
Stats: ~5000 users and 1500+ torrents
Description: AlfaScene is a General/0Day tracker with a cool looking ilayout. Its shown some rapid growth in the past two months. The site is run by the same folks behind SceneLinks.Ro (now defunct). Full review and back-story can be found here.

ToxicJ
 
Site Name: ToxicJ (http://toxicj.net/)
Signup URL: http://toxicj.net/register.php
Stats: 540+ users and ~650 torrents
Description: Toxicj is a gazelle based Asian music tracker (specially Korean and Japanese music). They have recently suffered from a massive data loss and you may need to re-register if you were a member earlier (thanks to John Monahos for the info).  Currently the entire site is on free leech. Full review, screenshot and category info can be found here.

DarkForce
 
Site Name: DarkForce (http://www.darkforce.cc)
Signup URL: http://www.darkforce.cc/register.php
Stats: 820+ members and 1000+ torrents
Description: DarkForce is a gazelle based tracker for general scene releases as well as Bollywood/Indian/Desi releases. Full review including screens can be found here.

iTune
 
Site Name: iTune (http://www.itune.ro)
Signup URL: http://www.itune.ro/register.php
Stats: 6300+ users and 2700 torrents
Description: iTune.Ro is a new gazelle based English music tracker that’s recorded an impressive growth over the ~3 or so months it’s been online.  Read our full review about this tracker here.

torrentsRmine
 
Site Name: torrentsRmine ( http://www.torrentsrmine.org )
Signup URL: http://www.torrentsrmine.org/xbtit/index.php?page=signup
Stats: 550+ torrents and 2350+ members
Description: torrentsRmine is a specialized TV torrent tracker that focuses a lot on talk shows such as Jay Leno, Ellen, Oprah, etc. It’s a very underrated (and pretty unknown) tracker. Check out the full review for screens and more info.

Walve-BTSound
 
Site Name: Walve BTSound (http://btsound.net)
Signup URL: http://btsound.net/signup.php
Stats: 1360+ users and 770+ torrents
Description: Walve BTSound is private tracker based in Russia that specializes in Wavpack music torrents. Full review including available language options can be found here.

Comic Torrent Tracker (CTT)
 
Site Name: Comic Torrent Tracker (http://comictorrent.net)
Signup URL: http://comictorrent.net/signup.php
Stats: ~1200 torrents and 1880+ members
Description: CTT is a new comics tracker which tracks a lot of comic books in English and other languages. Full review and screenshots can be found here.

HDTor
 
Site Name: HDTor (http://www.hdtor.com)
Signup URL: http://www.hdtor.com/signup.php
Stats: 7600+ users and 525+ torrents
Description: HDTor is a HD movie and TV show torrent tracker. Check out the full review located here.

PMTorrents
 
Site Name: Portable Media Torrents (http://www.pmtorrents.com)
Signup URL: http://www.pmtorrents.com/signup.php
Stats: 6500+ members and ~550 torrents
Description: PMTorrents is a private torrent site with media (movies, music and TV shows) optimized for portable devices. The site recently got a facelift and now tracks many more MP4 movies than before. Check out full review here.

Dead-Skull
 
Site Name: Dead-Skull (http://www.dead-skull.net)
Signup URL: http://www.dead-skull.net/signup.php
Stats: 470+ members and 19 torrents
Description: Dead-Skull is a new horror movies tracker which was recently featured here on FILEnetworks Blog. Torrents are being added very slowly but the content is pretty rare. Check out full review here.

ICTorrent
 
Site Name: ICTorrent (http://www.ictorrent.com)
Signup URL: http://www.ictorrent.com/forums/register.php
Stats: 12100+ members and ~550 torrents
Description: ICTorrent is a new and promising Bollywood/Hindi/Indian tracker. There was a recent review of this site posted on FILEnetworks Blog – you can read it here.

LeechTurk
 
Site Name: LeechTurk (http://www.leechturk.com)
Signup URL: http://www.leechturk.com/signup.php (Click on English flag icon to get the English version of signup page)
Stats: ~1800+ torrents
Description: LeechTurk is a Turkish General tracker with lots of BDRips and BRRips (English). This is also the home of p2p release group LTRG. For the full review check out this article.

Bonus - Son of Shun
 
Site Name: Son of Shun (http://www.sonofshun.com)
Signup URL: http://www.sonofshun.com/forums/profile.php?mode=register
Stats: 10800+ users
Description: Son of Shun is a not a BitTorrent tracker. It’s a DDL forum which has lots of verified links to premium documentaries. Check the full review here.

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BitTorrent sites open for signup – 15 private trackers with free registration

If you are using hardware (motherboard, etc) based on an AMD chipset, you might want to check this post out. AMD Overdrive is an application that can be used to fine tune your hardware as well as to unlock advanced tweaking options that are not available by default. This is not an application developed by a 3rd party but by AMD itself. A new build of OverDrive (v3.02 build 289) was released yesterday with many new features and bugfixes. Note that this is a very powerful piece of software – using it recklessly will can even damage your hardware.

NEW Features

• AMD Black Edition Memory Profiles
• Achieve optimum high speed DDR3 performance with pre-tuned memory profiles. Open up bandwidth and overclock your memory for even more performance.
• AMD Smart Profiles
• Tune performance when you run the applications you use most. Set optimum affinity and performance based on our default profiles or customize your own.
• Customizable AutoClock
• More options for experienced users to automatically tune their PC
• Fan Control
• Enhanced support for monitoring your PC and taking control
• Ready to use with Microsoft Windows 7

You can get more information from the app homepage located here.

Download

[Click Here] to download AMD Overdrive 3.02 build 289 – Direct Download

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Overclock and tweak AMD chipset products with AMD Overdrive 3.02 Build 289

If you were disappointed by the cancellation of planned GFT IRC invites opening earlier, here is some good news that you might want to hear. SceneFZ (SFZ), an excellent general/0day tracker, is currently open for free signups. SFZ is usually closed to the public and requires and SMS code to get in (for which I believe you have to pay). They have however opened free signups for all users from today till the 11th of May – this is not a common occurrence and usually only happens about four times every year. SFZ in my opinion is a very underrated BitTorrent tracker.

SceneFZ has over 52000 members and is a bigger tracker than the likes of RevolutionTT and Torrent-Damage in terms of user base. With over 13200 active torrents,it has richer content than most other general/0day trackers currently around as well. SceneFZ has it’s roots in Romania – like most Romanian trackers the download speeds here are very good.

Almost all torrents indexed on this site are English releases (scene, p2p and SfZ exclusives). This includes movies, music, games and all sorts of other torrents found in general trackers. In addition, SFZ has some great exclusive packs as you can see from the screenshot below:

What’s even more cool about these packs is that all of them are on free leech. SFZ exclusive releases can be identified by the ‘sfz’ tag at the end of the title of a torrent.

Another thing that you’ll notice about this tracker is its interface. SFZ doesn’t have a common interface like most other trackers. I personally like the layout and specially the cool category icons. The site however contains advertisements – probably their way of covering server costs as they don’t accept donations AFAIK. Also, I found an interesting FireFox extension for SFZ called “SceneFZ Notifier” – it apparently alerts you when new torrents are added to the tracker. You can download the extension from here (i haven't tested this).

As mentioned above signups will stay open till the 11th. If you are looking for a decent general tracker, check this out.

Site Name: SceneFZ (http://scenefz.net)

Signup URL: Go to http://scenefz.net, accept the agreement and choose ‘Sign up’ from the left pane.

Thanks to ‘Oleg’ for the heads up.

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SceneFZ – General private tracker open for free signup

Fans of Real time tactics and action games rejoice – Battlestations : Pacific is out! Battlestations : Pacific is the sequel to 2007’s Battlestations : Midway. This time around it’s being developed by Eidos Hungary. The game of course is protected by DRM (Digital Rights Management sofware). Devs have used SecuROM and as usual scene group RELOADED have cracked it three days before the game’s street date. I have not been able to find reviews of this game anywhere so far but the screenshots sure do look nice. Hopefully the gameplay too is better.

Getting back to RELOADED’s release, it comprises of an untouched full DVD ISO of the game (6.38GB) as well as a cracked exe that apparently has the SecuROM protection removed. They have also added a new line at the end of cracking instructions : 5. Support the software developers. If you like this Game. BUY IT! Although most groups such as Razor1911 have been including similar phrases in their releases for many years, RELOADED didn’t follow this practice up until now.

Anyways the release has now made its way onto private and public Bittorrent trackers, one click hosting sites and so on. Expect this to be downloaded a lot of times, specially given the popularity of the first game of the series.

Game Information:

Set in WWII, Battlestations: Pacific delivers intense, action-packed combat and strategic warfare on an extraordinary scale and features two distinctly different single player campaigns. As the Americans, the game picks up the story where Battlestations: Midway left off and allows players to fight their way from The Battle of Midway to Okinawa as they try to secure peace in the Pacific. As the Japanese however, players take control of the Imperial Japanese fleet and have the unique chance to fight at Pearl Harbor before attempting to change the course of history and take full control of the Pacific Ocean.

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Pirates crack Battlestations : Pacific DRM 3 days before release date

I have come across many CD ripping applications in the last few years and Audiograbber definitely is one of my favorites. This is a great software that allows you to cleanly rip tracks from CD music albums with ease. Note that Audiograbber’s ripping process does not use the computer’s sound card unlike in other similar apps – it copies audio digitally. This leads to much less compatibility issues, increased performance and ultimately results in quality ripped music. Additionally, Audiograbber can normalize audio, remove silence and retrieve music album info from freedb instantly.

You can use an array of 3rd party encoders with this app which will allow you output music to a number of different file types. I suggest you use the LAME MP3 encoder (download here) if you plan to save your tracks in MP3 format – it’s an excellent combination.

Another great thing with this software is that it does not put a single file in your windows directories! No DLL's, OCX's, device drivers, spyware, adware or whatever else that messes up the computer. Not a single entry in the registry or win.ini. If you delete the Audiograbber directory it's all gone, that's it!

Download

[Click Here] to download Audiograbber 1.83 from official page (Edit- fixed link to point to FileForum hosted file as official server seems to be currently down)

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AudioGrabber 1.83 – One of the best CD Ripper software for Windows

GForces Tracker (or GFT) is a private torrent tracker that has gained immense popularity over the past few months. This ratio free tracker is well known for it’s amazing pre times and good download speeds. GFT, being a private community, is almost always closed for public registrations. Getting into this tracker is not easy – invites are hard to find (they are given to donors only) and the site has strict rules regarding invite trading/selling. GFT however has several times offered members free invites via their IRC channel (as we reported before). Good news is that IRC invites will again open on the 9th of this month.

UPDATE: Looks like this won’t happen, after all.

Invites: CLOSED!!!!!!!! \o/ There wont be any invites in saturday most you can thank to Traders! We will be open when FST closes for good ^^

As we mentioned before, GFT hates traders.

Original Article:
Following is quoted from the topic set on GFT invites IRC channel:

Topic is ::: The GFTracker Invite Channel :::
Invites: 09/05/2009 12:00 EST aka 17:00 GMT :
Idle: Do Not Idle This Channel Until Then :
Note: Invites/Interviews will be done in PM only : Please wait till you are pm'd :

First of all don’t join the invites IRC at this point – there is no use since the invites won’t open till the 9th. Only thing you might achieve by joining the channel and requesting for an invite now would probably be a ban from the IRC server. Just hold onto your testicles till invites open up :) Once this happens, we will post an article with IRC channel addresses as well as step by step instructions on how to proceed to get an invite, as usual. Note that you may be asked to provide profile links/ratio proof from private torrent trackers that you are already a member of.

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GForces Tracker (GFT) – IRC invites will open on 9/5/2009

Digital Hive (DH), a well established private torrent tracker, is celebrating its 3rd birthday this week. If you are a member of this tracker, you probably already know the good news – all torrents on the site have been made free leech for one whole week until the 13th of May. If you aren’t a member and is looking forward to get in, there’s even more good news - DH has opened registrations to the public till the 13th as well. Note that this is not a specialized tracker – DH is a general/0day tracker with movies, music, games, software, packs and other general content.

Digital Hive is one of the larger and well established general trackers out there. As of 6/5/2009 it tracks close to 8000 torrents and has an active user base of 15200+ members. DH is a pretty active place and is not a ghost town like some trackers – some of the more popular torrents have more than 150 seeders. Don’t forget to check out the Digital Hive FireFox extension which will enable you search the site right from within FireFox browser.

Speaking of the content on Digital Hive, expect a lot of scene and p2p releases to be available given that this is a general/0day tracker. There are however a lot of unique torrent collections; TV packs and movie packs. DH currently has around 70 movie packs and 175+ TV  packs. The screenshot below captures some of the movie packs on Digital Hive:

As we mentioned above Digital Hive signups are now open to the public and will continue to remain open till the 13th of May. Following is quoted from the official news post on DH about free leech and open signups:

Its that time of year again, Wednesday May 6th is DigitalHives 3rd birthday!
HAPPY BDAY DH!
As a birthday gift to all our loyal users we have set freeleech on -ALL- torrents until Wednesday May 13th! We have also opened the signups here to allow more people to join in on the celebration!
We will also be having contests through out the week, expect more news on this later today!
Thank you to all the Uploaders/Donors/Users who keep this place alive and heres to another great year!
UPDATE: There was a small issue with Uber Users still recording download stats, it has been fixed.
UPDATE#2: If you were getting HTTP500 errors they should also be resolved, update your torrents if needed.
//DH Staff

This tracker had been closed for the most part in the past year except for a few open signup windows which lasted for a mere few minutes. If you were waiting to get in, here is your chance – all new members start with 5GB free upload credit.

Site Name: Digital Hive (http://www.digitalhive.org)

Signup URL: http://www.digitalhive.org/signup.php

Thanks to ‘Chetan’ for the heads up!

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Digital Hive torrent tracker – Free leech and open signups for one whole week

Up until now YouTube videos were something you viewed using a web browser. However, with Sprink around, this is all going to change. Sprink is a standalone application based on the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) which allows you to search and play YouTube videos without the need for an web browser. The application is in beta testing phase and is currently available for Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating systems. We have included download links to the April 2009 preview below – check it out if you are interested.

Make sure you have all the required software’s installed in order to run Sprink:

• Microsoft Windows 7 Beta (from Build 7000 - Build 7106) or Microsoft Windows Vista SP1 or above
• .NET Framework 3.5 SP1
• Adobe Flash Player

Download

[Click Here] to download Sprink version 0.677 (April 2009 Preview) – Direct Download

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Sprink – Run YouTube videos outside your browser

We’ve posted about ArenaBG tracker here on FILEnetworks Blog before but our previous article is now almost 6 months old – it’s time for an update. For those who don’t know, ArenaBG is a huge private torrent tracker which has it’s roots in Bulgaria. It’s a lot similar to Zamunda.net in terms of size and content – both are huge trackers with plenty of torrents and users. Just like in Zamunda, don’t let the Bulgarian text in the layout fool you – majority of the content on ArenaBG is English and there is an option to change interface language to English as well. Since this tracker does not ban users for not having a good ratio, it is likely to be popular among those with low bandwidth connections as well.

ArenaBG has undergone a lot of changes in the past few months. The site now sports a brand new look with a sleek new interface. There have been some improvements to site content as well. New categories for 0Day appz and music have been introduced. With over 2700 torrents, ArenaBG’s 0Day section is one of the largest I’ve seen on a private tracker. Music section is also filled with lots of English music in WavPack, APE, FLAC (Lossless) and MP3 and other popular audio formats.  In addition to the new categories, ArenaBG continues to track movies, games, TV shows and other general content as usual. The screenshot below captures some of the torrent packs available on this tracker:

As we mentioned earlier ArenaBG is a huge tracker. There are well over 250000 members and it currently tracks close to 25000 active torrents. This tracker has a similar ratio system to that of Zamunda – ratio is only used for user class promotions. Users that do not have a good ratio are not banned unlike in most other private torrent trackers. While this should be good news to those without high upload bandwidth, please try your best to avoid hit and running (stopping the upload immediately after you finish download).

Registrations for ArenaBG are always open – anyone who wants in can create an account for free. Check it out – it’s a decent General/0Day tracker. Also, this site is also a good place to start if you are new into private trackers (migrating from public trackers maybe).

Site Name: ArenaBG (http://0.arenabg.com/torrents.php)

Signup URL: http://0.arenabg.com/register.php

Note: To change interface language to English, use the drop down menu to the top right corner of the page

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ArenaBG tracker – Now with 0-Day appz, music and a brand new interface

Valve’s Steam content distribution platform was initially thought by many as the perfect solution to PC game piracy. However pirates eventually found ways bypass the protection and nowadays it’s not uncommon for Steam released titles to be leaked to the public. This article is about a new scene group called REdownLOADED who specializes in Steam protected titles. As you can see from the name, REdownLOADED seem to be inspired by the veteran scene group RELOADED. In fact, some interesting comments can be found in the NFO file of their first release The.Maw-REdownLOADED

Following are excerpts quoted from the said NFO:

note: This game is retail steam. We downloaded it. We made a winrar sfx installer copied it into a bin/cue and rarred like any iso release just like RELOADED does for all their steam games. If you nuke this homemade release you need to nuke:

• The.Last.Remnant-RELOADED
• NBA.2K9-RELOADED
• Zeno.Clash-CPY
• Wallace.And.Gromit.Ep.1.Fright.Of.The.Bumblebees-CPY
• The.Path-CPY
• Watchmen_The_End_Is_Nigh-Razor1911

and many more! Watch out for more redownloaded releases!

.

.

Greetings to RELOADED for making invalid valid!

Towards the end of the NFO, there is a personal greetings section which names several individuals. This IMHO was a bad idea because I instantly recognized several posters from one of my favorite gaming forums (they had used the same username in the NFO). Although this may not be a big issue, it could draw some unnecessary attention towards the members because REdownLOADED after all is connected to the warez scene. Anyways it’s always good to see a new group on the scene, specially a one that caters for Steam releases – good luck and stay safe!

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REdownLOADED – New Steam games release group on the scene

In today’s open signup update, we feature four very special private torrent trackers; The Vault, The Box, The Place and The Occult. Although these are sister sites, the content tracked by each is completely different - The Vault is a business/money making tracker, The Place is a lifestyle tracker, The Occult is a Cult/Mythology/Astrology tracker while The Box is a British TV series tracker. All four sites have vast amount of content, most of which is very rare and not found on any other private tracker. We have provided screenshots and mini reviews for each tracker below – if it interests you, signups are currently open.

The Vault

The Vault is a private tracker that is focused primarily on money making (both online and offline) and business. It has E-Books, videos, audio files, text documents and various other media associated with business related topics such as SEO, money making, sales/marketing, money management, economics, finance, customer service, copywriting, management, leadership, investing, trading, stocks, E-Commerce, real estate, recruitment/interviews, blogging, biographies and lots of other subjects similar to these.

Site Name: The Vault (http://www.thevault.bz) 
Signup URL: http://www.thevault.bz/signup.php
Stats: 8000+ users and 17200+ torrents
Invites IRC Channel: irc://irc.thevault.bz:6667/thevault-invites
Tracker Specific Instructions for IRC invites: Yes. If you missed out on the open signups, please refer to this article.

The Place

The Place is a private tracker that specializes in lifestyle content. From Food, Drinking, Dancing, Health, Fitness, Seduction, NLP and Cooking to Magic Illusions, this tracker has a wide array of content spanning across over 13000 torrent files. This includes videos, e-books and audio files related to day to day human life.
 
Site Name: The Place (http://www.theplace.bz) 
Signup URL: http://theplace.bz/signup.php
Stats: 6000+ users and 13300+ torrents
Invites IRC Channel: irc://irc.theplace.bz/invites
Tracker Specific Instructions for IRC invites: Yes. If you missed out on the open signups, please refer to this article.

The Occult

The Occult is the newest tracker out of these four. It has some of the most unusual & uncommon torrent categories ever seen on a private tracker (Mythology, Scientology, Drugs, Shamanism, Astrology to name a few). As the name suggests, it specializes in torrents related to various cults, ways of living, religions, healing and so on. Media on TheOccult include PDF E-Books, DVDs, MP3 audio, etc.
 
Site Name: The Occult (http://theoccult.bz)
Signup URL: http://theoccult.bz/signup.php
Stats: 2680+ users and ~1250 torrents
Notes: Unlike The Vault, The Place and The Box, signups for this tracker have not closed ever since it’s inception.

The Box

Out of all torrent sites featured in this article, The Box is the largest and without a doubt the most popular. It’s specialty is British (UK) TV series including Entertainment, Sports, Comedy, Sci-Fi, Drama, Kids and many other categories. There is a huge collection of UK TV series available on this tracker, spanning across over 36000 torrents. The Box focuses on both old and new TV series.
 
Site Name: The Box (http://www.thebox.bz)
Signup URL: http://www.thebox.bz/signup.php
Stats: Over 70000 users and 36000+ torrents
Notes: Signups for this tracker are known to open and close at regular intervals. If you couldn’t get in the first time, keep checking.

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‘TheVault’, ‘ThePlace’, ‘TheOccult’ and ‘TheBox’ trackers open for signup

New builds of both OpenOffice.org and OxygenOffice have been released. These are free office automation suites which can be used as alternatives to commercial suits such as Microsoft Office, Corel WordPerfect Office, etc. It seems that there is a lot of confusion among readers regarding the differences between OpenOffice and OxygenOffice. OxygenOffice Professional is an enhanced version of OpenOffice which features security, reliability, performance enhancements as well as some extra content. Both versions are still being actively developed and they apparently have a huge fan base from across the world.

According to Wikipedia article, OxygenOffice features the following enhancements:

• Possibility to run Visual Basic for Application (VBA) macros in Calc (for testing)
• Improved Calc HTML export
• Enhanced Access support for Base
• Security fixes
• Enhanced performance
• Enhanced color-palette
• Enhanced help menu, additional User’s Manual, and extended tips for beginners

Apart from the above list, OxygenOffice suite includes several additional templates, additional samples over 3000 clip art, close to 100 new fonts, and several tools that are not available in OpenOffice suite by default. The core applications such as Writer, Calc, Impress etc are more or less unchanged in both versions.

Download

[Click Here] to download latest OxygenOffice Professional for Windows and Linux from SourceForge

[Click Here] to download latest OpenOffice Professional from official download page

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OpenOffice.org 3.1.0 Final and OxygenOffice Professional 3.0.1.3 – Direct Download

When we first posted about PS2P back in late 2008, it was just a start up tracker that had to face the test of time like any other new BitTorrent site. Six months later, PS2P still stands - with a bigger community, better content and many new features. For those who don’t know, PS2P is a private torrent tracker specializing in Playstation 1, 2 and Playstation Portable games. It has a lot of ISO images and ROMs of PS games which can be played both on modded consoles and on PCs (with the use of emulators). In addition to games, there is a great collection of official soundtracks  (OST) of video games released for Playstation consoles over the past few years.

Statistics won’t tell you much about PS2P – rather than focusing purely on numbers, they seem to be focusing on gaining active members as well as quality content. There are currently 1500+ users and 250+ active torrents on this site. Out of the 250+ torrents, most are packs, FULLSETS or collections with multiple games in one torrent (for example all PS2 games beginning with letter A in one torrent). This includes 1200+ PS2 PAL Games/Versions, 1800+ US PS2 Games, around 800+ Asian PS2 Games – that’s almost 4000 console games right there. Some PS2, PSP emulators, Hacks, Mods, DVD Covers and other Tools for the Playstation console scan also be found on this tracker.

As you can see, there is a huge amount of Playstation games available for download here on PS2P. Most of the torrents are uploaded as ‘contributions’ or as parts of ongoing projects by the site’s active community. There are also a lot of non scene releases available here which you might not find on any other torrent tracker.

During This includes the PS2-P Wiki, the past few months, lots of new features have been added to this tracker. This includes the new Wiki, cool new category icons, revamp of categories, several new projects and ‘contributions’, games from REDUMP.ORG, the ‘featured torrents’ section and many more. Also don’t forget that PS2-P has a cool, unique interface.

If you still are not a member, we hear that public signups for PS2P will be open till the 4th of May, 2009. Quoted from site homepage:

PS2PTT will open its doors from this Friday 1st May am till Monday 4th May am GMT.
Tell all your friends.

Check it out. It’s a great resource if you have a modded console or if you are planning to play emulated PS/PS2 games in the future (something we’ll cover in more detail in an upcoming article).

Site Name: PS2-P Tracker (http://ps2ptt.com)

Signup URL: http://ps2ptt.com/signup.php

Categories: 

• !Featured
• Contributions/New Games: PSP
• Contributions: Lossless VGM
• Contributions: PS2 Projects
• Contributions: PSX
• Covers
• Extra Projects
• Project PS2: ASIAN SET
• Project PS2: PAL SET
• Project PS2: USA SET
• Project PSP: SCENE SET
• Project: Lossless VGM SET
• Project: PS2 Undubs
• Project: PsOne SETS
• Project: X-BOX SET
• PS2 New Releases
• REDUMP.ORG
• Requests
• Tools

Thanks to Oleg and frank for the heads up.

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PS2P Tracker – PS2, PSX and PSP torrents and video game soundtracks

In our quest to find new and old private torrent trackers, we have come across some really large sites such as ArenaBG, RARBG, Partis.Si, Torrents.Ru, Gamato, etc. Today we present you another huge private tracker – Zamunda.net (we we’ve talked about it before but it’s time for an update). Zamunda is apparently a very popular site in Bulgaria, Turkey, Russia, etc but it does not seem to be as popular in English speaking countries. This is a bit of a surprise because underneath an interface with Bulgarian characters lies a solid private tracker which actually has more English content than TorrentLeech and doesn’t have any mandatory ratio rules.

The administrator of Zamunda is a Bulgarian. However the site is no longer hosted in Bulgaria - legal pressure caused it to relocate in Russia. However no obstacle has been able stop Zamunda’s growth – it currently has more than 600000 members (that’s over half a million) and tracks close to 65000 active torrents.

At the start of this article we mentioned that Zamunda does not seem to be a popular choice among users who seek English releases. Our guess is that most of them get turned off by Zamunda’s interface which is by default displayed in Bulgarian language. This clearly is a mistake – majority of Zamunda’s releases are English movies, TV shows, games, software, music, E-books and other general content released by scene and p2p groups. Additionally, interface language can be set to English – simply click on the English flag icon on top left corner of the page.

However, even in the English interface, every torrent name and description is displayed both in Bulgarian and English. Do not be fooled into thinking the actual content tracked by the torrent is also Bulgarian – it is most probably English. For example the torrent title Paul Blart: Mall Cop / Пол Бларт: Ченгето на мола (2009) actually points to the English version of the movie. Also the Bulgarian flag next to a torrent title means it has optional Bulgarian subtitles, not that it has BG audio. Movies with Bulgarian and Russian audio are usually located in ‘Movies/BG’ and ‘Movies/Russia’ categories. Movies in other sections almost always have English audio.

In addition to general torrents, Zamunda also has a great selection of PC game rips (with over 700 rips) as well as a huge collection of non scene DVDRips which are sometimes not even found on dedicated movie trackers. However torrents seem to be renamed during the uploading process and release group name is sometimes not included in the renamed version indexed on the site (just Turok instead of 'Turok -Skullptura').

  
Screen: Some of the torrent packs at Zamunda. Despite the Bulgarian text, all torrents in this screenshot feature English audio

Another great thing about Zamunda is the large number of peers connected to the tracker – even torrents that are a few years old are well seeded thanks to it’s 0.6+ million strong user base.

One thing we had failed to mention in our last article about Zamunda is that it does not have any mandatory ratio rules unlike many other private trackers. There is something called the ‘rating system’ which records download and upload stats of a user but this is only used for user class promotions. Your ‘rating’ will also affect the ability to make requests on Zamunda (to make a request you need to be a power user).  However users are not banned or warned for having a low ratio. Following is quoted from the FAQ:

Q: What is that "Rating"? Can I raise it ?
A: The rating is actually the ratio between leech and seed. Try to be high because the high rating gives some benefits - you can become a Power User, for example. Your rating becomes higher when you seed files. If you seed more, you'll have a better rating. Your rating becomes lower if you download.

This should be welcome news to those with low upload speeds but always keep in mind that lax ratio rules are not an excuse for hit and running (HnR) - BitTorrent is based on sharing so always try to give something back to the community. Also, don’t expect the download speeds of ScT or SCC from Zamunda. However this tracker is a lot faster than most general/0day sites out there and perhaps more than 100x faster than TPB, Demonoid or H33T in most cases.

Zamunda is a private tracker and is closed for public registrations most of the time. They do not have an invite system so the only way in is during an open signup. If you are looking forward to get into this site today is your lucky day – Zamunda is currently open. We don’t know till when the open signups will last so get in while you can.

Site Name: Zamunda (http://www.zamunda.net)

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

Categories:

• Mobile/GSM
• XXX
• Animation
• Video/HDTV
• Video/x264
• Other
• Games/PC ISO
• Games/PC Rip
• Games/PS
• Games/Console
• Clips
• Books/Comic
• Music
• Music/DTS
• Music/DVD-R
• Music/Lossless
• Programs/PC ISO
• Programs/other
• Serial/TV
• Dox
• Movies/DVD-R
• Movies/HDTV
• Movies/XviD
• Movies/BG
• Movies/Science
• Movies/Russia
• Hentai

Read the rest of this article...

Zamunda – Huge private tracker with no mandatory ratio rules (signups open)

DarkCoder has done it again! The one man cracking powerhouse has developed a seemingly working crack for Chronicles of Riddick : Assault on Dark Athena. Although a full DVD ISO of this game leaked online right on the release date, DRM embedded in this title held off pirates at bay for nearly a month. Assault on Dark Athena was protected by TAGES + SolidShield – a combination that has proven time consuming to crack on many occasions. The game also had to be activated online. Only three activations were allowed by the DRM on a single copy and this caused an uproar even among die hard fans of the series.

Getting back on topic, DarkC0der’s crack is supposed to be used with v1.1 of Chronicles of Riddick : Assault on Dark Athena. The ‘crack’ comprises of several modified dll files which seem to be related to TAGES client. It is not clear if the protection is bypassed or completely removed (maybe DarkCoder found a loophole in the v1.1 update?). Although I have not tried it myself, comments on various online communities are very much positive towards the crack’s functionality. By the way, TAGES drivers which gets copied during install will still be present on the system even if you use the cracked dll files.

With the release of a crack for Chronicles of Riddick : Assault on Dark Athena, DarkCoder gives out a strong message to his critics – his success with SecuROM PA was not just luck. He has yet again managed to beat scene groups in cracking an extremely difficult modern DRM system that was seemingly invincible until today.

Note: Do to ask for or post download links to cracks, key generators or anything of that sort. This is a news blog only.

Related Articles:

• Bionic Commando Rearmed cracked by DarkCoder
• Crysis Warhead cracked by DarkC0der
• Darkc0der cracks Dead Space DRM
• BioShock has been cracked!
• Pirates crack Chronicles of Riddick : Assault on Dark Athena

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DarkCoder cracks Chronicles of Riddick : Assault on Dark Athena v1.01

Earlier we reported about the release of X-Men Origin : Wolverine (hereby referred to as XMO:W) which is an action adventure game based on the movie of the same name. The game was developed for the PC by Raven software and published by Activision. Personally i think the devs did a good job on creating a polished PC game that is loads of fun to play. However it’s not a perfect, 100% error free title (which game is, btw?). This article discusses both technical and non technical gameplay issues you may encounter with XMO:W - we have tried our best to include solutions that may help you alleviate such issues.

Note: This article is a Work-In-Progress. It will be updated as we discover more issues/solutions for XMO:W. If you run across something new, feel free to post it in the comments section.

Technical Issues

How to play XMO : Wolverine with a game controller or a gamepad (XBOX360 controller, Logitech gamepads, etc)?

If you run into any problems trying to attach a 3rd party gamepad/controller into the game (certain functions in the gamepad don’t work, freezing, etc) , you can try using the XBOX360 controller emulator to fix these. Download links and instructions can be found here (the game exe means the folder where the main executable for your game is located – in this case paste dinput8.dll, xinput1_3.dll and xbox360cemu.ini in the /Binaries dir inside your XMO:W install location). You might need to tweak xbox360cemu.ini file a bit if you are using something other than an X360 controller (for example, here is a config file optimized for Logitech gamepads). If you get an XInput Test error message, edit your xbox360cemu.ini so that it has the line UseForceFeedback=0 in place of the string UseForceFeedback=1. If you still experience issues try powering on the controller before you launch the game.

How to run X-Men Origin : Wolverine in Windowed mode?

To get most recent games to run in Windowed mode, you needed to edit some config file. But no such hassle with XMO : W – just hit Alt + Enter and the game will switch to windowed mode.

How do I change advanced graphics options in X-Men Origin : Wolverine?

The graphics options menu in XMO : W has only around two options – not very good news for those who like to tweak games to perfection. However, advanced graphics settings can be changed by editing the configuration file – you will be able to change lots of graphics options such as motion blur, bloom, dynamic lights, shadows, vsync, resolution and more.

1. Go to your game installation dir. Default is Program Files/Activision/X-Men Origins Wolverine.
2. Open the "Engine" folder and then the "Config" folder.
3. Inside Config folder there should be a file named BaseEngine.ini. Open this file with a text editor such as notepad.
4. You will see a lot of configuration options. Advanced graphics settings are located below the [SystemSettings] string (do a text find on SystemSettings).

Note: Edit the configuration file at your own risk. Setting incorrect values can cause the game to not run or become unplayable.

How to enable VSync and Anti Aliasing (AA) in XMO : W?

In the graphics settings menu, you will not find an option to do either of these. You can however enable Vsync by editing the configuration file (see above). Just set UseVsync=False to UseVsync = True in the BaseEngine.ini. I have still not managed to find a way to force AA via config file editing. However I tried forcing AA from NVIDIA control panel and it seems to work well. Should work with ATI hardware as well but I have not tested it – you might need to rename the wolverine exe to something else that uses Unreal Engine 3 such as masseffect.exe or bioshock.exe if forcing via ATI control panel.

How to manually change screen resolution of the game?

It seems that some screen resolutions including several widescreen resolutions are missing in the XMO – W options menu. Missing resolutions can be set by editing the BaseEngine.ini configuration file (see above). The values next to strings ResX and ResY represent width and height, respectively.

For example ResX=800 and ResY=600 represents a screen resolution of 800x600.

Black screen at startup, ‘X Men Origin Wolverine has encountered a problem and needs to close’ errors, no sound or stuttering audio, display glitches and other technical issues

Although some users have reported having such errors on various gaming forums, I couldn’t find a major fault with the game which triggered these. The errors seem to be random or present only on certain hardware/OS configurations (machine specific) so only general advice can be given on troubleshooting. Following are some steps you can take to reduce the possibility of crashes and other errors in X-Men Origin : Wolverine:

1. Update your video drivers
   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
   For Beta ATI/NVIDIA drivers for Windows 7, XP and Vista, check out this page: http://downloads.guru3d.com/
2. Update DirectX – This is very important if you are using Windows XP. Not having the latest monthly DirectX updated could cause all sorts of problems ranging from missing dll file errors to crashes or ‘needs to close’ error messages. Latest monthly runtime can be found here.
3. Update sound card and motherboard drivers - Click Here to download 3DP Chip for Windows Vista/XP – This program will automatically detect your hardware (video card, sound card and motherboard) and find available driver updates.

Note that there is no guarantee that following steps above will make your problems vanish. However they are basic yet important tips that many chose to ignore. IMHO the updating drivers/directx should be done as frequently as possible (or as soon as updates are available).

GamePlay issues

What is the difference between X:Men Origins : Wolverine Uncaged Edition and regular edition?

Uncaged edition is the name given for PC/XBOX360/PS3 versions of the game – these are rated M (mature). XMO : W for the Wii/PS2 does not have the ‘Uncaged’ tag and are rated T (Teen).

How to unlock and change the costume for the character (Logan)?

First you need to unlock the challenges for each costume. This is done by collecting costume figurines that are scatted around in the game. Collect at least two statues of the same type and a challenge will be unlocked. Then go to Main Menu –> Bonus and complete the challenge. You will then be able to select the costume at the start of game. If you are wondering what’s the big hype about unlockable costumes, well they automatically regenerate.

Towards the end of the jungle, there are three statue platforms one needs to jump on to get to the other side. How do you do this?

1. Destroy wooden support structure on two of the statues. Now go to the wheel and turn it.
2. You should now be able to jump from the first platform onto the second. You can grab the extra health if you time the jump just when the status begins to move.
3. Go to the 3rd statue, jump on the stone ledge and jump to the platform and do another jump.

In the Lab mission, just after you fight off the ghosts (sector 4) you need a power cell to active the elevator. But I cannot find a power cell anywhere?

1. You should have found a power cell and used it to unlock the door to sector 4. Well you are going to use the same cell again.
2. Head back to where you inserted the first power cell. The door should be open now.
3. There should be a crate between the two large doors. Push that create in between the doors you just opened with the cell.
4. Pull the power cell out from where you originally inserted it. The doors will shut but the create will jam them so you can still sneak through with the power cell.
5. Use the power cell on elevator door.

How to perform fatalities (finishing moves) in X-Men Origin : Wolverine ?

You need to press the following action keys in the given order: Press Grab, then press heavy attack and once the fists glow press heavy attack again.

Article will be updated when/if new issues or tips are found.

Read the rest of this article...

Solutions for X-Men Origin : Wolverine crashes, sound & gameplay issues

First of all we are 1-2 days late with this article – extremely sorry about that. While pirates from all around the world were waiting for a working crack for Chronicles of Riddick : Assault on Dark Athena, scene group RELOADED have released a cracked version of X-Men Origins : Wolverine. It’s an action adventure game based on the hit movie of the same name. I have had the time to play X-Men Origins : Wolverine for about 3 hours and I’m genuinely surprised at how good it is, specially given that it’s a movie based game (which usually suck balls).

X-Men Origins : Wolverine comes with embedded Digital Rights Management (DRM) software in a bid to fight piracy. However RELOADED are one of the few groups out there who seem to have mastered the art of cracking SecuROM. Besides, this game does not seem to be protected with SecuROM PA (online activation component) so it may have made things easier for the crackers. RELOADED’s release comprises of a full DVD ISO of the game as well as a cracked executable which has the DRM removed.

The cracked release has already made it to public and private torrent trackers and is being heavily downloaded. It’s not surprising because the user perception on this game in various gaming forums is pretty good. X-Men Origins : Wolverine has an aggregate review score of 74% on GameRankings (based only on two reviews) but I don't think this score does justice to the game. Anyway screw the critics - go ahead and play it – it’s a damn fun game with lots of blood and gore. Buy it and support the devs if you can.

Note: Do not post download/torrent links to cracks here. This is a news blog only.

Read the rest of this article...

Pirates crack X-Men Origins : Wolverine DRM (PC)

At various points of time we have posted articles on various private torrent trackers that offer free IRC invites. IRC invites are probably one of the easiest and safest (but also one of the most underused) ways to get into a private site – you don’t need to worry about trading or the presence of known cheaters/scammers in the invite tree as the invitation comes directly from tracker staff/administration. So here is a list of 11 private trackers (plus 1 BitTorrent invite forum) and addresses of their free invite channels – hopefully this list will reduce the amount of invite begging you’ll have to do and provide easy access to at least a few of your favorite trackers.

Note that you might have to go through an interview or may be asked to provide speedtests, ratio proofs, etc during the IRC invite process. What you should do varies according to the tracker you are dealing with – we have provided tracker specific instructions where possible. Some common guidelines would be not to PM (private message) channel ops without permission and avoid spamming the channel.

Also, If you are an IRC noob, we suggest you read this article about mIRC and how to easily connect to an IRC channel using the software.

1. Tehconnection
 
Site Name: Tehconnection (http://tehconnection.eu)
Type: Tehconnection is a Gazelle based movie tracker. More info can be found here.
Stats: 20800+ users and 7016 torrents
Invites IRC Channel: irc://irc.tehconnection.eu/TehConnection.Invites
Tracker Specific Instructions: Yes. Read this article.

2. Torrent-Damage
 
Site Name: Torrent-Damage (http://www.torrent-damage.net)
Type: Torrent Damage is an excellent General/0Day tracker running on a heavily customized version of Gazelle source. More info + screenshots can be found here. 
Stats: 40000+ users and 14700+ torrents
Invites IRC Channel: Channel #td-invite on Server irc.torrent-damage.net  or falcon.torrent-damage.net (only mibbit is supported)
Tracker Specific Instructions: Yes. Follow step by step instructions in this article. 

3. Underground-Gamer
 
Site Name: Underground Gamer (http://www.underground-gamer.com)
Type: Underground Gamer is a popular retro games torrent tracker.
Stats: ~30000 members and 7000+ torrents
Invites IRC Channel: irc://irc.underground-gamer.com/invites
Tracker Specific Instructions: No. Read the channel topic and most importantly read tracker rules before you ask for an invite. 

4. The Place
 
Site Name: The Place (http://www.theplace.bz)
Type: The Place is a popular lifestyle torrent tracker with videos, e-books and audio files related to day to day human life.
Stats: 6000+ users
Invites IRC Channel: irc://irc.theplace.bz/invites
Tracker Specific Instructions: Yes. Refer to this article.

5. The Vault
 
Site Name: The Vault (http://www.thevault.bz)
Type: TheVault.Bz has E-Books, videos, audio files, text documents and various other media associated with business related topics. This includes SEO, money making, sales/marketing, money management, etc.
Stats: 6700+ users
Invites IRC Channel: irc://irc.thevault.bz:6667/thevault-invites
Tracker Specific Instructions: Yes. Please refer to this article.

6. BitGamer
 
Site Name: bitGAMER (http://www.bitgamer.com)
Type: bitGAMER is an excellent games torrent tracker. Our recent review of the site can be found here.
Stats: 21000+ members and 4000+ torrents
Invites IRC Channel: irc://irc.underground-gamer.com/bginvites
Tracker Specific Instructions: No. Read channel topic.

7. Pass The Popcorn
 
Site Name: PassThePopcorn (http://passthepopcorn.org)
Type: PassthePopcorn is a popular movie tracker based on customized gazelle source. More information can be found here.
Stats: 13500+ users and 8800+ torrents
Invites IRC Channel: irc://irc.passthepopcorn.org/invite
Tracker Specific Instructions: No. Invites are given out based on interview results. Read channel topic first.

8. Animatoonic
 
Site Name: AnimaTooniC (http://animatoonic.org)
Type: AnimaTooniC is an Anime, Cartoons and Comics torrent tracker based on Gazelle. More info and screenshots can be found here.
Stats: 750+ members and 1000+ torrents
Invites IRC Channel: irc://irc.p2p-network.net/animatoonic-invites
Tracker Specific Instructions: Yes. Refer to this article.

9. What.CD
 
Site Name: What.CD (http://what.cd)
Type: What.CD is one of the best (if not the best) music trackers.
Stats: close to 0.5 million torrents
Invites IRC Channel: irc://irc.what.cd:6667/what.cd-invites
Tracker Specific Instructions: Yes and if you try to get an invite without reading these, there is a high likelihood of failure.

10. BrokenStones
 
Site Name: BrokenStones (http://brokenstones.me/)
Type: Brokenstones is a specialized Mac appz tracker.
Stats: 5000+ users
Invites Site: http://bswillyouinvite.me/
Tracker Specific Instructions: Yes. Refer to this article.

11. TorrentTech
 
Site Name: TorrentTech (http://www.torrentech.org/)
Type: TorrentTech is a huge electronic music tracker.
Stats: 33500+ members and 46500+ torrents
IRC Channel: http://irc.torrentech.org/ (requires java)
Tracker Specific Instructions: No. But reading the TT rules is strongly recommended. It may take a long time to actually get invited.

12. The Pirate Society

Site Name: The Pirate Society (http://www.thepiratesociety.org)
Invites Channel: irc://irc.p2p-network.net/thepiratesociety-invites
Stats: ~5300+ members
Description: TPS is not a private tracker. It’s BitTorrent related forum with invites giveaways, news, recruitment and more. For more details of this site refer to this article.

Good Luck, Guys!

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Private trackers that offer free invites via IRC channel

It would not be wrong to say that What.CD is currently the best music torrent tracker around. With close to half a million torrents and a huge user base, What.CD is every BitTorrent music fan’s dream. However, getting into What is not that easy. The site has been invite only ever since it’s inception and it’s unlikely to have open signups the near future (If you are thinking of obtaining a What.CD invitation from an invite selling/trading forum, well forget it. They will hunt you down and ban your ass forever.). So how can someone new get into this great tracker? If you dedicate some of your time to research on music, music related technologies, and BitTorrent, you will easily be able to get in via the IRC interview.

For those who don’t know about What.CD, the following description should give a brief idea:

Founded in October of 2007, What.CD is a private BitTorrent tracker focusing largely on music. With its fast download speeds, well-seeded torrents, and wide selection of music files encoded in such lossless formats as FLAC, ALAC, APE, and WavPack, in addition to such lossy formats as MP3, Ogg Vorbis, AAC, and AC3, What.CD is a music-lover's paradise. For the true audiophile, What.CD offers FLAC 24-bit/96 kHz vinyl, SACD, DVD-Audio, and multi-channel DTS rips. Furthermore, What.CD offers eLearning videos, eBooks, comic books, software, and audio books.

Something that is not mentioned above is that What.CD runs on the Gazelle codebase. In fact, it was What’s crew who created this awesome BitTorrent tracker script. In addition to music torrents, What has a great comics section as well as an appz section which are both rich with fresh content.

How to get invited for free – the interview

Let me break the bad news first – the interview is somewhat difficult and you’ll have to do some reading beforehand in order to pass. Luckily, all instructions and the topics you need to research on are already clearly defined by What.CD. In fact, there is already a small ‘interview prep’ site online (http://whatinterviewprep.webs.com), which is a must read for every potential interviewee. Read it in the following order:

1. How to join – Includes IRC channel details and how to connect
2. Prepare for the interview – Areas and topics you need to read on
3. After the interview – What you should do next, once you pass or fail the interview

Initially it may seem like a lot of work but hey, if you pass the interview you’ll have access to the best music tracker on the planet. How cool is that?

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Free What.CD invite via IRC interview – How to get in