As we previously highlighted, Dragon Age : Origins is without a doubt one of the best RPG games to be released this year. We didn’t post our routine troubleshooting article for this game simply because it didn’t have any major problems. However, several of our readers wrote to us regarding a problem they faced with the game so here is a possible fix for this seemingly common issue. Some users started receiving the following error “The application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect. Please see the application event log for more details” after they applied the first patch for the game. The fix is simple.

First of all this error most probably has nothing to do with your system. It manifests because some of the original DA : Origins components are built using an older version of Microsoft C++ library and the new DA : Origins patch uses components built using a newer version. Solution is simple – download the new C++ runtime, install it and run the game.

You need to download the latest version of C++ 2005 Service Pack 1 Redistributable or it will not work. Download link is provided below:

[Click Here] to download Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Service Pack 1 Redistributable Package ATL Security Update from Microsoft Download Center (Genuine Validation NOT required)

Note that this error is quite common with other software as well. If this pops out while using your favorite Windows application, try this solution first – chances are that it’ll solve your problem.

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E-Learing torrent trackers have always had high demand in the BitTorrent community. There are so few of them and it’s usually not easy to get into the ones that are around. But here is the good news – DocsBits is a brand new E-Learning torrent tracker. The site is only a few days old and so far it looks very promising. Even though we called it an ‘E-learning’ tracker, DocsBits does not seem to be limiting itself to educational torrents. In addition to educational content the site seems to index fiction, documentaries and even magic related books.

DocsBits

DocsBits is a private tracker from Romania. Romania is known for its many 0Day trackers but specialized trackers based on the country are a rarity. DocsBits somehow reminds me of Docs.Torrents.Ro, an excellent Romanian E-Learning tracker that shut down a while ago. Anyways DocsBits being a ‘Romanian’ tracker doesn’t mean it tracks Romanian content. Actually, majority of the site’s content are English.

At the time this post is being written, DocsBits was only 4 days old. During the first 4 days the tracker had managed to add close to 450 new users and 110+ new torrents; impressive stats indeed for a E-learning start up. But users and torrents are not all that’s been changing. When I logged into the site today the visual style and category icons had all changed (for the better). By the way, it seems to be based on the TBDEV tracker script.

Docsbits Screenshot

As you can see from the screenshot above, DocsBits is not limited to educational content; it’s categories list defines 20 different topics ranging from medicine to hacking. And it’s not just E-books either – video documentaries and even applications are tracked.

Signups for DocsBits are currently open – you don’t need to go through interviews or hunt for invites. If you want to check out a new ELearning tracker go ahead and register. It’s too soon to say whether DocsBits would be a success but so far, things have looked good.

Site Name: DocsBits (http://www.docsbits.com)

Signup URL: http://www.docsbits.com/signup.php

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Back when we started giving out BitTorrent tracker invites via this blog, giveaways were mostly limited to Demonoid codes. Since then, a lot of reputed trackers have joined hands with us and our Giveaways section has been buzzing with activity. Here is yet another respected private tracker offering invites via FILEnetworks; CZTEAM. We have 30 free invitations for this tracker which will be given out to interested readers, absolutely for free. CZTEAM (formerly known as CZONE) is one of the better General/0Day trackers from Romania. The site is known for its download speeds and rich content.

CZTEAM

With over 32000 members and over 11000 active torrents, CZTEAM is one of the larger private trackers out there. The site indexes almost all major scene and p2p releases and most of the indexed torrents have adequate number of seeds (sometimes over 200 seeds per torrent). The site has a a decent interface which can be customized via several themse. CZTEAM have recently added ‘Torrents of the Day’, ‘Torrents of the Week’ and ‘Torrents of the Month’ pages which highlight popular torrents during the given period of time. You may read more information on CZTEAM in our previous article about the site located here.

CZTEAM Torrents

Back to invites. A few months ago CZTEAM ran which was probably their final open signup. Since then the site has been invite only. However CZTEAM admins have agreed to provide 30 free invitations exclusively for FILEnetworks readers. Note that the availability of further invites will be decided based on the first 30 members who sign up.

Note: This giveaway is not open to members in Israel, Egypt or Romania (due to tracker admin’s request - Israel and Egypt are banned and CZTEAM administration has wished to see more foreign users - hence no Romania as well ).

Note: We ran several open signup updates on CZONE whenever it opened registration. If you managed to get in back then, please do not request an invite here. Also, this giveaway is not open to anyone who previously had a CZTEAM account and got it disabled for whatever reason.

What you need to do in order to request as CZTEAM invite:

  1. Go to www.speedtest.net
  2. Do a SpeedTest against the London server and Bucharest server. (If you have trouble locating them on the map, choose Settings from the top menu and set ‘preferred server’ manually from drop down list)
  3. Add links to both the speedtests in a new E-mail message. Note that direct links need to be included – no screen captures please. Both SpeedTests should have the same date and it should be between 4/11/2009 and 6/11/2009.
  4. Specify in message body the E-mail address you need the invite sent to.
  5. Set the subject of the mail to CZTEAM Invite and send it to invites[dot]filenetworks[at]gmail[dot]com.

Note that only 30 invites are available. These will be given out to 30 qualified members on a first come first served basis. Please allow 2-3 days for your invite to be sent. Good Luck!

Special thanks to |nvari and rest of CZTEAM staff

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Dragon Age : Origins DLC Leaks on Torrent Trackers

Posted by TEAM FILEnetworks | 11/05/2009 | | 0 Comments »

There are games and then there are masterpieces. Dragon Age : Origins is definitely a masterpiece. Once again BioWare has delivered an amazing gaming experience at a time when high quality games are a rarity. No matter how good a game is, there will always be those who pirate it. DA : Origins is one of those games that deserves to be bought but of course, it leaked online a day before release (but generally, I’ve seen lots of folks talking of buying the game even on hard core pirate forums which is a good thing). However, those who choose to pirate it will be missing out on a lot of downloadable content (DLC). This game has tons of extra content in the form of new unique items, quests, party members, new abilities and so on.

Dragon Age Origins Cover

But did you ever think pirates will stop at releasing just the game? Some of the DLCs for DA : Origins have already made it to BitTorrent trackers and one click hosting sites. Here is a list of addons for the game that have already leaked, in one form or the other:

  • The Stone Prisoner*
  • Warden's Keep*
  • Blood Dragon Armor
  • Memory Band*
  • Feral Wolf Charm*
  • Guildmaster's Belt*
  • Band of Fire*
  • Dalish Promise Ring*
  • Collector's Edition (Adds 3 items: Bergen's Honor, Grimoire of the Frozen Wastes, Final Reason)*
  • The Edge
  • Embri's Many Pockets
  • Helm of the Deep
  • The Lucky Stone
  • The Lion's Paw
  • Mark of Vigilance
  • Amulet of the War Mage
  • The Wicked Oath

*Needs to be authorized online

Now the bad news for those running illegitimate copies is that some of these DLCs require authentication from BioWare’s servers. For example, the better addons from the above list such as Warden’s Keep and Stone Prisoner all need to be authorized. Well I’ve seen folks fiddling around with various workarounds to get them working but honestly, buying the game would be a lot more easier. Most DLCs (except some promotional content that come bundled with certain offers) are free and easily activated for those who legally bought the game.

Note: Do not ask for download/torrent links for DA : Origins or any of its DLC. This post is for informational purposes only.

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If you look in any of the major general BitTorrent trackers, chances are that you won’t find a lot of Asian movies indexed. However, there are quite a few torrent trackers and online video streaming sites that *specialize* in such content. Between these sites you’ll pretty much find almost all popular Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Hong Kong, Korean, Malaysian, Indonesian, Vietnamese and other movies from the the Asian region. This post summarizes information about 4 such sites. 3 of them are BitTorrent trackers (Asian DVD Club, AvistaZ, AsianTorrentZ) while the other is an online movie streaming site (AZNV). All of these are of course open for registration.

Links to full review has been included where applicable. It’s recommended you read it before signing up for a tracker.

AvistaZ
Avistaz 
Site Name: AvistaZ
Signup URL: http://bt.avistaz.com/account.php
Stats: 86000+ users and 9600+ torrents
Description: AvistaZ is another large tracker for Korean, Thai, Japanese, Chinese, Hong Kong, etc movies. In addition to movies, AvistaZ tracks some TV shows and music too. A new invitation system is in the works so open registrations might not last long after all.
Full Review: [Click Here]

Asian DVD Club (ADC)
Asian DVD Club
 
Site Name: Asian DVD Club (http://asiandvdclub.org)
Signup URL: http://asiandvdclub.org/signup.php
Stats: 24700+ torrents and 42000+ users
Description: Asian DVD Club is a private tracker for full DVDR movies from the Asian region. A fact very few are aware of is that ADC is the sister site of popular classic movie tracker Cinematik. Movies from lots of Asian countries may be found here – this is probably one of the largest specialized trackers in terms of torrents index and user base.
Full Review: [Click Here]

AsianTorrentZ
AsianTorrentZ 
Site Name: AsianTorrentZ (http://www.asiantorrentz.com)
Signup URL: http://www.asiantorrentz.com/account.php
Stats: 6400+ users and 1360+ torrents
Description: One of the new trackers to cater this niche but AsianTorrentZ has grown rapidly in a quick span of time. The site has a very similar visual style to that of AvistaZ. Tracks movies from a number of different Asian countries including Malaysia. Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam.
Full Review: [Click Here]

AZNV.TV
AZNV 
Site Name: AZNV.TV (http://aznv.tv)
Signup URL: http://aznv.tv/?p=register
Stats: 1500+ movies/TV/Drama/Anime
Description: Unlike the other three sites mentioned in this article, AZNV is not a torrent tracker. It’s a free online streaming site for high quality Asian movies, TV shows and Anime. They are now testing H264 Flash streaming so expect more good things to come. To read more about this site, it’s layout and the streaming technology they use, please refer to the full review linked-to below.
Full Review: [Click Here]

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I bet single every one of you know about giant music trackers such as What.CD and Waffles.Fm. These sites are so popular that anyone new to the BT world would think that these are the only music trackers currently in existence. This however is not true. Overshadowed by the likes of What.CD, hundreds of smaller & lesser known private BitTorrent communities focusing on music still exist. This article is about one of them; Glabella. We first mentioned about this tracker in our BitTorrent Twitter accounts article sometime back. It seemed to be a popular tracker among our reader so here comes the full review.

Glabella

Glabella is a BitTorrent tracker of Latvian origin. But don’t let that bother you – the site fully supports English and Russian languages in addition to Latvian. To change the language, click on a flag icon located to the left of the top toolbar.

According to Glabella’s statistics, the site has over 44000 members. This is quite a huge number for a private tracker. However, we think the site’s actual active member count is much less that 44k (judging by seeder/leecher stats, snatches per torrent, and Alexa rank). That being said, keep in mind that Glabella is not a ghost down. Most music albums have enough seeders for you to download them without issues.

As for the content, Glabella mostly tracks English music albums in MP3 format. They do have some great collections, discographies and music video packs in addition to regular albums. It currently tracks music related to 33 different genres.

Glabella Screenshot

Glabella runs on a customized version of TBDEV tracker script. The user interface is nothing special but at least it’s easy to navigate. Once again, if you need to change interface language it’s possible via the top toolbar.

At the time this article is being written, Glabella is open for signup. If you want to check the site out, now would be a good time.

Site Name: Glabella (http://glabella.org)

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

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60 Minutes, the American investigative television newsmagazine, recently did a report on movie piracy. Specialists on Intellectual Property and movie industry big shots were interviewed and the documentary highlights how much of a threat BitTorrent and online downloading has become today. It also mentions how piracy is linked to drug dealing, child pron and all other bad things in the world. Personally, I found the video to be quite humorous as it was completely biased and full of bullcr@p. It didn’t feel like an ‘investigative’ report at all – for me the whole thing looked like one big drama with bad actors. Video is embedded below:

Direct link to the video: http://www.megavideo.com/?v=BJ2GPXWZ

Remember kids, “Those little dots going back and forth are pieces of the movie”. Thanks a lot T.J for sending us the link to video.

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Few months ago we ran an article on HDTor, a private BitTorrent site with Turkish and English High Definition movies and TV series. With over 12000 members, it was/is a pretty decent HD tracker. Anyways this is not another HDTor review - The crew behind HDT have launched a new private tracker known has HDTShare or HD-Universe. This new site too specializes in HD content and both movies and television series in high def formats will be available on HD-Universe. As existing members of HDTor may have noticed, there were quite a few non English (Turkish) releases indexed there. HD-Universe will instead focus more on English releases and will try to recruit more English speaking members, departing from it’s Turkish roots.

HD Universe

HD Universe is quite new and right now there is nothing much to speak of in terms of statistics. At time of this post, there were only around 40 torrents and ~900 members. However expect these numbers to rise rapidly – HD Universe will be further boosted by HDTor’s existing user base and torrent index by the time transition is complete. Note that in some cases, you won’t automatically gain access to HD-Universe even if you were a member of HDTor. You’ll have to sign up and create a new account in order to use the site. If you use the same username as in HDTor and inform the admins, you might even get to keep your old ratio stats.

Another significant change between HDTor and HD-Universe is the codebase. HDTor used to run on TS Special Edition while HD Universe runs on a modified version of TBDEV.

HD Universe torrents

Quoted below is a recent mass E-mail sent to existing members of HDTor:

Dear HDTor.com Members,
As you all know in order to be a worldwide known hd tracker we decided to move on under a new name and script.Main reasons for this decision are we attract foreign users nomore and more expenses than income etc.
We HDTor.com staff team,are not going to let you down,If you sign in to our new site with your current user ID in HDTor.com and inform staff team about it your ratio, upload and download rate will be given as it is.For VIP members, their VIP memberships will start over again.
Warning:those who make a haul using others\' user names will be suspended from both sites.

It’s too early to tell whether HD Universe will go on to become a great HD tracker. However its admins and staff are not noobs when it comes to running torrent sites, as they have demonstrated with HDTor. All we can say is that it would be an interesting tracker to watch. Registrations for HD Universe are currently open and interested readers may join for free.

Site Name: HD Universe (http://www.hdtshare.com)

Signup URL: http://www.hdtshare.com/signup.php

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If you download subtitles for downloaded movies and TV shows, you might have run into the following scenario – the subtitle you are looking for is available but it’s in another language. Needless to say its frustrating when this happens as you’ll have to wait for someone to upload the correct file which could take maybe several days or may (that is, IF someone uploads it at all). Open Subtitle Translator is a handy tool to have in such situations – it’s a small program that can automatically translate a subtitle file from one language to the other. Note that Translation services are powered by Google Translate and you’ll need an internet connection to make it work.

Open Subtitle Translator

The application is written in Java and usage is quite simple. First you need to set the translation language preferences via the Options menu. After that, all you need to do is to load a subtitle file into the app and hit ‘Start Translate’ button. Open Subtitle Translator will translate the file line by line and display results in real time. Once you are done, you can save translated stream as a separate, new subtitle file. Note that sometimes I had to select all lines (Ctrl + A) before hitting ‘start translate’ to get the app to work properly.

Note that this is not a perfect solution. Translation is done by a machine and even Google won’t be able to interpret the meaning of some phrases correctly. Anyway it’s an interesting tool – you can easily check it out as the app does not even require an installation

Download

This software is free and is not bundled with adware or any form of malware.

[Click Here] to download Open Subtitle Translator from SourceForge

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If you’ve been monitoring IRC racer channels, you might have come across the name HeavenTracker (HT). That’s because it usually comes among the top 5 in most ‘races’ – in other words this site has great pre times. However HT remains to be one of the less talked (and hyped) trackers in the BitTorrent community. It almost never has opens registrations ( 2 times in three years) and invitations/requests seem to be scarce on most BitTorrent invite forums. It’s actually quite surprising considering HT is a well established torrent site with thousands of members and torrents – it definitely is one of the better General/0Day torrent sites out there. Hopefully our post will shed some light into this underrated tracker and of course, for those interested in getting in, invites are available on HT IRC channel.

HeavenTracker

At the time this post is being written, HT had a user base of 10000 members and an impressive index of 16000+ torrents. As you might have guessed, it’s not a newcomer to the BT scene – the site has been online for more than three years. Note that HeavenTracker has Polish origins but if you are an English speaking user, there is no need to panic. Majority of the site’s content are international scene and p2p releases and interface language can also be set to English. There is even a forum for English speaking members and hell, their search has a filter which can remove Polish releases from results (which is pretty cool and not to mention useful).

As we have mentioned earlier, HT is a general/0day tracker. From movies, music to 0day apps you can find almost anything here. This is one of those trackers with dual browse pages – main torrent browse page lists general releases and a second page is used to display 0Day releases and MP3 torrents. Currently there are around 9900 torrents in general section and further 6400 more in 0Day/MP3 section. Apart from individual torrents, HT does index torrent packs. For example, the screenshot below displays some of the packs recently uploaded, in celebration of the site’s birthday:

HeavenTracker Packs

HeavenTracker open registrations are very rare. Users normally require an invitation code to sign up. But very few know that HT has an official invites IRC channel through one can easily obtain an invite. Just be ready to provide a speedtest, a screenshot from another tracker you are a member of and a reason why you want to join HT. Site and invites channel details are as follows:

Good Luck! Special thanks to jarek, kyrcer and rest of HT staff.

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