FILEnetworks Blog

How to fix “The update could not be installed” error in Mozilla FireFox

Posted by TEAM FILEnetworks | 7/24/2009 | Troubleshooting, Web Browsers | 1 Comments »

This has got to be one of the most annoying errors associated with the popular web browser Mozilla FireFox. If FF encounters a problem when an update is being applied, an error message "Software Update Failed. The update could not be installed…” will be displayed every time you try to start the application. I was unfortunate enough to face the issue myself and luckily managed to solve it wihout having to waste a lots of time. If you are encountering the same issue, here are a few things you can try to hopefully get the problem sorted out.

Note: Before you try any of the fixes below please backup your personal settings, bookmarks and saved passwords.

Browse to Start Menu –> Programs –> Mozilla FireFox and right click the FireFox shortcut. Choose ‘run as administrator’ from the menu and execute. If it doesn’t work the first time, try 2-3 times. If FF cannot update due to insufficient user account privileges this should solve it.
Browse to C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Mozilla\FireFox\Mozilla FireFox (path is different in Windows XP). Delete the updates directory, updates.xml and active-update.xml files if they are present. Start FireFox. If FF encountered an error during the update process, this should clear the last update and start fresh from the beginning.
If it still doesn’t work, go to Mozilla download page and download the latest version of FireFox. Without uninstalling the existing version, execute the new setup. If the existing version is 3.X/3.5.X, newest version will be installed over the existing installation, clearing any update mishaps.

Good Luck!

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Interview with vgmTorrents creator

Posted by TEAM FILEnetworks | 7/23/2009 | Bittorrent, Private Trackers | 3 Comments »

Although BitTorrent trackers have grown in popularity, very little is usually known about their creators. Wouldn’t it be cool to know more about folks behind your favorite torrent trackers (as longs as it doesn't harm their security)? Techloid, a new P2P related blog has done something you don’t see everyday. They’ve interviewed Rosario (aka ‘hangman’), the creator of vgmTorrents – a private video game music tracker we recently reviewed. First part of the somewhat lengthy article is quoted below:

“Ahh, Italy. Home to Ferrari, Valentino, the Renaissance, The Mafia, Pizza, Leonardo da Vinci, Enrico Fermi and many beautiful women!
But that's not all. Italy is also home to Rosario, a game developer who lives and works there. Rosario is the creator of vgmTorrents, a private video game music tracker. After discovering his how-to on building a torrent tracker, we exchanged emails and sent him a bunch of questions on vgmTorrents, video game music, The Pirate Bay and the future of torrents and file-sharing”
[Continue reading at Techloid]

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VIPMusic Tracker – First ever open signup, no invites needed

Posted by TEAM FILEnetworks | 7/22/2009 | Private Trackers, Torrent Sites - Music Trackers | 12 Comments »

Big news folks. As we Tweeted earlier today, VIPMusic tracker has opened signup for the first time ever. If you don’t know what it is, VIPMusic is a highly sought after private torrent tracker specializing in scene released MP3 music albums. As you might already have noticed from various invite request threads on BitTorrent forums, this is not a very easy tracker to get into. Anyways this should be great news for English music fans as VIPmusic tracks a huge database of music torrents related to a number of different music genres such as Electronic, House, Indie, Metal, Industrial, Pop, Punk, Hardcore and lots more.

At a glance VIPMusic might look like a small BitTorrent tracker. This is only partially true - It’s user base is small when compared to other similar sites but the torrent index is not (registered user stats on the homepage are incorrect, btw). With over 25500 active torrents VIPMusic has one of the most content rich music libraries on the net.

VIPMusic actually tracks torrents under 40 different genres which means it has something for every music fan. Most of the torrents are scene released material (by groups such as FNT, DV8, APOLLO, BCC, OMA, etc) in MP3 format. This includes promos/advance releases. In addition to individual albums they have some awesome torrent packs which can be accessed via the ‘Collections’ menu. The following screenshot should give you a better idea on the content available on this tracker:

This tracker has a pretty unique interface which I found to be quite user friendly. There are separate browse pages for each music genre and the torrent index itself has a clean look to it. VIPMusic boasts a good set of features such as the ‘Monitor functionality (You can monitor certain Artists/Groups and the tracker will alert you when new releases by them are uploaded), bookmarks, freebies (which are similar to freeleech slots) and requests.

As we mentioned at the start of this article VIPMusic has never hard an open signup before. A notice posted on site homepage explains why the floodgates were opened:

2009-07-22 - ViPMusic open for signup.
We've decided to open registration page for the first time. Unfortunately there are many reasons for that: there aren't enough snatches and very little percent of users seed good 95% of the releases what eventually causes many releases to die quickly, we're having a serious problem covering the servers cost (please take a look at the donation bar); These are the main two reasons.
The signup page is here. Feel free to spread the word around.
Also don't hesitate to discuss the issue in our Forum.
We would also like to mention that donations have been slowing down again since the start of summer. If you have any spare cash laying around please donate, and help this site continue.

Anyways we are not sure till when the signups will remain open. It’s always a wise decision to signup ASAP when you can still get in for free without begging for invites from strangers :)

Site Name: VIPMusic (http://vipmusic.org)

Signup URL: http://vipmusic.org/opensignup.php

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SceneDVDR and CareStreet – Two new DVDR trackers open for signup

Posted by TEAM FILEnetworks | 7/22/2009 | Private Trackers, Torrent Sites - Movies Trackers | 7 Comments »

These days seem to be particularly good ones for fans of untouched DVD movies. More and more private torrent trackers specializing in DVD5/DVD9 movies are being launched and this article features two more such sites; CareStreet and SceneDVDR. CareStreet of course originally debuted as a scene MP3 tracker but they seem to have converted into a movie tracker overnight. SceneDVDR is also new and is only around one month old. Both these sites are based on the recently released source code of SweDVDR and have identical site layouts. Anyways considering what happened to SweDVDR, you can never complain about too many torrent sites these days. The more heads the hydra has, the better it is for file sharers.

SceneDVDR

SceneDVDR started out silently back in June and recorded an impressive growth in both user base and torrent index during the past month. The site which only had around 46 torrents and 160 members when we last featured it now boasts a userbase in excess of 2600 registered members and a torrent index with 370+ torrents.

As you can see from the above screenshot SceneDVDR tracks untouched DVD movies. Most of the DVDs tracked are released for the Nordic region – English speaking users need not worry since most releases do carry an English audio feed (check the spoken audio in torrent description just to make sure).
Site Name: SceneDVDR (http://www.scenedvdr.org)
Signup URL: http://www.scenedvdr.org/signup.php

CareStreet

Didn't’ see this one coming but CareStreet has converted from a scene MP3/Lossless music tracker into an untouched movie tracker all of a sudden (looks like SceneSound who had a head start as a Scene MP3 tracker attracted most of SoftMP3’s user base). Either way CareStreet’s statistics so far are looking good with 132 movie torrent uploaded in the last few days. They currently have over 630 active members.

Once again most of the DVD releases found on this tracker are for the Swedish/Nordic region. Just like in SceneDVDR, an English audio feed is usually available in the DVDs with optional Swedish/other language subtitles.
Site Name: CareStreet (http://www.carestreet.net)
Signup URL: http://www.carestreet.net/freesignup.php

By the way congratulations to the Swedish Anti Piracy agency. You’ve managed to destroy one tracker (SweDVDR) and at the same time givenbirth to three more new sites. Way to go!

Some other DVDR trackers recently featured on FILEnetworks Blog:

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TorrentFetcher – Windows application for torrent search

Posted by TEAM FILEnetworks | 7/22/2009 | Bittorrent, File Sharing, Private Trackers | 3 Comments »

When it comes to desktop torrent search tools, BitChe is perhaps the most popular. TorrentFetcher is a similar utility that allows you to search for torrents without the need for a web browser. It’s a simple windows application that can search for, display information about and even download the .torrent file chose from the list of search results. It supports category based search and search results come complete with seeder/leecher information, file size, date, etc. TorrentFetcher does not display information about it’s sources or where it searches online for torrent files. Most of the torrents I found in the app’s search results were either tracked by TPB tracker or the Demonoid tracker.

Features – Quoted from developer page

Search through multiple pages of torrents at once.
Automatically move downloaded torrents to a specified output directory (good for bittorrent clients that monitor a specific folder, like uTorrent).
Automatically launch downloaded torrents.
Know which torrent files you already have in your downloaded folder through automatic highlighting.
Results highlighting lets you know if a torrent is well or poorly seeded or if it has negative comments left about it.
Automatic detection and removal of "denis stalker" trackers using the MonoTorrent library.
Minimize-to-tray option to keep the utility handy at all times.

Download

TorrentFetcher is freeware and is only 420kb in file size. You can download it from the link below

[Click Here] to download TorrentFetcher 1.02 from official server (Direct Download)

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Megaups – General tracker open for signup

Posted by TEAM FILEnetworks | 7/21/2009 | Private Trackers, Torrent Sites - General/0Day Trackers | 3 Comments »

Ever since we started blogging about private torrent trackers, we’ve posted about no less that 175 General/0Day trackers (the total no. of tracker reviews exceed 400). Although some readers blame us for posting too many such sites, we have no plans of stopping anytime soon. Whatever we post, it all comes down to user preference which we’ve found out to be quite varied among readers. Anyways this article is about Megaups.com, a relatively unknown but large general/0day tracker open for public registration. There is a good chance that you’ve never heard about this site before but it’s statistics are somewhat surprising.

Megaups actually is one of the larger general trackers that are around. It has over 18400 registered members and tracks over 8000 torrents. This tracker definitely is not a ghost town when it comes to seeder/leecher activity. Some of the popular torrents have over 100 seeders each. What’s more, Megaups is not a foreign language tracker – the site is completely in English.

As a General/0Day tracker megaups mostly have torrents you can find elsewhere. Movies, music, games, E-books and even wrestling torrents – it’s all here. Apart from the usual P2P and scene releases, Megaups tracks something called ‘Mega Multi Collections’ – most of the time these are untouched DVDR movies on free leech and double upload. There are of course some exclusive packs indexed as well. Screenshot below depicts part of Megaups torrent index:

Based on TS Special Edition tracker script, Megaups comes with all the standard features of a private tracker. This includes a bonus system, requests, forum,lottery, radio, casino, integrated speedtest, etc.

For those interested in joining the site, it’s currently open for registration. The catch here is that it doesn’t allow free E-mail addresses – your ISP provided email should work. And surprisingly, I even found Slopsbox to be working as well. However you need to delete a ‘;’ in the middle of confirmation link you get in the Slopsbox inbox for signup to work properly (otherwise it would throw ‘your account could not be found’ error).

Site Name: Megaups (http://megaups.com)

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

Categories:

Anime
Apps/Misc
Appz/PC ISO
Dvd Multi
Ebooks
Episodes
Games/PC ISO
Games/PC Rips
Games/PS2
Games/PSP
Games/XBox360
Linux
Mac
Misc
Movies/DVD-R
Movies/XviD
Music
MusicVideos
Nintendo DS
Sport
VIP Downloads
Wii Games
WWE

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FaceBook Photos Uploader – Upload images right from desktop

Posted by TEAM FILEnetworks | 7/21/2009 | Cool Apps, System Utilities | 0 Comments »

Here is another useful utility for FaceBook addicts. If you upload a lot of photos to FaceBook (like many people do), FaceBook Photos Uploader can save you lots of time. It’s a java based desktop application through which you can upload multiple photos to the social networking service without even the need for a web browser. Not only can it upload images to an album of your choice, it even includes support for tagging and captions as well. Since it’s a java based, the software is platform independent – it’ll work as long as you have a compatible version of Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed.

Latest available version of FaceBook photos uploader is v1.4.1.It now supports uploading a maximum of 200 photos per album.

Changelog

Changed number of photos per album back from 200 to 60.
Fixed problem with dragging photos onto upload panel in Linux ( issue 48 ).
Added "Choose Photos" button to allow people to browse filesystem from within the uploader.
The photo browser has gone, to be replaced with a panel which lets you drop photos or folders onto it.
Minor UI change in about box

Download

This software is free and is only 4.5MB in file size.

[Click Here] to download latest version of FaceBook Photos Uploader from Google Code

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Underground Ravers – BitTorrent tracker for hardcore music (unlimited invites)

Posted by TEAM FILEnetworks | 7/20/2009 | Giveaways, Private Trackers, Torrent Sites - Music Trackers | 14 Comments »

If you are a fan of hardcore/hardstyle music you’ll love this site. Underground Ravers (UR) is a specialized music tracker focusing only on hardcore music, music videos and a limited number of music related applications. Although it’s a relatively unknown site, UR has been around for more than three years and actually has a long history. Underground Ravers has always been a tracker that preferred secrecy – however it is now seeking more members to expand its user base. Tracker admins have been kind enough to give an exclusive signup key for FILEnetworks Blog readers which will support an unlimited number of registrations during a limited period of time.

Underground Ravers was launched back in mid 2006 – It was started as a replacement for Ravetracker, which shut down due to legal threats on the same year (Ravetracker itself was started after happy2bhardcore was shut down). Since then UR has slowly but steadily grown into a small community based hardcore music tracker. As of 19/7/2009 this tracker has close to 600 members and indexes over 1850 active torrents.

As mentioned several times in this article Underground Ravers specializes in hardcore music. Releases span across 6 main categories; live, tape, video, vinyl, CD, other and digital. Note that there are a lot of non scene user uploads on this tracker which are probably not found elsewhere. You can preview a part of UG’s torrent index in the following screenshot:

If you are planning to become a member of this site and is planning to use Azureuz/Vuze as your BT client, you might want to read the following:

Please DO NOT use Azureus/Vuze bittorrent client on this tracker. There is a problem with this client where it can double the stats you send to the tracker.
We recommend using uTorrent.
If you Azureus/Vuze then staff will not fix any ratio problems you may encounter. You have been warned!

Underground Ravers has always been a ‘secret’ tracker. Even posting tracker URL in public is usually prohibited (this article is which is approved by site admins is an exception). They currently have open signups however judging by the reactions in the shoutbox, this isn’t a very popular decision among the site’s existing members. However it should definitely be great news for hardcore music fans looking forward to get into Underground Ravers (EDIT: Already closed. Only way in is via our signup link).

Site Name: Underground Ravers (http://www.underground-ravers.com)

Signup URL: http://www.underground-ravers.com/signup.php

FILEnetworks Signup Key: http://www.underground-ravers.com/signup.php?key=FLNW190709

Note: This key is for FILEnetworks Blog readers only. If you are posting it elsewhere please link to this article instead of just posting the key – people who sign up should at least know what the tracker is about.

Special thanks to UR admins and staff for offering FILEnetworks Blog readers a chance to become members of this tracker.

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Fix Bionic Commando (PC) 2009 crashes, unlock content & troubleshoot video issues

Posted by TEAM FILEnetworks | 7/19/2009 | PC Games, Troubleshooting | 6 Comments »

Bionic Commando has finally arrived for the PC. Note that this is not the previously released platform game 'BC : Rearmed’ we are talking about. This article is about the FPS that was released on the 17th of July. I’ve just installed the game, played it for a few mins and it doesn’t look bad at all. However if you are thinking of playing this with a Mouse+Keyboard setup be prepared to go through hell until you get used to the controls – everything seems to be optimized for the XBOX360 controller. That being said this article as usual discusses troubleshooting information for various audio, video and other technical issues you might encounter with Bionic Commando 2009 (and how to unlock content, of course).

Note that this article is a work in progress. More troubleshooting information will be added as we get information.

How do I unlock bonus content, additional skins and other unlockables in Bionic Commando 2009

It appears that Bionic Commando 2009 (PC) has at least three unlockable items; Prototype weapon, the purple matrix and retro skin. Right now we can tell you how to unlock the retro skin.

The retro skin is automatically unlocked if you beat previously released Bionic Commando Rearmed. However not all of us have the time to do that so let’s try a registry hack to make the game think you completed it :)

Launch the Windows Registry editor (in Start-->Run type regedit and press enter)
Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Grin\Shared\
Once in the ‘Shared’ directory, right click on empty white space on the right hand panel and select New->String Value
Type db_retro_skin as the name and press enter. Right click db_retro_skin and select modify. Enter e03ae879d5441029e52f31b33a4181de in the value field and press ok.
Close registry editor and start Bionic Commando

The classic skin should now be unlocked.

How do I enable Anti Aliasing (AA) in Bionic Commando 2009?

If you were wondering whether you can enable AA from the in game menu, well you can’t. The only hope is to force AA through your video card’s control panel. However I wouldn’t recommend this as the game uses the Diesel engine which does not like driver forced settings.

How do i disable the intro movie and splash screen from being shown every time BC loads?

Intro movie is very cool the first time you see it. But when it plays every time you launch the game it becomes a pain in the ass. Luckily you can disable both the splash screen and the intro through a command line parameter.

Create a shortcut for Bionic Commando exe on your desktop. Right click the desktop shortcut, go to properties and append the following at the end of ‘Target’ field.

-nointro
-s

-nointro disables intro movie while –s disables splash. To disable both use –nointro –s

Bionic Commando crashes to desktop, hangs at loading screen or does not load at all.

This seems to be quite a common issue among many gamers but the actual cause in most cases seem to be related to not having the proper software required to run the game. Make sure you have the following installed before you run the game. You can also check this thread on official support forums which is started by a user with similar problems.

NVIDIA PhysX – Bionic Commando requires NVIDIA PhysX installed in order to run. If your display driver did not install PhysX automatically (some driver versions do not), you can manually download and install the PhysX system software from here.
Updated version of 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.
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/. If you are having video issues with official drivers, do not hesistate to give beta drivers a go. They are not always evil as the sound like.
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.

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BitShock Tracker Family - Invites & Open Signups ( Appz, Games & General Torrents )

Posted by TEAM FILEnetworks | 7/19/2009 | Giveaways, Private Trackers | 17 Comments »

About three days ago we promised a Bitshock (BSk) invitation code giveaway in this thread. We’ve already got several mails asking why our promises have not been upheld yet. Hold on to your testicles – we don’t break promises. It somehow got delayed a bit due to various reason but the giveaway is finally here. 250 free invite codes given on a first come, first served basis -no strings attached. In addition to invites to the General/0Day tracker, we’ve posted signup URLs, updated stats and review links for Appz BitShock and Games BitShock (gBSK) – two specialized trackers maintained by the same crew behind BitShock.org.
UPDATE: If you got “Don’t leave any fields blank” error when trying to signup for BitShock, please try now with the new signup URL.

Appz BitShock

Site Name: Appz BitShock (http://appz.bitshock.org/)
Signup URL: http://appz.bitshock.org/signup.php
Stats: 5700 users and 9800+ torrents
Description: Launched back in 2008, Appz BitShock quickly established itself as one of the largest specialized private trackers for applications/software. Most of the torrents indexed are scene released 0-Day releases. For full tracker review including screenshots, please refer to this article.

Games BitShock

Site Name: Games BitShock (http://games.bitshock.org)
Signup URL: http://games.bitshock.org/signup.php
Stats: 3400+ users and 160+ torrents
Description: Games BitShock is a new specialized games tracker featuring both PC and console games. You can find a detailed description of the site along with screenshots in our recent review of gBSK which can be found here.

BitShock (Main – General/0Day)

Site Name: BitShock (http://www.bitshock.org)
Signup URL: http://www.bitshock.org/register.php
Stats: 4800+ active torrents
Description: BitShock is a decent but underrated private tracker. Good pre times, good download speeds, plenty of packs, content rich torrent index with movies, music, games, books, etc – you’ll get pretty much everything you look for in a general tracker here. It’s the largest and the hardest-to-get-into tracker in the BitShock family – BSk is invite only while the other two sites are almost always open. However with the recent promotions and challenges launched by the site ops, getting into this site has become quite easy. Following is quoted from homepage:

Bitshock launches a new challenge: We've put at your disposal 250 invites per user, each bringing you a fantastic 5gb upload bonus for every user invited. Still, there's a catch: If one of your invited members get's disabled/banned, you will loose 10 GB upload credit. So please do not try to make double accounts, we will find out and things will not be pleasant

Note that the 250 invites promotion will end on the 26th of June. Whatever codes you have left unused will be removed on that date so use them when you can.

Guest Account Details: BSk has a really innovative feature which allows users to preview the site before you register. Download/Upload is disabled but you can have a good look at BSk’s design, content and community by signing in with the guest account.

Username: BSk
Password: bitshock

Invite Codes:

You can use one of the invitation codes below to create a free account at BSk. If you want you can even share your invite codes with others here as comments to this article. However keep in mind that invite trading and selling is prohibited – only giveaway is allowed. Before signing up, please use the guest account to observer the site – create an account only if you find the site useful. Please do not waste invites if you do not intend to use the tracker.