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Add Exceptions to Anti Virus Programs
Introduction Many antivirus programs now offer protection against ransomware which protects the user folder from malicious attempts. This is normally a good thing as ransomware is designed to encode your user data since data has a huge value. Unfortunately this can prevent that trustworthy programs can write to these folders either which can lead to all kinds of unwanted behavior. The antivirus programs allow to put certain programs on a safe list so that they are allowed to write to these folders again. This tutorial will show you how to do that for a few widely used antivirus programs. The…
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Moving Windows Documents folder to external drive via symbolic link
Introduction A lot of newer notebooks come with a rather small SSD. To save space, the ‘symbolic link’ method gives you the possibility to move game user data (like save games) to an external drive if the room on your system drive is getting scarce. Steps The method is explained with the example of Sims 4 but should work accordingly with any other game or application that has data in the documents folder. All you need to find out is in which folder the data is store and then do the instructions for that folder. Make sure Origin (or other…
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[ORIGIN] How to change the Installation Path
Changing the Installation Path For EA games you can set the default installation path of a game through Origin Click on Origin – Application Settings and choose the tab Installation and Saves. In Game Library location you can set the default path for all EA games. Changing the path will not automatically move already installed games to a different location but all newly installed games will get their own folder within that path. The path given there will tell you where you’re game is probably installed, especially if you never changed it. C:\Program Files(x86)\Origin Games is the default path. There’s no…
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[ORIGIN] Choose the language
Introduction You will be prompted to choose your language on installing the game. Players that like to switch their language later, can do so fairly easily. You will need an active Internet Connection. Be aware that not all games have all languages and not all countries have all languages available. It depends on the game for which languages it’s being localized which is listed in the details of the game. Unfortunately this list isn’t filtered by country. Because of this, it may happen that some languages aren’t available to you. Unfortunately you only know after buying the game which ones…
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Setting up a gaming profile for your graphics card
Introduction Laptops and sometimes desktop computers can have a graphics chip as well as a graphics card with dedicated memory. Games should always run on the card to make optimal use of the hardware and give you the best performance possible. Unfortunately that doesn’t work for every game automatically. Because of this it’s recommend to set up a gaming profile for them. Steps Depending on whether you own a Nvidia or a AMD card, the steps to set up a gaming profile differ. NVidia Make sure to install the newest graphics driver and the Nvidia control panel Right-click on your…
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[UPLAY] Cloud Saves
Introduction Most of the newer games today offer cloud saving. Saves will be uploaded to the Ubisoft servers and can be used by simply logging in with the same Ubisoft account. Cloud saves are a convenient way to exchange data between computers and to create a backup. In my opinon, they don’t replace local backups though since something can go wrong when synchronizing with the cloud. Because of this it’s still important to keep local backup. Ubisoft games create a lokal folder in your Windows documents folder which allows for easy backing up via copy/pasting the folders. How do the…
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Windows 10 Defender – Controlled Folder Access
Introduction Windows 10 Defender comes with a security feature called controlled folder access. This feature is to protect folders from unauthorized changes by malware and other unfriendly applications. On activation of the feature, it’s mainly the user folders that get protected which often leads to unwanted locking of the folder which in turn keeps applications from running properly. You can add exceptions to the controlled folder access similar to the firewall or anti virus protection. How can I change the settings ? Option 1 Click on Start –> Settings –> Update and Security –> Windows Security (left hand side) –>…
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Clean re-install of graphics drivers with Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU)
It can happen that graphics drivers get so badly corrupted, that the installation routine of the software isn’t able to repair them. In that case it’s a good idea to do a clean re-install of the drivers. A great tool that can help you with this is DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) Note: These instructions in this post are for NVIIDA Cards but the steps are the same for AMD or Intel Graphics Cards. All you have to change is the manufacturer in step 19. It’s best to print this instructions or have them open on a second device, as you need…
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[ORIGIN] Deactivate Origin in Game
Introduction A special feature of Origin is the so called Origin in game. It allows you to chat with your friends in game, to stream your game or to access an Internet browser. More details can be found here: How To Get the Most Out of Origin In Game Unfortunate this feature can also lead to issues so while troubleshooting your game, it can be important to turn off Origin in game. You can either turn if off for all games or only for a specific game. Turn Origin in game completely off. Open Origin Click on Origin – Application Settings…
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Critical Events
Steps to take Error messages and logs can most often help identifying why a program crashes. Windows logs a lot but it’s sometimes hard to find out where. Once such place is the reliability monitor. Follow these steps to get the error from that monitor. Opening the reliability monitor Show critical events A window will open that has several segments The segments that have a red circle with an X are the critical events that occurred on your system. Click on the X to see more info on the events (newest ones are always on the right) Choose the ones…
