I am having some difficulties! I exit a game, logout and close all game tap windows that might be open. Then I sign back in and try to play a different game or even the same one and it gives me an error message that there is a game in play. How do I close that game? I have tired everything that i know how to do. this has happened to me on numerous occasions and the only thing that I can do to fix it is to restart my computer. There has to be a better way.

Sagethyme wrote: I am having some difficulties! I exit a game, logout and close all game tap windows that might be open. Then I sign back in and try to play a different game or even the same one and it gives me an error message that there is a game in play. How do I close that game? I have tired everything that i know how to do. this has happened to me on numerous occasions and the only thing that I can do to fix it is to restart my computer. There has to be a better way.

This happens sometimes, and there is a slightly better way than a total reboot:

Hit Ctrl-Alt-Del (all at the same time). This will bring up the Windows Task Manager, a neat little utility that lets you get all sorts of info about the state of the computer, including all running programs (even the ones that aren't directly associated with a window, like the Gametap client.)

Click the "processes" tab. Find the process named "Gametapwebplayer" (or something very similar, I'm not in Windows right now so I can't check.) Right click it and kill it. Might take a second or two. If you see a process that is obviously associated with a game you were running like "Rainbow6Vegas2.exe," feel free to kill it to. Leave everything else alone (you are going to see a lot of programs running that you never knew existed, but many of them are going to be things needed by Windows, so stopping them isn't a good idea.) Reload the GT page in your browser.

I remember someone posting a BAT file that automates the process for you somewhere else on the forum, but not sure where or who it was.

Sagethyme wrote: I am having some difficulties! I exit a game, logout and close all game tap windows that might be open. Then I sign back in and try to play a different game or even the same one and it gives me an error message that there is a game in play. How do I close that game? I have tired everything that i know how to do. this has happened to me on numerous occasions and the only thing that I can do to fix it is to restart my computer. There has to be a better way.

this happens to me to sometimes.

TrentonZero wrote: Find the process named "Gametapwebplayer" (or something very similar, I'm not in Windows right now so I can't check.)

Gametapplayer.exe is the process.

Trenton....Thanks for that info....always wondered if there was a better way than a total reboot. Very much preciated advice.

Jsmooth15 wrote: Trenton....Thanks for that info....always wondered if there was a better way than a total reboot. Very much preciated advice.

You've been rebooting this whole time? It literally takes me a single double-click and 2 seconds of waiting to reset GT.

shawnasativa wrote: Jsmooth15 wrote: Trenton....Thanks for that info....always wondered if there was a better way than a total reboot. Very much preciated advice. You've been rebooting this whole time? It literally takes me a single double-click and 2 seconds of waiting to reset GT.

Yeah......some....otherwise I would just go do something else. Who cares anyways. Simple, dumb mistake on my part. Wow....Sativa you want a medal?

Jsmooth15 wrote: shawnasativa wrote: Jsmooth15 wrote: Trenton....Thanks for that info....always wondered if there was a better way than a total reboot. Very much preciated advice. You've been rebooting this whole time? It literally takes me a single double-click and 2 seconds of waiting to reset GT. Yeah......some....otherwise I would just go do something else. Who cares anyways. Simple, dumb mistake on my part. Wow....Sativa you want a medal?

I find it a little odd, because this question gets asked, and answered, about once a week. It does amaze me that people use Windows for years and never find out about Ctrl-Alt-Del.

I'm a Mac-head, so what I'm about to say is a bit heretical, but... sometimes I think the mouse has destroyed computers. In the MS-DOS and Unix days, people at least had the wisdom of Socrates: they knew they didn't know, and that's always the first step to finding out. Now, they live in ignorance, and most don't know they are ignorant, because the desktop metaphor takes care of the trivial for them and does nothing to imply the existence of the useful stuff under the surface, and so they don't realize that computers are far more pleasant to work with than they think they are.

(sighs) I'm an old curmudgeon at the age of 29. THAT'S technology for you.

I know a lot of Mac users who don't know much about computers. I'm not sure this is totally a bad thing. Most people are interested in using computers, they have no idea how the magic box works and don't care. I'm the same way about my car. I hope it starts every day and runs like Carl Lewis, but I have only textbook cursory knowledge of the combustion engine. If it breaks, I bring it in to get fixed. It's okay if people feel the same way about computers.

As a side note about Mac users, many of them are shocked to realize their games don't work anymore unless they set up another partition for Windows. It used to be even worse when their architecture was different! Basically, you get Photoshop, Internet, specific games, and office products. I would rather have Linux because at least you have Wine. Apple has sold people on the notion of fashion in technology, not the technology itself, and that's interesting.

isisprince wrote: I know a lot of Mac users who don't know much about computers.

Oh boy, here goes the religious war...

Agreed. The only operating system that consists of knowledgeable users on nearly the whole is Linux, and even there, many don't know the glory of things like awk and vim. That's why the sentiment was heretical: Apple gave personal computers (as opposed to workstations) the desktop metaphor, and I have very mixed feelings about it, and have since the beginning. I get the feeling MS would have gleefully left us using DOS. I started with DOS and was angry when Win 95 forced the GUI on me, but Win 95 was very much a reaction to Mac OS. But, I like my Mac, even if I do use Vim instead of Pages and, whenever possible, Terminal instead of Finder.

Quote: I'm not sure this is totally a bad thing. Most people are interested in using computers, they have no idea how the magic box works and don't care. I'm the same way about my car. I hope it starts every day and runs like Carl Lewis, but I have only textbook cursory knowledge of the combustion engine. If it breaks, I bring it in to get fixed. It's okay if people feel the same way about computers.

I understand that. I understand blissful ignorance, but not miserable ignorance. Here is where the analogy breaks down: If I saw a person who didn't know about the ignition key and thought he had to go turn the engine with a crank every time he wanted to start it, and disconnect the fuel line every time he wanted to stop it...I would pity the poor soul his ignorance and think he needed to learn a little more about the functioning of his car, and express amazement that he had never thought "There must be a better way." Similarly when I see some poor sap who reboots his computer when a simple keystroke will do the job for him or who goes through manually renaming dozens of files on a regular basis when just a little scripting knowledge would save him the trouble, I don't think that is blissful ignorance.

Quote: As a side note about Mac users, many of them are shocked to realize their games don't work anymore unless they set up another partition for Windows. It used to be even worse when their architecture was different! Basically, you get Photoshop, Internet, specific games, and office products.

I cannot think of a single application on Windows or Linux that doesn't have a Mac equivalent, outside the realm of gaming. (Linux especially, since Mac OS X supports X11 and uses a BASH shell for its terminal.) I can think of lots of Mac apps that Windows and Linux users have to do without (more on that later.)

Quote: I would rather have Linux because at least you have Wine. Apple has sold people on the notion of fashion in technology, not the technology itself, and that's interesting.

I love Linux (and I used Gentoo for years prior to switching to Mac), but I have to disagree with your notion of what makes Apple good. There is more stereotype to it than truth. They definitely over emphasis style, but it is a mistake to assume that style equals a lack of substance. I can think of a number of things that make Macs a great choice for the tech oriented person.

1) Mac users can install Wine, too. Macs are basically Linux machines with a proprietary window manager. Granted, this is over the head of many Mac users...but it's also over the head of many Windows users, and would still be over their head, even if they installed Linux. But that's the biggest error in what you said: Any sentence that begins "At least in Linux I can..." is already wrong, because Mac OS X is just a Linux distro with some proprietary software included, and it's a rare Linux app, for CLI or X11, that I haven't been able to get working under OS X.

2) Applescript and Automator. Every application worth its salt on OSX has a built in interface to allow it to be automated with Applescript (or anything that can call the right libraries, if you prefer Ruby or Python) without getting into messy and easily broken GUI hacks (though you can do that, too). In Linux, you can't even take it for granted that your favored app will be aware of your desktop settings. You are in for unpleasantness if you prefer Xfce as a window manager, KDevelop as an IDE, and Nautalius as a file manager. Yeah, they will all work together, but not cleanly.

3) Quicksilver. Apple only gets limited credit for this one. They didn't write it or think of it, but it is the tight control they keep over their OS that makes things like Quicksilver possible. (Quicksilver is basically a sophisticated, extendible GUI-app that is somewhat analogous to pipes in a Linux shell. There are a few projects trying to implement it, especially Gnome Do and Katapult, but neither has really pulled it off yet.)

Jsmooth15 wrote: Yeah......some....otherwise I would just go do something else. Who cares anyways. Simple, dumb mistake on my part. Wow....Sativa you want a medal?

Yes, I want a medal for "discovering" taskkill.exe and writing one line of code to automate it....

I was ACTUALLY just surprised that you hadn't heard of the absolute most common GT fix that gets a new thread made for it on a weekly basis. (Trenton's already explained it well enough.)

FYI: for people using Vista or Windows 7, it's Ctrl+Shift+Esc to get the task manager now....

shawnasativa wrote: FYI: for people using Vista or Windows 7, it's Ctrl+Shift+Esc to get the task manager now....

That's a mistake. (I get it: it's the NT style...but given a choice, they should let home users keep their keystrokes and make the system admins change.)

Ctrl+Shif+Esc is a lot easier to do though. Once I get used to it, I think im going to be better off.

shawnasativa wrote: Jsmooth15 wrote: Yeah......some....otherwise I would just go do something else. Who cares anyways. Simple, dumb mistake on my part. Wow....Sativa you want a medal? Yes, I want a medal for "discovering" taskkill.exe and writing one line of code to automate it.... I was ACTUALLY just surprised that you hadn't heard of the absolute most common GT fix that gets a new thread made for it on a weekly basis. (Trenton's already explained it well enough.) FYI: for people using Vista or Windows 7, it's Ctrl+Shift+Esc to get the task manager now....

Sativa....I was just having a sense of humor. No worries.

MobiusArcher wrote: Ctrl+Shif+Esc is a lot easier to do though. Once I get used to it, I think im going to be better off.

I guess it *is* a little more natural, since you can do it while only taking the left hand off the home row.

(This has drifted pretty far off topic, hasn't it?)

TrentonZero wrote: Oh boy, here goes the religious war... Agreed. The only operating system that consists of knowledgeable users on nearly the whole is Linux, and even there, many don't know the glory of things like awk and vim.

vi is alright, but awk isn't necessary. Perl is much better, and Linux doesn't run without it. This means that you are guaranteed to have it available.

TrentonZero wrote: That's why the sentiment was heretical: Apple gave personal computers (as opposed to workstations) the desktop metaphor

That would be xerox, not Apple. I understand you are a Mac fan, but the world did not begin with Apple, and they did not write the equivalent of the book of Genesis. Furthermore, Windows was out long before Mac OSX. I am sort of amused that you jumped from MS-DOS to Windows 95 as Windows 3.1 was quite a success at the time.

TrentonZero wrote: and I have very mixed feelings about it, and have since the beginning. I get the feeling MS would have gleefully left us using DOS.

Also incorrect, see the above statements. I think it would be wrong to assume that Apple is not just as evil if not more so than Microsoft. They are the kings of vendor lock-in, basking in incompatibility for most of the last two decades and now are attempting to block flash as a legitimate format. By creating walled gardens, they own the technology to everything for their product and force everyone else to not only comply, but sign over certain rights. An example would be the iPhone applications store, which gleefully ( to take your words) monitors the content and revokes content if it goes against even political philosophy or against the business intentions of Apple. I knew of an app that got pulled because it said that it didn't like Apple, politely worded also. Is that who you want to rule the world in some sort of technical hegemony? With Microsoft, we know the evil, but at least we have the freedom to choose.

TrentonZero wrote: I started with DOS and was angry when Win 95 forced the GUI on me, but Win 95 was very much a reaction to Mac OS.

As stated above, this is a factual error.

TrentonZero wrote: Here is where the analogy breaks down: If I saw a person who didn't know about the ignition key and thought he had to go turn the engine with a crank every time he wanted to start it, and disconnect the fuel line every time he wanted to stop it...I would pity the poor soul his ignorance and think he needed to learn a little more about the functioning of his car, and express amazement that he had never thought "There must be a better way." Similarly when I see some poor sap who reboots his computer when a simple keystroke will do the job for him or who goes through manually renaming dozens of files on a regular basis when just a little scripting knowledge would save him the trouble, I don't think that is blissful ignorance.

Most people do not know how to write algorithms and cannot be expected to. I volunteered in a nursing home teaching people how to use computers for years, and I can tell you that their knowledge struggles with the basics. They want to be able to e-mail their family and basically surf the web. Period. I'm glad that you shared how to kill tasks. I use sysinternals suite, which is what a professional would use and is freely available on the web from Microsoft.

TrentonZero wrote: I cannot think of a single application on Windows or Linux that doesn't have a Mac equivalent, outside the realm of gaming.

Isn't that why we are all here? Gaming is an important part of personal computing for everyone on this forum. If it can't play games, get Linux. You do away with walled gardens and corporate sponsored issues such as vendor lock-in.

TrentonZero wrote: I love Linux (and I used Gentoo for years prior to switching to Mac),

That's probably why we don't get along well. I know gentoo users.

TrentonZero wrote: There is more stereotype to it than truth. They definitely over emphasis style, but it is a mistake to assume that style equals a lack of substance.

Their commercials make fun of substance! They look like Old Navy commercials. Look at the fancy scarf that I'm wearing! Aren't those geeks funny looking? Buy our computer instead!

TrentonZero wrote: Applescript and Automator. Every application worth its salt on OSX has a built in interface to allow it to be automated with Applescript (or anything that can call the right libraries, if you prefer Ruby or Python) without getting into messy and easily broken GUI hacks (though you can do that, too). In Linux, you can't even take it for granted that your favored app will be aware of your desktop settings. You are in for unpleasantness if you prefer Xfce as a window manager, KDevelop as an IDE, and Nautalius as a file manager. Yeah, they will all work together, but not cleanly.

Ridiculous. You have bought the vendor lock-in juice and are already drunk. The only reason you would want to write AppleScript is if you are living in a Mac only world. As far as being aware of desktop settings, it's a matter of choosing the right libraries. The APIs are there. Linux is open. And in Linux, you have much better software repositories for free software. Also, there are differences with the terminal, specifically as it relates to filenames. They went their own way, just like Microsoft did.

Jsmooth15 wrote: shawnasativa wrote: Jsmooth15 wrote: Yeah......some....otherwise I would just go do something else. Who cares anyways. Simple, dumb mistake on my part. Wow....Sativa you want a medal? Yes, I want a medal for "discovering" taskkill.exe and writing one line of code to automate it.... I was ACTUALLY just surprised that you hadn't heard of the absolute most common GT fix that gets a new thread made for it on a weekly basis. (Trenton's already explained it well enough.) FYI: for people using Vista or Windows 7, it's Ctrl+Shift+Esc to get the task manager now.... Sativa....I was just having a sense of humor. No worries.

I must have sounded angrier than I was, cause I wasn't even a tiny bit angry. I felt bad that you spent so much time on an error that can be fixed in literally 2 seconds.

TrentonZero wrote: MobiusArcher wrote: Ctrl+Shif+Esc is a lot easier to do though. Once I get used to it, I think im going to be better off. I guess it *is* a little more natural, since you can do it while only taking the left hand off the home row. (This has drifted pretty far off topic, hasn't it?)

I'm all about right-click > Task manager now... silly awkward key combinations.....

shawnasativa wrote: FYI: for people using Vista or Windows 7, it's Ctrl+Shift+Esc to get the task manager now....

thanks,i didn't know that.whenever i'm on vista i always just control-alt-delete and pick task manager from the menu that comes up.

No sweat. I'm glad I caught that before I upgrade, it's the kind of thing almost all Windows users should know. Seems silly, I hope there's a good reason for changing it.

isisprince wrote: (stuff)

You don't answer anything I said, and you correct mistakes I didn't make. Look at your own post: you even quote me pointing out that that Lisa was merely the first PC with a GUI and was preceded by workstations, and immediately accuse of me not giving the Xerox Star workstation credit. That one mistake sums up aptly why we don't get along: Every time I talk to you, I feel like I'm talking to a bright fifteen year old who has, to use an old idiom, gotten a little too big for his britches. You make a big fuss about vendor lock, which is just bizarre. It's very apt to the iPhone (in fact I just lost work because of the steep licensing fees Apple charges companies that want to develop in-house iPhone apps.) But then, who brought up the iPhone? I use a Motorola. I do my work primarily in MacVim (not Apple developed) and TextWrangler (ditto.) I browse with Chrome. I listen to music with Songbird. I watch movies with VLC. Every now and then I get in a mood and turn off Aqua and use xMonad as my window manager. My keyboard and mouse are both manufactured by Microsoft. You start this whole brouhaha with your bit about how Apple doesn't deliver technology but mere empty style. Your sole proof so far: their marketing strategy. I don't really know what to make of that, man. I don't like their commercials either, but then, I've never in my life refused to buy a product I liked simply because the commercials didn't appeal to me. I've also never refused to buy a product because I could conceivably imagine some remote future where the vendor was a totalitarian tyrant who crushed all with his iron fist. I could turn even the open source movement into dystopianism (quite easily actually: I just read a book on the French Revolution....the most extreme open source people always come off sounding a bit like Robespierre, and you get the impression that they would happily guillotine any programmer that dared to charge for his work.)

Come on guys, Lets all try to get along.

MobiusArcher wrote: Come on guys, Lets all try to get along.

I just don't know what the problem is. I must remind him of someone else he knows or something, because every time we talk, he takes some modest statement I make and blows it into insanity. I say the missing nipple pixels in Witcher are no big deal and he turns me into a puritanical nut that wants to reduce all entertainment to Barney. I say I prefer Mac OS X (and gave it only a very reserved endorsement at that, seeing as how my overall point was a distaste for its underlying philosophy), and I'm conspiring to help Apple take over the world. I say I preferred Microsoft DOS over Microsoft Windows, and some how he got Microsoft hatred out of that. I feel like I'm just an effigy for some other person he knows or imagines.

If it makes any difference, my joke about you, Apple and The Force had no meaning behind it. I think I made it in a different thread though, but either way, you don't sound like a Mac person at all...

I addressed you point by point on a topic that you yourself admitted was a topic holy war. If you knew it was such a thing, why are you now claiming innocence? "Woe is me, I brought up something controversial, gave facts that turned out to be wrong, and generally am embarrassed to look like a blowhard who doesn't know what he's talking about." That is exactly how you are acting right now. One more point about vendor lock-in and the evil therein, it affects the way the world is right now by changing the technology you use, how much it costs, and in a more general sense, employment and fair play.

I called you out on the witcher topic (I totally forgot that was you) because the discussion focused on censorship, and as you have seen in multiple threads I have posted in, my motivations are centered around liberty. A variety of topics that come up that limit peoples freedoms, and I post in each and every one of them. You happen to be on the other side of that issue in some of these threads more often than not. It's not you personally. I couldn't care less about you personally. But if you speak against freedoms, if you bring up topics and don't know what you're saying, I'm going to let you know about it. It's a discussion board, you started a discussion knowing full well that it was a "holy war", so if you can't handle it, why bring it up? I don't feel bad for you, and I think it's awfully telling that you somehow feel victimized when you participated in this discussion knowing full well the controversial nature of it.

Lastly, I should add that you spent some of your time picking on the original poster for not knowing what to do. It's a perfectly legitimate question, and there's no reason you should attack him for it. Again, you feel like a victim, but you are a completely voluntary participant here.