Mr. Funny Man

Planescape: Torment running into IRQL trouble with atapi.sys

Finally giving up on Neverwinter Nights for what should rightfully be the very last time, I have installed Planescape: Torment as per Emperor Devon’s prescription. He has promised me a terrific and thought-provoking storyline. The graphics are better and more bearable than Fallout as well, so there’s not an issue there.

I got the 2-CD version, which I’m loading with Nero ImageDrive. After a smooth install, I load the second disk and start playing. The game impresses me right from the start – it has a unique environment, a very intriguing one at that. Great graphics that balance 2D and 3D and much better sound than I had expected. Probably what I like best about it is that the conversation text is large, verbose and easily readable as opposed to the pain-in-the-butt Neverwinter Nights and Fallout.

The problem is, the game seems to crash at random times. It restarted my computer twice, so I disabled that feature in Windows XP. Now I’m presented a scrumptious blue screen that is, in Microsoft tradition, incomprehensible.

The only clues I could gather from it were that it involves “DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL” and atapi.sys. Research tells me that it atapi.sys is related to CD/DVD drives. That would mean the problem can be traced to Nero ImageDrive, which must be having some sort of compatibility issues with Planescape. I’m going to disable it right now, and do a “full install” of Planescape.

This is an unofficial method and from what I gather, works something like this:

1. Copy the CD’s contents to a folder on your hard drive.
2. In the Torment.ini file in your game folder, change the CD2 entry to the path of the CD’s contents. It should be directed to the “cd2″ folder in your CD copy’s folder.

While I have a feeling this isn’t going to work, I still have my fingers crossed. While typing this. Damn I’m good at this.

Concept: Mood-based Music Player

The idea is simple. After generating a music library, the player allows for a mood-based play function. With a keylogger and some sort of a device to scan any visible text or tags on the screen. The songs in your library are tagged (or auto-tagged, with title and artist info, or imported from Last.fm). The tags are then matched and the dynamic library is generated at a rapid refresh rate.

The result? If I’m reading a page on war, I’ll hear Montségur or Paschendale. If I’m entering a lot of expletives in my input, an angry, dark song will play. With calmer, easy pages we have calmer, easy songs.

May be a lot of effort, though and I doubt if anyone will trust a music player with a keylogger and an on-screen information cache.

Security Holes