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There has been a huge number of features added and bugs quashed so I’m looking for as much testing and feedback as possible. So far its only been very briefly tested by me on Vista 32 bit. Please, please let me know how this beta performs. I want to know about problems, bugs, quirks, or even if it all works perfectly. Contact me, post in the comments or add an item to the issues tracker. Please include as much information as possible, including your version of Windows and if possible, the steps to reproduce a bug.

Click ‘Read the rest of this entry’ for the list of new features and the download link.

New since the last stable release:

• Support for Firewire drives/disks
• Support for card readers/flash memory cards (Cards are now ejected not the card reader as happened in previous versions)
• Auto-polling to detect when a new flash card is inserted
• Double right clicking on a drive opens an explorer window for the disk
• Much better notifications:
  • Uses balloon hints in the taskbar for notifications instead of a messagebox
  • Much better detection and explanation of the reasons for a failed eject
  • Now notifies (via a balloon hint) when an eject is successful
• Automatically closes explorer windows related to the disk before ejecting (this stops a lot of the failed ejects in Vista)
• Can auto-close any applications running from the disk before ejection:
  • Can do this using a safe ‘ask’ method or a brute force unsafe method
  • Please note this closes applications that were launched from the ejecting disk. It currently does not close applications launched from elsewhere that have a file from the ejecting drive open.
  • Eg - if you launch portable firefox from a usb stick and then eject the stick it should close portable firefox and eject successfully, but if you open a document on the pen drive in Word then it wouldnt be able to detect and close this.
• Hotkey support (can assign a hotkey to eject a drive based on its name or drive letter)
• New ‘no disks’ found icon - the old face icon apparently scared some people
• Added tray icon:
  • Added popup menu to tray icon so you can right click and eject disks, similar to the behaviour of Windows’ ‘Safely remove hardware’ tray icon
• Smart auto-resizing of the program window to accommodate new disks/devices
• Better docking behaviour when the program window is in a corner of the screen
• Added ‘/NOSAVE’, ‘/CLOSEAPPS’ and ‘/CLOSEAPPSFORCE’ command line switches
• Fixed - font size in the options dialog on Windows XP
• Fixed - very rarely a device with many disks/partitions might not have all its disks detected correctly. The detection procedure is now threaded to stop this rare occurrence
• Fixed - if the program was set to read only - when it restarted in mobile mode and copied to the temp folder it couldn’t delete itself
• Options dialog added - options can now be set and saved. Click on ‘more’ then ‘options’ to show it.
• Added options to:
  • Start the program minimized
  • Remember the last size of the program window
  • Remember the last position of the program window
  • Autosize the program window
  • Enable/disable balloon notifications
  • Close to the system tray
  • Minimize to the system tray
  • Enable/disable eject notifications
  • Use the standard windows eject notifications
  • Close the program after a successful ejection
  • Minimize the program after a successful ejection
  • Control the adding and management of hotkeys
  • Control the closure of any programs running from a drive before ejection
  • Search for media cards (in card readers)

Download the beta version.

Read the readme.

Get the source code.

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Escape From Monkey Island Setup and Launcher

Curse of Monkey Island Setup and Launcher

Grim Fandango Setup and Launcher

Two things became clear during this process: one - I should have done this years ago, its a lot simpler than I thought, and two - I write some really bad code. Some of it was from 2002, a time when just getting a program to compile was my big achievement.

I’ve done my best to clean it up and in doing so I’ve moved all string constants into a separate unit - this should make it much easier for people to make translations. Anyone looking to update the installers can look at Hoanzl’s work for ideas.

As always, feel free to contact me if you have any queries. If anyone has any patches or changes they want to merge into any of the repositories, just let me know and I’ll either do it myself or add you as a project member.

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A bug previously meant that all music from Strongbad season 1 was dumped incorrectly. It either didn’t play, or was missing the last few seconds. This has now been fixed and music from all games should now dump correctly.

Many thanks to Gary Kertopermono for spotting this bug and identifying the fix.

Download it here.

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I’m continuing to work on USB Disk Ejector when I get time. This post is just to let people know where I’m up to and keep you all informed.

I’ve added many fixes and features since the last beta, these include:

• Detecting card readers
• Allowing card media to be ejected without the USB device itself being ejected
• Better notifications for successful and unsuccessful removal
• Automatically closing explorer windows for the drive (helpful in Vista)
• Closing programs running from the drive (nicely or brute-force)
• Proper firewire support
• Window autosizing
• Window positioning fixes
• Miscellaneous other tweaks.

At the moment I’m fixing bugs and making sure that the new features all work correctly. Once that’s done I’ll release beta 2. My intention now is to release beta versions as often as I can. If I again find that I’m unable to work on the program for a long time, people will still be able to try the new features, without having to wait for a full stable version.

You can see a screenshot of the current build below, the icons are likely to change as I cant identify the author of the card reader icon to request permission to include it.

USB Disk Ejector 1.2 beta 2

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I’ve been thinking recently, of fully open sourcing the app and putting it on Sourceforge. However I’m not sure its worth the bother, its only worth doing if people would actively contribute to and work on the app.

Putting it on sourceforge would be a chore for me and I’d have to get used to using subversion or cvs - which would be pretty pointless if I remained the only developer. Additionally, releasing it under the GPL or MPL would be problematic since portions of the eject code are based on work by Uwe Sieber in this article. I would have to get clarification from him, I would have to get permission again from the authors of the app’s icons and I would have problems with the modified HddInfo.pas unit that I use. Its licencing is ambiguous since there are many different versions of it floating around the internet by different authors - none of which are the same as the version I modified.

Essentially what I’m saying is that Sourceforging it would be a huge pain. I would only go to the trouble if I could be sure that people would actively contribute to the program. I’m not hugely confident of this - the source to all my apps has been on my site for 5 years and in all that time only one person has ever contributed to the code. Nevertheless, if it would happen, then I’d do it.

Here’s what I want from you - please say in the comments if you think I should go ahead with this. Please remember that I dont care if you want it on Sourceforge because you’re an open source enthusiast or because you think it’ll mean more regular updates. Let me know if you personally would contribute to the program (remembering that its coded with Delphi).

Thanks, and sorry for the whiney tone of this post.

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Music from Sam and Max: Whats New Beelzebub now dumps correctly and a potential bug with some new format music files has been fixed.

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I’ve had very little time to work on USB Disk Ejector lately. I’m still continuing to work on it when I get chance, I am aware though, that its been a while since the last release. With that in mind I’m releasing a beta of the next version (1.2). Its not feature-complete and there are still unfinished bits but it should be usable until I am able to make a proper release.

Please remember that this is a beta version - not everything will work correctly. It will also only be posted here - not on the software page.

New in this version:

• Options dialog added - options can now be set and saved. Click on ‘more’ then ‘options’ to show it.
• Added options to:
  • Start the program minimized
  • Remember the last size of the program window
  • Remember the last position of the program window
  • Enable/disable balloon notifications
  • Close to the system tray
  • Minimize to the system tray
  • Enable/disable eject notifications
  • Use the standard windows eject notifications
  • Close the program after a successful ejection
  • Minimize the program after a successful ejection
  • Control the adding and management of hotkeys
• Hotkey support. Not yet fully implemented.
• Added popup menu to system tray icon.
• Added an ‘about’ form.
• Firewire devices can be ejected via the command line switches - I still need to add settings to enable/disable this in the GUI.
• Added ‘NOSAVE’ command line switch - when used the program will not save settings to a file and will ignore any existing settings file.

Download the beta version.

Read the readme.

Please report bugs in the comments, some (such as the incomplete hotkey support) are known, but there are bound to be others.

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The speech extractor has had a number of bugfixes: its decoding problems are now fixed, so all voices should sound just as they do ingame, annotations have been added for all games and the annotations for Sam and Max Season 1 and CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder are now 100% complete. Many thanks to Aeon for completing the Sam and Max annotations.

[Edit - Telltale Music Extractor has been updated again to fix a problem with the music in Sam and Max: Whats New Beelzebub. Please download the new version if you are having problems]

Get them here:

Telltale Music Extractor

Telltale Speech Extractor

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A program that enables you to rip the voices and sfx from all games released by Telltale Games. To date (August 2008) that includes:

• Bone: Out From Boneville
• Bone: The Great Cow Race
• Crime Scene Investigation - 3 Dimensions of Murder
• Crime Scene Investigation - Hard Evidence
• Sam and Max: Season 1:
  • Sam and Max: Culture Shock
  • Sam and Max: Situation Comedy
  • Sam and Max: The Mole The Mob And The Meatball
  • Sam and Max: Abe Lincoln Must Die
  • Sam and Max: Reality 2.0
  • Sam and Max: Bright Side Of The Moon
• Sam and Max: Season 2:
  • Sam and Max: Ice Station Santa
  • Sam and Max: Moai Better Blues
  • Sam and Max: Night Of The Raving Dead
  • Sam and Max: Chariots Of The Dogs
  • Sam and Max: What’s New Beelzebub
• Strong Bad: Season 1:
  • Strong Bad: Homestar Ruiner
  • Strong Bad: Episode 2 (Skeleton support - should work when the game is released)
  • Strong Bad: Episode 3 (Skeleton support)
  • Strong Bad: Episode 4 (Skeleton support)
  • Strong Bad: Episode 5 (Skeleton support)
• Telltale Texas Hold’em

It should also work with future games, provided that the file formats don’t change.

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A program that enables you to rip the music from all games released by Telltale Games. To date (December 2008) that includes:

• Bone: Out From Boneville
• Bone: The Great Cow Race
• Crime Scene Investigation - 3 Dimensions of Murder
• Crime Scene Investigation - Hard Evidence
• Sam and Max: Season 1:
  • Sam and Max: Culture Shock
  • Sam and Max: Situation Comedy
  • Sam and Max: The Mole The Mob And The Meatball
  • Sam and Max: Abe Lincoln Must Die
  • Sam and Max: Reality 2.0
  • Sam and Max: Bright Side Of The Moon
• Sam and Max: Season 2:
  • Sam and Max: Ice Station Santa
  • Sam and Max: Moai Better Blues
  • Sam and Max: Night Of The Raving Dead
  • Sam and Max: Chariots Of The Dogs
  • Sam and Max: What’s New Beelzebub
• Strong Bad: Season 1:
  • Strong Bad: Homestar Ruiner
  • Strong Bad: Strong Badia The Free
  • Strong Bad: Baddest Of The Bands
  • Strong Bad: Dangeresque 3
  • Strong Bad: Episode 5 (Skeleton support)
• Telltale Texas Hold’em

It should also work with future games, provided that the file format doesn’t change.

If you use this tool then please make sure you buy the games.

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Remember I did not create these, so do not contact me about any problems. You can post in the comments though and I’m sure he’ll address any problems you have.

You can get both installers here.

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Many thanks to Michael Carman and Victor Rades for reporting and helping me fix this error.

Download it here.

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Hardware:

The bottom screen on this DS is broken, but the touch screen still works. I’ll be putting it on ebay selling as broken/spare parts.

Gamecube with 2 pads, memory card, Metroid Prime, Luigi’s Mansion, Mario Smash Football. Power lead and scart adaptor also included as well as RF (tv ariel) adaptor.

Gameboy Advance with Super Mario Advance, rechargable battery pack and power adaptor. I’ve got a case for it somewhere too.

Games for DS and PC:

Black and White 1 with strategy Guide

The Entertainment Pack - has the new executables for Sam and Max and Full Throttle with the aspect ratio fixes and graphics filter. Grim Fandango is the updated version with the patch included and option to install fully to hd.

Indy and The Emperors Tomb - I won this in a Mojo contest years ago.

Books:

Misc stuff:

Buffy Series 1 Collectors Edition

Pc Format 1998-2003. These will probably be going to recycling.

Pc Zone 1998-2003. These will probably be going to recycling.

Pc Plus 2001-Present. Probably for recycling again.

Soundblaster Live PCI Card

The Office Series 1

Voodoo 2 - PCI

Zalman silent cooler - for socket A Athlon’s. Comes with a big fan thats suspended above the heatsink with a speed control.

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In order to justify a new release I’ve also included two requested features. Firstly, proper Windows 2000 support. I know some people were disappointed that the old version didn’t work on Win2K - well now it does (for real this time). Secondly, displaying disk/volume labels. If you’ve given a disk a name it will now be displayed in bold and you can see an example of this in the screenshot below.

I still don’t know exactly when the next version of the program will be released. I don’t have much free time at the moment but I’m still slowly working on it. You can see a mind-map containing all the proposed features for the next version here.

As always, feel free to get in touch with me via my contact form if you have any problems or feature requests that aren’t on the mind-map.

Download it here.

[Update] It seems that some people have issues using the program when they have network drives that aren’t accessible. I think I’ve identified the problem and I’m just waiting for a few more people to test the fix. I’ll be releasing an updated/fixed version soon.

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Just to make it clear - I didnt make these patches, Maks Verver did. I am just hosting them on his behalf.

Also note that these are unofficial patches that are not authorized or supported by Telltale Games. If you encounter problems running one of the games on Windows 2000, you should reinstall the game on a supported operating system before contacting Telltale Games for technical support.

Get them here.

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Many thanks to those that have donated, I really appreciate it. You should all have had a thank you email, if you haven’t received one it may have been caught in your spam filter. Thanks also to those that commented or emailed me about the program. All feedback is useful and although I may not be able to implement every suggestion I will do my best to fulfil most requests.

A list of the ideas and proposed features for the new version can be found here. It was compiled from all the requests people sent me, along with a few ideas of my own. Work on the next version is happening slowly; unfortunately all the interest in the program coincided with a very busy period of my life. I have very little free time at the moment and this will be the case up until the end of April. After that I hope to be able to put in a lot more work on the program and get a new version released fairly quickly.

Until then, you can subscribe to my RSS feed here and please feel free to get in touch with me via my contact form if you have any problems or requests that aren’t featured on the list.

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Download it here.

Quick and Easy week is now over, many thanks to those who’ve offered words of encouragement. Should you want to show your appreciation and support my work, you can do so via a paypal donation. The ugly paypal button on the right of the page will let you do this. I hope that people find the tools useful; as always people can contact me via the forums or my contact page if they have any problems or suggestions.

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This was originally a program that I wrote for my own use and released just to see if anyone found it useful. Apparently people did and it was surprisingly popular.

In response to user requests I’ve now beefed it up significantly. This new version has been completely re-written and has many new features. It now works on Vista, can run as a command line application and can eject drives from the command line based on drive letter, drive name or partial drive name.

The new command line options make it especially suitable for use with a flash/pen drive, especially if you use a menu such as PStart or the Portable Apps launcher. Eg. I have PStart setup to run the program with the command line option “/EJECTTHIS’. When I run it, the program loads silently, ejects the pen drive and exits. This works regardless of the drive letter that Windows assigns the drive. I strongly recommended that you check out the readme for more information on the new command line options and how they can be used.

New in version 1.1:

• Now works on Windows Vista. It’s only been tested on XP and Vista but should work with earlier versions of Windows too.
• Changed to ’silent ejection’ by default. There are now no messages shown when a device is successfully ejected, messages are only shown when there is an error and the eject fails.
• The keyboard can now be used to eject drives (press enter).
• Completely reworked the command line options, the old ones were removed and new ones added. See the rest of the readme for more information on these.
• Drives can now be ejected entirely from the command line. You can specify a drive letter, drive name, or partial drive name.
• Mobile mode has been removed, its now automatic. The program will restart itself in mobile mode when appropriate.
• Completely rewrote the drive scanning code. USB devices that dont identify themselves as removable disks can now be managed by the program.
• Uses Vista fonts when running under Vista.

Download it here.

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This is the latest stable version, if you want to try the beta version with many more features, click here.

A program that allows you to quickly remove USB devices in Windows. It was originally designed to remove only USB pen drives but will now eject any USB device. It can be run as a non-visual command line program or a normal gui program. Its very useful if you have a USB flash/pen drive, especially if you use a menu such as PStart or the Portable Apps launcher.

The command line options are very flexible, they can be used to:

• Eject the drive that the program is running from.
• Eject a drive by specifying a drive letter.
• Eject a drive by specifying a drive name.
• Eject a drive by specifying a partial drive name.

When run as a ‘normal’ GUI program the tools enables USB devices to be quickly ejected through a mouse click or keyboard press. It’s especially useful when dealing with multiple USB devices and for Vista users who don’t want the ‘now safe to remove this device’ dialog box to appear.

The program was designed for and has been tested on Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista. It does not work on Windows 98 (this may change in a future release).

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A replacement installer (setup program) for Escape From Monkey Island. The installer that comes with the game can be problematic with newer versions of Windows and refuses to work at all on 64 bit Windows.

This installer works on both 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Windows and has been tested on Windows XP and Vista. It should work fine with all Windows versions though.

It performs a full install of the game and comes with my Escape From Monkey Island Launcher - which adds extra features beyond those in the game’s original launcher.

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Escape From Monkey Island Launcher has been updated to version 1.5. The resolution patch has been reworked to make it much faster, the 6 different language versions of EMI are now better supported and Vista/64 bit Windows support has been added. The full list of changes can be seen below:

New in version 1.5:

• Resolution patch reworked: It’s now much faster. On most systems it will only take 1 or 2 seconds to apply - compared to 30 seconds in previous versions.
• Added support for the 6 different language versions of EMI: The launcher will now download and install the appropriate patch when prompted. Previously only the English patch was supported.
• Added features from the original Lucasarts launcher. Added buttons to switch between Direct3D/OpenGL and 16 bit/32 bit colour. The original launcher now wont run on some systems so it was necessary to include these features.
• Cosmetic changes: Interface redesigned, text and icons made clearer, changed the launcher images.
• Vista compatibility: The launcher now automatically prompts to run as administrator when its started, the program icon now includes all sizes up to 256×256.
• Fixed a small memory leak.
• Now uses the excellent EMI icon created by Thanius.
• 64 bit versions of Windows are now officially supported. The launcher has been tested on XP64 and Vista64.
• Old versions of Windows are no longer officially supported. Versions before XP (95/98/ME/2000) should be fine but the launcher hasn’t been tested with them.

Download it here.

Escape From Monkey Island Setup is a new tool. Its a replacement installer (setup program) for Escape From Monkey Island. The installer that comes with the game can be problematic with newer versions of Windows and refuses to work at all on 64 bit Windows. This installer doesn’t have those problems and comes with the above-mentioned Escape From Monkey Island Launcher.

Download it here.

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An improved version of the launcher program that LucasArts shipped with Escape From Monkey Island, it has a number of features not present in the original launcher:

• Can run EMI in windowed mode.
• Can make EMI run in a higher resolution
• Can automatically download and install the V1.1 update patch for all language versions of EMI.
• Supports all recent versions of Windows (XP, XP64, XPMCE, Vista, Vista64). Windows 98, ME and 2000 are not officially supported but should work correctly.

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The Curse of Monkey Island Launcher has been updated. Its had a slight redesign to make it easier to use, has full Vista compatibility and now supports 64 bit versions of Windows. The full list of changes can be seen below.

New in version 2.5

• Cosmetic changes: Interface redesigned, text and icons made clearer, changed the launcher images.
• Vista compatibility: The launcher now automatically prompts to run as administrator when its started, the program icon now includes all sizes up to 256×256 and if running on Vista the launcher now uses vista fonts.
• Fixed a small memory leak.
• Now uses the excellent CMI icon created by Thanius.
• 64 bit versions of Windows are now officially supported. The launcher has been tested on XP64 and Vista64.
• Old versions of Windows are no longer officially supported. Versions before XP (95/98/ME/2000) should be fine but the launcher hasn’t been tested with them.
• The cutscene fix feature has been removed: Newer versions of DirectX and newer versions of Windows mean that the fast cutscene bug no longer occurs.

Download it here.

Curse of Monkey Island Setup is the new tool. Its a replacement installer (setup program) for the Curse of Monkey Island. The installer that comes with the game can be problematic with newer versions of Windows and refuses to work at all on 64 bit Windows. This installer doesn’t have those problems and comes with the above-mentioned Curse of Monkey Island Launcher.

Download it here.

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A replacement installer (setup program) for the Curse of Monkey Island. The installer that comes with the game can be problematic with newer versions of Windows and refuses to work at all on 64 bit Windows.

This installer works on both 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Windows and has been tested on Windows XP and Vista. It should work fine with all Windows versions though.

It performs a full install of the game, meaning that the cd’s are not needed to play and comes with my Curse of Monkey Island Launcher - which adds extra features beyond those in the game’s original launcher.

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