Uh, didn't you guys miss the point?

Submitted by Mayhemm on Tue, 2008-01-15 00:13

I have to say I was a little surprised by your response to Mike's TF2 question; and not just because Will revealed he doesn't use anti-virus or firewall. You guys spent the whole time talking about your anti-virus preferences but failed to address the root of the problem; Mike's low paged pool memory.

Wouldn't it have been better to offer advice as to what he could do about this error? I mean, you guys (except for Gordon, I think) play TF2 all the time. Would you not have encountered this error before through first or second-hand experience?

I must confess that the reason why I'm so worked up about this is I have the same error; only it's with Episode 2. "Warning! OS Paged Pool Memory Low" appears in the top right corner and when the game goes into a loading screen, it never comes out (CRASH! Please try again). Clearly it affects the Source Engine, not just TF2.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think disabling applications we use regularly (as Valve advises) is an adequate fix. Since this is a memory error, would adding more RAM fix it (I only have 1GB)?

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Living on the edge...

Submitted by rb3m on Tue, 2007-11-20 15:18

I understand why you discourage people from not using an antivirus and firewall, but you should also stress the importance of being paranoid about security. I find that it's far more dangerous to think you are safe because you have an antivirus than not having an antivirus and being paranoid about what your computer is doing.

Personally, I don't use an antivirus or firewall either and haven't for over 15 years. I've never had any problems. Do I simply not know if I have a virus or not? Yes, but running an antivirus will only tell you whether it found something or not, not if you have a virus.

I am very careful about what stuff I download, what goes in and out of my computer (I use a sniffer), what's running in my system and keep all my software updated. I run a virus scan twice a year or so and I've never had a problem in all this time. Am I still at risk? Sure, but so is everybody.

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Symantec

Submitted by Hooterman on Thu, 2007-11-15 15:52

I'm pretty sure Will is confusing the Symantec A/V scanner with Norton. Cuz he jumped on Jeremy when he said thats what he uses, and Symantec is anything but a resource hog, unlike Norton.

And I'm fairly certain that Dave's "de-crap" version of norton may also be the Symantec version.

Also, for the record, I too run Symantec Corp A/V while playing TF2 with no problems in XP.

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