Cities XL 2011 Crashes On “Play” And Says I’m Using A Demo

I recently purchased a new game Cities XL 2011 as I’m quite a fan of city builders.

After the install I hit a major snag, When pressing the “Play” button my game minimised then crashed. I was able to play the tutorials but after a short period the game closed and warned me that my demo was over! Note that if only 3 tutorials are showing you are playing the demo mode. The game actually has about 10 if you’ve activated it successfully.

I’ve been reading the forums for about 5 days now and only once did I read about this possible cure.

It is pretty simple. For my I had AVG (antivirus) installed. Although recently they had swapped thier product to a paid one which meant the antivirus no longer scanned my computer I had left it installed. So even though it wasnt running somehow the software prevented my computer from activating my game online. Which meant the game assumed it was a demo.

The Fix:

1. Uninstall your antivirus software
2. Load your Cities XL 2011, YOU DO NOT NEED TO REINSTALL
3. If that fails reinstall Cities XL 2011
4. Reinstall antivirus software (or wise up and dont open email attachments that are less than 1mb or from strangers, check the url of website links before clicking, DO NOT USE INTERNET EXPLORER! Use chrome its so fast)
5. Enjoy your game!

Hope this helps!

Fixed: My Sony Ericsson K800i, K810i or K850i Phone Won’t Charge?

I’ve had my Sony Ericsson K800i phone for over a year now and yesterday I found that my phone just wouldn’t charge at all. And as a result I spent the night disconnected from the world, well almost (thank the lord for Facebook). After spending over an hour trying to fiddle the charger connector into all kinds of weird and wonderful angles my phone was still as dead as a dodo. To add insult to injury it didn’t even light up once to say that there was power getting in at any time during the hour.

I’d just about given up on getting my phone charged without taking into the O2 store and having it set off to be fixed.

While at work on my hours lunch break, I thought I would have one last attempt at getting the thing to charge because I had an hour to kill. And by shear luck managed to work out what might have been the problem and got my phone charging.

So here’s how I did it:

Step One: Cleaning The Connectors

1. Get a staple (or a paperclip, thanks phil!)
2. bend the staple so it’s straight (extra length)
3. Now carefully scrape any dirt and fluff off the metal connectors on the bottom of the phone, be careful not to press too hard or you will scratch the metal off and prevent any connection being made.
4. Using the same method try to remove any dirt in the rim where the connection is made.
   
5. Now try to charge your phone – No luck? Read on..

Step Two: Cleaning The Charger Holes

Something that I completely overlooked when I was cleaning my phone of dirt was if there was any dirt stuck in the holes that the charger pushes into on the phone.

1. Using the staple try to get out all the fluff that gets trapped in the 2 holes either side of the metal connectors.
2. This requires some force as the fluff in my phone was well compacted.
3. Keep at this for 10minutes, getting into each corner of the hole and pushing hard.
4. Now try to charge your phone again.

This final step worked for me and allowed me to once again charge my phone.

I hope this works for you as it did for me. If so drop me a comment, it takes seconds and lets me know that my time wasn’t wasted.

Step Three: Charger Connector/Phone Angles

For those that are still having trouble trying different charging angles can sometimes work a treat. For this the best technique I have found is:

1. Place the charger into phone as normal
2. Now pull the left side of the charge out leaving the right side in to phone, not pushing or pulling to hard and with a lot of luck your phone might begin charging again.

Step 4: Cleaning The Inside Of The Phone (Thanks helen)

Helen commented mentioning that she managed to get her phone charging by cleaning the inside of the phone where the battery connects to the phone at its source. Dust and dirt works its way inside the phone over time and it may just be that  something is blocking the connection on the inside.

Final Note

I hope that one or more of these techniques get your phone charging again because I know how much of a pain it can be without your phone. If there were any bits you are unsure of or any other techniques that got your phone working again then please leave and comment and I will add/correct/update anything that I can.

I hope this was of help.

All the best.

How it all started..

Well.. as all human beings when something breaks I find myself determined to get to the bottom of the problem myself with the least amount of money, and when I cannot find the answer I get very angry.

So after having tackled a few quite tricky problems I feel it only fair to rejuvenate the world with this knowledge and give people that happy feeling that you get when something you feel irredeemable is once again redeemed!

So here we have it “Fixed It”

Now lets get those problems solved!