Eve Online update takes gamers offline

A major update for Eve Online released on Wednesday contained a flaw which left some gamers unable to boot their PC.

CCP, the game's developer, has fixed the bug and re-released the update, but the results could still cause problems for those affected.

The Eve Online Trinity expansion added new content and included a complete revamp of the game's graphics engine.

The bug seemed relatively obscure but, judging by the response on the CCP forum, it appears to have affected a number of users.

CCP said that customers would need to have a non-Vista version of Windows, at least two hard disks and an operating system installed on the second hard disk.

This set-up could cause the upgrade process to corrupt the boot.ini file, a Windows system file used to determine operating system options without which the computer cannot boot into Windows.

"We apologise profusely for this error and are working on offering more extensive help to those that have a non-working Windows PC, so please stay tuned," wrote CCP on the official Eve Online site when the bug was uncovered.

CCP announced yesterday that it had fixed the issue and released a new version of the update. The company has posted repair instructions for those unable to reboot their PCs, but the procedure can be quite technical.

Some forum posters questioned why the update was able to mess with the boot.ini file in the first place.

"Eve-Online has its own boot.ini in their folder and the one that wrote up the installer/patcher screwed up for the delete command line for root drive instead of Eve-Online folder," said one user.

Most of the responses from customers have been understanding and helpful, but one poster asked: "Hopefully those who didn't know about this can get their computers going without any problems.

"I really hope CCP has a reimbursement plan for those who needed to take their computer in for service to get it working properly again.

"I will lose a lot of respect for CCP if they don't reimburse those who might be affected and had to pay to get their computers fixed."