EA Games SUCKS Big Time - Thank god for Tech Geeks
EA games still sucks big time. Thank goodness for tech geeks that are willing to post their knowledge. As usual I figured out the problem with a little help from the internet. God I do love the internet! Any time I'm having a problem with my computer - to the internet I go. As some of you may know, I was having problems with EA games download manager. I downloaded Sims 2 Pets and Seasons from EA and was suddenly having problems with connecting to the EA games website so I could play The Sims (I still don't like that sh*t).
Tech "Support" and I, and I use the term loosely, played footsie with each other until I was ready to hire my own goons to beat me senseless and put me out of my misery. I get really crabby when my trusty old computer is not working. I am addicted to the internet and consider surfing the one hobby I have not abandoned.
Anyway, first I searched for EC5510 to see if I could find someone posting in a group. Well I found postings as far back as over a year ago, but no one that had actually been informed by EA as to what the hell this error code means (and I still don't). I was also getting an error message that the download needed 5GB of space.
I decided then to take a different tact. As I said before, I had added a lot of memory on my computer just so I can play the game - 3 memory cards in fact. I like to download freeware, but they were not huge files. So I wrote down all the free software I had downloaded and proceeded to uninstall all of it. Didn't gain a lot of space. So I decided to surf the net with something like, "Where has all my disk space gone?" And found a great utility that would do just that - answer the question as to just what programs are sucking up all my space. I also learned that XP just loves disk space and will just suck it all. Then, from some computer geek blogger I found a utility with fancy dancy color coded stuff that looked like it would suck up even more space to run and noted the comments of others that recommended other utilities, some they used professionally.
So this is what I picked, "TreeSize" from Jam Software. A real simple, free utility that will scan your C drive, order all the programs in order based on size, and show you with a simple color slide and a toolbar which programs and folders are sucking up disk space. It also shows you some leftover folders and pieces of code from programs that you have unistalled in the past. I just clicked and deleted them. I gained about 2GB of space doing that. I tried to delete some more crap and got some error messages that another program was running them. Since I had stopped all but system programs running in the background, I was a little reluctant to force the delete by stopping as many systems programs as I could without shutting down so I left them.
Anyway this seemed to resolve the problem of the download manager, which was not downloading 5GB of data but needed that much space to do its thing. It downloaded the new version, opened a window for me to enter my ID and password to my account and voila! my download buttons for both games and their patches! I started up the game just fine.
Now back to EA games. What was so hard about telling me what EC5510 meant (still don't know, but perhaps it means not enough harddrive space to operate?) and what was downloading (a newer version of their download manager?). Based on the error code I reported, could they not tell me it was imperative that I free up this space and perhaps direct me to some free utility with a disclaimer that they are not responsible for any catastrophe I may visit upon my computer? What's with the Gestapo, CIA-like secrecy? Why the stoopid canned responses that never addressed my specific problems or questions for that matter.
While surfing about this problem I came across a lot of disgruntled consumers that were blasting EA for shoving out "broken" games that are buggy and then not addressing tech issues or providing adequate support. Shame on you EA games!!!
(Giggle) Should I continue to torture the techs by asking inane questions over and over until one of them implodes? (tee-hee).