RE: Possible Bug

This is in response to Sard Caid's blog post "Possible Bug". Being that I had enough to say about it myself I didn't want to clutter up Sard's commentary log and simply chose to post an addendum here.

I actually had the same problem happen in my rapier, but wasn't related to the use of a jump clone.
Using the jump clones is still a big problem for me since the Quantum Rise patch, where now the use of a jump clone will cause the game to hang, requiring me to close the application and restart it. So far I have been able to re-enter the game at the intended location but its extremely frustrating and makes the use of jump clones a hassle.
The situation with my ship's modules was severe however, where I had logged in after a "server connection lost" error to find that a couple of my modules wouldn't online, including my cloaking device. This condition persisted even after physically removing the modules and refitting them. The first time this happened I simply tried to correct it by relogging, giving a few minutes for the cache to clear and logging back in. This seemed to help in getting all of my modules to work, but lo' and behold once I got out of the station they would not respond to my activation using the mouse cursor, displaying the error message that "the module is offline" etc, etc. This was exacerbated by the fact that I was trying to avoid being camped at the station. *sigh*
To make a long story shorter (there were other little issues related to this, such as the modules responding with the [F]-keys but not the mouse, or the modules will unload but not reload) I realized that this situation was really only applicable in the "bug reports" section, which basically means that it may get fixed in some patch up the road... so I sumbitted a brief bug report, logged off, and waited 'till uptime to go about my daily routine.
Upon re-entering the game everything seemed to be alright, and I manually activated my cloaking device to double check all of my systems. It was then that I realized that not only was the problem NOT fixed, but now I was stuck in cloaking mode with a cloaking device that was now saying wasn't even online! At this point I was able to write a full petition under the "stuck player" heading, as I was neither able to dock nor leave the system due to my ship refusing to decloak (I was in a cov ops pilot's hell!) The petition response was as follows:

Hi,
Thank you for contacting EVE Online customer support.
Can you please try to log off and log back on as this should deactivate the modules.

Thanks, CCP. That was a great help. So, I immediately respond with this:

I tried this method as suggested, and upon logging back in my situation remains the same. I was able to activate my cloak by selecting the applicable module, but it still both displays as innactive (i.e.: no flashing green) and will not let me de-activate it, thus resuming my original problem.

CCP's second response came within a few minutes and consisted of the following instructions:

Hi,

Thank you for your reply..

See if clearing your cache and settings folders helps, corrupt cache and settings files can cause ingame items and information being shown incorrectly or not at all. It can also cause players, ships and items to function improperly.

Close the game.
Press Windows Key + R and simply copy and paste the following path into the Run window.

%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\CCP on Windows XP
%LOCALAPPDATA%\CCP\EVE\ on Windows Vista.
Rename EVE folder.

This also unfortunately clears your personal setup.

Please note that copying the settings folder or any of it's files back may cause your problems to resurface, this includes the prefs.ini file.

Log in to the game.
Please advise of the outcome.

OK. So what following this course of action does is effectively get the game to rewrite all of your local files and give you a nice fresh start... theoretically. Being as it neither isolates the original problem nor does it help to explain what may have gone wrong, I simply took it upon myself to uninstall EvE completely and start anew with a clean install. "Fuck it," I thought, "All of my personal settings are gonna get borked anyhow so I might as well clean the slate completely."

The end result of this action is that I have not experienced this module bug at all, including the use of all grouping functions. Additionally the clean install actually seems to have improved the performance of EvE across the board, and hopefully fixed a number of other issues that I may have not even paid much mind to. Mind you, I had to reorganize all of my bookmarked coordinates into their respective subfolders again, but I would have had to do that anyhow by allowing the local client prefs to be re-written.

Oh, did I say all of my bookmarked coordinates? ALL of them? All 33 regions worth of them?

P.S.: The jump clone issue was completely unaffected by a clean reinstall, and is still totally fucked.