Disable User Account Control In Windows 10

On Microsoft Windows 10, User Account Control ('UAC') prevents applications from making certain changes on your PC. Some applications try to change system-related parts, such as the Registry or the file system.

ML Bot is one of these applications because, in order to manage Magic Online and uninstall / reinstall it, the bot needs to access the file system (the "files on your hard drive"). If you don't disable UAC, ML Bot will not be able to perform certain tasks on Magic Online and in particular to repair MTGO in case of crash. As result the bot will work fine until MTGO crashes. At this point ML Bot will not be able to handle the crash and recover.
Please note that on a stable machine this will hardly happen and keeping the UAC turned will not affect you however typically this is not the case, MTGO is very unstable and crashes often and turning off UAC is mandatory.

Here is how to disable UAC and get rid of its popups in Windows 10.

Step 1
Firstly, right click on the “Start” button and select Control Panel option.

Step 2
Select "view by: large icons"

Step 3
Select the User Account option.

Step 4
Select the 'Change User Account Control setting' option

Step 5
Select User Account Control settings, and move the slider to the bottom (Never Notify). If the slider is already at the bottom (Never Notify) then move it up, release the mouse, move it down again to Never Notify and release it. Click OK.

Step 6
When you click OK the new dialogue box is open. Click YES.

Step 7
At this point UAC should be disabled. You will need to restart your PC. Once restarted, launch ML Bot using the icon on the Desktop,  if you completed the steps successfully the bot will launch without UAC. If you still see a request dialog from UAC, you did not disable UAC and you need to do again the steps above. If the problem still persists, please contact us via email at staff@mtgolibrary.com or mtgolibrary@gmail.com

Impacted Connectivity on mtgolibrary.com

We're aware of reports of unsteady and limited connectivity to mtgolibrary.com.
Our network Engineers are currently investigating and the server will fully online again soon.

Thank you for your patience.

MTGO Library Bot 10.93

The new Magic Online version, released today, requires a ML Bot client update. We have just released the update (ML Bot 10.93) and stopped the launch of the previous versions. If you run an older version you need to update the bot to 10.93. The bot should automatically update, but you can still download the installer from the Online Control Panel.

Please also note that WotC changed the way the "Submit" button behaves. The button does not blink anymore when the buddies submit the trade, and thus there is no way to recognize the submit action. We will try to read the "Trade Submitted" flash message to recognize the action, even if the message fades in few seconds. For now the bot will only recognize the "done" written in the chat, like the old MTGO v3.

Later today or tomorrow we will also release another update, supporting the new set, SOI.

MTGO Library Bot 9.59

We released ML Bot 9.59 right after the downtime to fix a problem with opening the trades. The MTGO update changed the position of the "new chat" button and the bots were chatting in the "Support Area" instead of opening a new chat.

We released the update few minutes ago and forced a mass update. We contacted ORCS to explain the issue. Please check you bots and please update if they are version less than 9.59.

Wikiprice maintenance 22/11/2014

Today we will work a bit on wikiprice (mtgowikiprice.com) and it could stay down and/or not functioning properly for some hours.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Mtgo Wikiprice in maintenance

Wikiprice is currently down for maintenance. It will stay down for another 12h. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Server Maintence

Hello Botters,

We had an unexpected server maintenance required, trades will be disabled until 5am EST. Please make sure you update your bot to 8.10.

- ML Bot staff

Server Maintence: trades are disabled

Hello botters,

We are doing a quick server maintenance, trades will be disabled for 1 hour. Trades will be restored at 2pm EST.

-ML Bot staff


UPDATE - 1:52 pm - 8.09 is now released please update, trades will be re-enabled at 3pm EST.

mtgolibrary down for maintenance for another 2 hours

** UPDATE: server is up. Less than 2 hours! :-)  **

Hi all,

mtgolibrary.com will be down for maintenance for another 2 hours. We are doing some extra maintenance and some optimizations.

Sincerely,
Albert

Follow me on Twitter

I just started a Twitter account (@mtgolibrary), please follow me. I will tweet there news and infos. Twitter will be a great channel for real time feeds

This was ML Bot 1.01

I found a screenshot of the first version of ML Bot, year 2007 :-)
It was like that!!

Albert
staff@mtgolibrary.com

Wikiprice down for 2 hours

** UPDATE: wikiprice is now up again! **

Wikiprice (http://mtgowikiprice.com) will be down for 2 hours. We are migrating the server to a larger one to allow faster queries. Sorry for the inconvenience!


Sincerely,
Albert
staff@mtgolibrary.com

Cheaper than running yourself?

Renting a Server?

I upgraded my PC recently, and yet I am thinking of remaking a PC all together with more attention to energy efficiency.

As all of you know, to get into the botting world of MTGO, many of us are required to do some investments in hardware and waste many man-hours setting all up.
Most Botters PCs electricity usage range between 200 and 400 watt. This is because most of us did not build our pc's exclusively for botting and more likely upgraded our "everyday use" Gaming desktops into accepting (more) bots.

As Albert explained earlier in late August, building a Desktop to run bot(s) can cost between $500 to $1250+, depending on how many bots you wish to run. You might be mistaken that spending $500 on a PC to run, lets say, 2 Bots is a good idea, but there is a cheaper option.

A PC which is not designed to be energy efficient, running 2 bots, usually draws on average about 200-250w (average bots constant low load) while the monitor(s) are off, possibly up to 300-400w while they're on (depending if you dual monitor, screen size, etc). This means that, depending on wattage and your location, a Botting PC will use between $1 to $2 electricity a DAY. Might not sound much, but this is $30-60 on electricity a month, just to run 1-2 bots, which is definitely a number to consider, specially for newer bots with a very little amount of trades.

I am considering building powerful, energy efficient PCs to run more bots, but while I don't have enough capital to invest into a whole new card collection I was wondering if I could use my hardware/PC Building knowledge and software tweaking skills into something new and mutual benefit of me and other botters.

This is when I had the idea of possibly renting Virtual Machines exclusively for MTGO Library botting somewhere around $15 a month or less (while you would have full access to the PC remotely, to pause bot, edit personal prices, etc). This would remove a lot of weight of your shoulders, not having to worry about configuring Virtual Machines, not being able to play games on your PC while bots are running, having to sort out bot updates or quick adjustments while on holiday and so on.

While this is surely not great news for those who already run 6+ bots from 1 PC, but, it can be for the botters out there that run 1-3 bots on their personal PCs(with power hungry graphics cards or so).

Please share your thoughts and let me know if you would be the kind of person that would like to be involved in something like this.

MTGO Library Bot 5.93 released

This weekend wikiprice has been frequently offline due to maintenance. We changed its server and some important portion of the code.

MTGO Library Bot 5.93 is able to connect to the new server, while previous versions are not. If you are using ML Bot version 5.92 or lower, you have to upgrade to version 5.93 to have your bot on wikiprice.

MTGO Library Bot 5.90 released

ML Bot 5.90 has just been released. It supports the new wikiprice, up next week.

Yes, you understood correctly :-). After years, finally wikiprice gets a major revision and a new improved version will be online soon. Expect it to be faster, easier to search, and real time............

A comprehensive guide for the aspiring botter (Softwares) Part 7

Softwares:

Now we've come to the time to start looking at what applications to use and which licenses to purchase.
I'll recommend what I think you should use and I'll also try to give you at least one alternative that doesn't require you to purchase a license. I will not give you definite prices or links to where to purchase required licenses as these will vary depending on your location, etc.


First of all you'll have to decide which operative system to use: 

While I think Windows XP is the best alternative at the moment I would still recommend getting Windows 7 even though it consumes more resources, simply because the v4 version of MTGO that should be released shortly will (most likely) not run properly on Windows XP. This will probably force you to upgrade to Win 7 when v4 is released which seems unnecessary.
Now this is not something we're completely sure of, it might very well work on Windows XP but from what we've heard it won't, due to some rendering issues.

Windows 7 costs quite a lot and you will need one license per virtual machine plus one for the host PC.
A virtual machine is considered by Microsoft as being a separate computer and will therefore need a separate license. There are however plenty of ways to get these licenses cheaper than normal retail price.
Consider checking if you can get a student's discount or maybe the family pack of 3 licenses, which is way cheaper than buying separate licenses. You could also try it out before you purchase by using their trial period, this gives you some time to think about which OS you want to use.
The same applies if you decide to go with Win XP, you'll still need separate licenses that you have to pay for so I would say it's better to future proof by using Windows 7.

You might want to use Windows 8 and it should work fine. There are guides elsewhere on the blog that will help you with this but it's nothing I have any experience with.

If you're on a really tight budget and can't afford paying for licenses you could always give ESXi a shot.
ESXi is developed by VMware and was made freely available a few years ago. It only requires 32 MB RAM and uses almost no resources at all. It is however not as easy to use as the Windows operative systems and will most likely require you to follow a guide to get to work. User Thrillski on this blog is writing an article series about ESXi and I would recommend checking out his articles for more information. I myself have no experience with ESXi and can't really help you with this.

Other softwares you might want to check out: 

Virtual Machine:
I would recommend using VMWare Player or Workstation to set up your virtual machines.
The reason you have to run bots on virtual machines is simply because MTGO won't run more than one copy at a time on the same computer and the bot uses the mouse to navigate.
Therefore we install separate, virtual installations of your operative system of choice on the same computer.
VMWare Player is free to use and works well for botting purposes. Workstation however requires you to purchase a license and have a lot more settings that you can use but it's not necessary.

Backup software:
I've been trying out a lot of free backup softwares and ended up using SyncBack Free by 2BrighSparks as I find it to be the most suitable and lightweight of all the backup softwares I could find.

It's always a good idea to back up your virtual machines and/or MLBot settings so SyncBack is a good sollution that won't drain your recourses too much.

I would also recommend running Dropbox if you want to keep files synchronized between your virtual machines and bots. For example you could use SyncBack Free to backup files such as CardsForAdverticement.txt and the like into your shared Dropbox folder where the other bots can use it to update their own files using SyncBack. Sure Dropbox is not the most resource friendly software but it's a breeze to use so I think it's worth it.

Other than these you'll of course need to install .net Framework 4.0 and DirectX9 to properly run Magic The Gathering Online. And then there's the bot and the game to install.

I'll be back with another article next week, and in the meantime feel free to ask any questions you might have in the comment section.

Cheers!
-Tom (Sitrec)
Archbot MTGO Store: ArchBot, ArchBot2, ArchBot3, ArchBot4 & ArchBot5

mtgolibrary.com has a new server!

Yesterday we moved mtgolibrary.com to a new server, doubling the computational power. This means a faster website and a faster Online Control Panel.

If you take  a look at the "slow pages" (such as the "Trade Log" or the "Card Log") you should be able to appreciate the speedup :-)


Happy botting to everyone!

Albert
staff@mtgolibrary.com

Hardware Failures

Hello, today I am going to speak about hardware failures due to what happened to me last night.

The computer where I run my bots is right next to my bed. Its a silent water cooled setup witch is quiet enough to sleep right next to it. Last night at about 3AM I woke up with a bang! Unsure what was all about, I noticed that the PC was off. I tried to power it on and nothing happened. Checked my power switches downstairs and the sockets switch was off, pulled it up into "ON" and jumped back to off and heard another bang coming from upstairs. It was obvious to me that the PSU was shorting.

Unplugged the PSU off the power, turned the sockets on, plugged the PSU again with a different power cord and nothing happened. I was 90%+ sure it was the power supply but I wanted to be sure before ordering anything or getting a replacement.

I do have a few spare parts, such as an old HDD, 2 sticks of 4GB ram (atm i use 8+4+8+4 GB), a "old" graphics card, etc. In between these parts i had a old 400W psu. It did not have the 8 pin EPS cable that i needed, or the 2 PCI-E (only 1), but i hooked it up to the board, push the power button and the PC turned on. I was now 100% sure it was the power supply.

Saturday morning, bots already offline for 6 hours, I cannot afford to have the PC off up to Tuesday or so without my bots running. After a pointless trip to PC World to find out they don't stock PC components in store (????), I've ended up having to go to town center and buy a "slightly" overpriced power supply.

I taken the opportunity of having my PC all apart to clear all the dust, service the water cooling and tidy up the cables around my desk. Its all running smooth now.


My questions to everyone are: 

Do you keep any spare parts for diagnosis/repair in case any of your components die?

Do you have a plan in case your Disk/CPU/PSU/RAM/Board dies on you? (backups, close-by shops, etc)

You've Been Fragged! (Part 2 of 2)

Last time we discussed the problem of hard drive fragmentation and how it can slow down your computer and for bot owners like us, a slow customer experience leads to lost sales.  So what can we do about it?

First there is the current default solution: The defragmentation software included in Windows.  Most people use this solution and do not even realize it.  But if it was so good, why are there others who spent the time and effort to create such software?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defragmentation_software

So what makes each one unique?  It is the approach they use.  Some put frequently used files at the end of the hard drive so they can be read on one pass.  Others put larger files on the end and smaller files towards the center so that each file can be read on one pass.  But this approach neglects a drive’s seek time as the heads moves across the platter.

Information overload, right?  So what is the bottom line?

I think that the problem of fragmentation is overblown.  In all my years as a computer hobbyist and professional, I’ve not seen a drastic and noticeable performance increase before and after defragging a heavily fragmented drive.  When drives are spinning around at a minimum of 5400 RPM’s (90 revolutions per second) these days, who is going to notice the drive needing an extra revolution or two?

But I also believe fragmentation is a real phenomenon.  Left unchecked, a frequently edited large file can get heavily fragmented.

Microsoft turns on its defragmentation software on by default, so the problem usually does not get overblown.

I do recommend using a 3rd party solution, three or four times annually, just to make sure nothing gets too crazy.

BONUS TIP: NEVER EVER defrag an SSD drive.

You've Been Fragged! (Part 1 of 2)

Whether you are a computer tech veteran or a computer tech novice, one thing you heard was that you needed to occasionally defragment your hard drive.  You probably heard that there is a defrag program included in Windows but no one should use it.  You probably heard of Smart Defrag, MyDefrag or one that is made by the same people who do Ccleaner, or any of plethora of software offerings.

All these software offerings make a point of stating that using their program to defrag your hard drive is good for your computer that their program does something “unique” that other programs do not have or simply ignore.  When it comes to our computers, we want to use the best programs possible; especially if it is free.  Yet with all the information available, it is easy to simply get over-whelmed with information and it is difficult to ascertain what is truth, what is fiction, what is marketing and what is propaganda.

So let’s begin by describing what causes fragmentation.

Let’s begin with a brand new hard drive.  It’s been formatted and it is a data drive.  You copy three pictures onto it, 1 Meg, 2 Megs and 3 Megs in size.  You then decide that you wish to edit the 2 Meg file, increasing its size to 2.1.  Since the program will write the first then delete, it will place the 2.1 file after the 3 Meg file and then delete the 2 Meg file.  So out drive looks like

1 Meg - 2 Meg blank - 3 Meg - 2.1 Meg.

Now, you choose to edit your 3 Meg picture, increasing the size to 3.1.  Again, the picture will be written before deleting the original.  So your drive now looks like this:

1 Meg, 2 megs of the 3.1, 3 Megs of blank space, 2.1 Megs, 1.1 Megs of the 3.1 Meg file.

As this simple example shows, it does not take much to fragment a drive.  As files get fragmented, it takes more time for the computer to read the hard drive.  So defragging a hard drive is recommended.  The only question is how often and what program do you use; and how does this affect us bot owners?  I’ll answer those questions next time.

Bonus tip: NEVER EVER defrag an SSD drive.