Blanking Blues with Solitaire

Today we logged on to our WebTV Classic system for the first time since the WebTV network was rebranded as 'MSNTV,' and spent a while playing our Solitaire game to once again try and witness the blanking graphics problem first-hand.

A recent e-mail from a visitor mentioned that they had noticed the blanking graphics problem after about 150 moves. We proceeded to play two games. One lasted 100 moves before we were forced to try a new hand. After about 50 moves of the second game, as reported by a number of visitors, graphics on the right side of the tableaux started blanking out.

Unfortunately, the cause of the problem appears to be a bug in the WebTV/MSNTV web browser software (most likely of the "memory leak" flavor). This means there's nothing we can do to the Solitaire game itself to fix it.

However, now was our chance to try and figure out a way around the problem! And we've come up with a solution. (We've only tested it once, though, but it helped!)

As stated, it seems most people can get through about 150 moves of the Solitaire game before the browser starts acting up. It could actually be a time-related issue, but that's less likely. When problems do start occuring, the following steps should help:

1. Press the Save button on your keyboard or remote to save the current page (the current move of Solitaire) to your Favorites.

2. Turn your WebTV/MSNTV unit off. (Simply hanging up won't do. You need to turn it off to clear it's RAM memory.)

   You must then do the following within 10 minutes, or your game may be lost!

3. Turn the unit back on and log back in.

4. Press the Favs button to get to your Favorites listings.

5. Select the Solitaire game page and press Go to go back.

The game should reappear where you had left it. You should hopefully get another 150 moves before the blanking starts again.

Note: Be sure to delete the Solitaire links from your Favorites, so that you don't fill them up!

Kathy Ross wrote in saying:

"Instead of saving your game to a folder, just mail it to yourself. Then you don't have to go back to a folder to toss the game later... just toss the mail."

Instant Messaging?

The excellent Net4TV.com website has a suggestion which might help speed up a WebTV browser's access to game websites (including our own): turn off your WebTV's "Instant Messaging" feature. They have details at their Game Center.

Sincerely,
Bill Kendrick
BillsGames.com