UnGame - The Games Eliminator - Version 2.1 for MS-DOS Copyright (c) 1994-96 DVD Software, Ltd. All rights reserved. Table of Contents: Introduction ...................................... 1.0 Installation ...................................... 2.0 Running UnGame ................................... 3.0 Search ........................................ 3.1 Search and Clean .............................. 3.2 Search and Log ................................ 3.3 Set Log File ............................... 3.4 Select Search Path ............................ 3.5 Exit .......................................... 3.6 The Information Window ............................ 4.0 Help .......................................... 4.1 During the search ............................. 4.2 When a game is found .......................... 4.3 In the end of the search ...................... 4.4 The UnGame Command Line ........................... 5.0 Using UnGame on Local Drives....................... 6.0 Technical Support ................................. 7.0 Unrecognized Games ................................ 8.0 1.0 Introduction Have you ever considered how many employee working hours are wasted playing PC games? What about network performance degradation and wasted disk space? You could achieve substantial savings if you could remove games from your network. UnGame can search, detect and optionally delete games from your network server's disk or from individual disks (local C: drives). UnGame searches through the files in the specified directories for a special "signature". These signatures are held in the UnGame database, which already includes thousands of the most popular games. The file signatures are not based on the filename, so, simply renaming a game will not prevent its detection. Release 2.1 can detect 4600 different games. The shareware version can detect close to 100 different games only. UnGame can delete games under Windows 3.x, Windows 95, Windows NT, OS/2 and DOS. UnGame supports all major PC networks (Novel, Windows NT, Banyan and Lan Server). This document describes the use of the DOS version, including the batch option. 2.0 Installation (DOS version) Note that you can run UnGame from your floppy disk, but it's faster to run it from your hard disk or network drive. 2.1 Installing from a distribution diskette Create a directory on your drive (network or hard disk) and copy all the UnGame files from the distribution diskette to this directory. For example - in order to install UnGame on drive C: in a directory called ungame, from a distribution diskette inserted in drive A, type the following from the DOS prompt: c: md c:\ungame copy a:*.* c:\ungame 2.2 Installing from a downloaded ZIP file Create a directory on your drive (network or hard disk) and copy the ZIP file to this directory. Use PKUNZIP to expand the compressed files. The original compressed file name is UNGAM21S.ZIP (shareware version) or UNGAM21R.ZIP (registered version). Note: ===== If your are using a DOS version below 3.1 you must set the UnGame environment variable to point to your ungame directory by inserting the following line in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. set ungame=c:\ungame 3.0 Running UnGame Before you run UnGame, it is strongly recommended that you take a backup of your data. Although the game "signature" recognition process is accurate, there is always a very low chance (although remote), that a non game file will be deleted. To run UnGame, type UnGame from the ungame directory (or from any other directory if a path exists) and press . Upon entering UnGame you are presented with the main menu. The menu has six options. You can select different options by: a. Using the UP and DOWN arrows on your keyboard and pressing ENTER on the highlighted option b. Typing the highlighted option letter The following options are available: 3.1 Search This option scans the selected drive for games. If a game is found, you have the option to clean the game (delete it from the disk) or continue without cleaning. 3.2 Search and Clean This option scans the selected drive for games. If a game is found, the game files are cleaned (deleted) and the scan continues. USE THIS OPTION WITH CAUTION! It will delete all known games in the selected drive/path. 3.3 Search and Log This option scans the selected drive for games. If a game is found the log file is updated and the scan continues. We recommend that you use this option before you use the Search and Clean options so you can review the log file for a list of the games to be deleted. 3.4 Set Log File This options allows you to change the log file name from the default: UNGAME.LOG. A log file is created by the UnGame program when using any one of the above options. This file contains the following information: - Name of the games found - Disk statistics - how much disk space can be saved by deleting the game files located on the disk 3.5 Select Search Path The default search path is the root directory of the current disk. Use this option to select a different search path. UnGame will search through the selected directory and its sub-directories. Note that you can also set the search path from the command line. See details below. 3.6 Exit Use this option to EXIT from UNGAME. You can also exit the program at any time (even during a search) by pressing the ESC key. 4.0 The Information Window An information window is located on the right side of the menu. It displays operating instructions or other information according to the program phase. The different phases and their associated screens are detailed below. 4.1 Help A help screen is available while selecting options from the main menu. This screen includes context sensitive information on the highlighted option. 4.2 During the search The information window displays the number of games found, the number of games deleted, the disk space that is saved and the selected search path. 4.3 When a game is found The information window displays the name of the game that was found, a short description of the game, the size of the main EXE file, the total number of the files that the game includes and the total game size. 4.4 When the search terminates The information window displays the total search statistics. The number of files searched, the number of games found, the total disk space that the games occupy, the number of files deleted and the total size of the files that were deleted. 5.0 The UnGame Command Line It is highly recommended that UnGame will be scheduled to run periodically on all server drives. The best time to run it is after a scheduled backup. Make sure that the PC it is running on has security authorization to all drives. You can use the following command line options to bypass the main menu and select an operation directly from the DOS command line. UNGAME [search path] [-Flogfile] [-Xexclude] [other switches] search path Path/Disk to begin the search. -S Search mode. -C Search and clean mode. -L Search and log mode. -B Batch mode: Does not display the GUI. Exit the program on completion. This mode should be executed with the /C or /L only. -Y Automatic "yes" answer to all safety prompts issued by UNGAME. Should be used with caution! -D Disable Ctrl-Break and Esc (to prevent termination by the user) -Q Quiet/suppress all messages to screen (in batch mode) -O Write to Log Only if games are found. -F Set the log file name. -A Check All files (By default only .exe and .com files are checked). -X The filename of a file which contains the names of games and files to be excluded from the search (so they will not be deleted.) The game file name should be specified without the path. For example: tetris.exe -H Display help. Note: All command line options can be specified in either upper case or lower case. 6.0 Using UnGame on Local Drives (C Drives). Games can be found not just on servers but also on local drives (C drives). It is possible to use UnGame to clean games from local drives as well. Following is an example of how it can be done: Insert the following command to the AUTOEXEC.BAT or to the user login script: UnGame C:\ /B /C /Y /O /D /Q /FF:\UnGame\%userid.LOG UnGame will search the local drive (C) for games, will clean them, log all its activities in the file F:\UnGame\%userid.LOG (only if games are found) and then will exit without any prompt. Alternatively, you can build a BAT file that will activate UnGame in the user login script once a week (or once a month). 7.0 Technical Support For technical support, please contact DVD Software, Inc. at: BBS.................... 714-757-1829, 1200-14.4K baud, USR V.32 Fax.................... 714-757-1832 Compuserve............. 76131,1450 America Online......... UnagmeSup Internet.............. UngameSup@AOL.COM Mail.................. DVD Software, Inc. P.O. Box 16112, Irvine, CA 92713-6112 2 Ravenna, Irvine, CA 92714 For ordering information, please read ORDER.TXT 8.0 Unrecognized Games The UnGame database contains 4600 games. New games are added continuously. If you find a game which is not recognized by UnGame, we would appreciate if you could inform DVD technical support of the following details: Name of game Release Vendor Name and size of main EXE (or COM) file. DVD will do its utmost to include the game in the next update of UNGAME. A planned feature of UnGame is the ability of users to add games to the UnGame database. Watch for it in one of the coming releases.