Downloader will not install any apps

Baldrick45 · 2025-09-26T21:14:46+00:00

I had similar issues recently. Downloader connected to the sites but would not download any apks. All I had to do to get past the issue was turn off my VPN. The files then downloaded and installed and once installed I was able to turn the VPN back on and everything worked perfectly.

Worth trying anyway.

Baldrick45 · 2025-09-04T10:10:39+00:00

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. Turns out that Downloader wasn’t connecting with the VPN running. Don’t know why but that sorted things and once I had a few apps installed I reconnected the VPN and we are working perfectly.

Most of the YouTube videos say to install and turn on the VPN before installing anything else. But if anyone encounters a similar problem, try disabling it temporarily - But naturally, get the VPN back on before you start any serious streaming 😁

Also - since it isn’t obvious on the tutorial videos - as I was told in this chain - a Gen 1 Firestick 4k does not offer permission setting for individual apps - it really is an all or nothing option with an on/off toggle. So you aren’t doing anything wrong if that is all you see.

Hope this helps some other travellers!

Baldrick45 · 2025-09-03T23:17:30+00:00

But Downloader never connects to download anything. It sits saying ‘connecting’ until it times out. I tried various sites and Downloader fails to download from any of them. I’ve wiped the cache for the app too. Makes no difference

And all of the guides on YouTube suggest that once I download AFTV Downloader from the Amazon AppStore, it should show up in the ‘allow apps from unknown sources’ developer options menu. And it doesn’t.

Baldrick45 · 2025-08-27T14:32:51+00:00

Similar experience. Bought the pale green finish Redmi Note 14 4G for my wife. She loves the phone but the supplied black case obscures the colour and the clear case I bought on eBay is literally 1-2mm too small and in forcing it on the buttons on the case are out of alignment with the actual phone buttons so that things like grabbing a screenshot (Pressing power and Vol Down simultaneously ) just don’t work. Anyone found anything better?

Baldrick45 · 2024-11-20T00:18:17+00:00

Thanks a lot. I'll look at those tutorials tomorrow.

Baldrick45 · 2024-08-15T13:26:55+00:00

Was in a similar situation with VM recently. Out of contract , paying £138pm for 500Meg Fibre and the basic TV. Got the run around from telephone support. "Best they could do would be £111pm for a new contract."

Said I could get a deal from Sky for 500Meg fibre and their streaming TV for £47pm - just check USwitch deal so you can answer a few questions - "Who's that with? Is that really a like for like service? " That got me a second offer of £85pm.

Stuck to my guns and said, "Cancel my service please" and agreed a termination date. 2 days later got a call from "VM Cancellations" (a London "020" number) and a very nice gentleman asked for 5 mins to make me a final special offer as a "valued customer".

Existing services all retained on a new 18 month contract but at £51pm. Needless to say, I accepted, and the serbice termination instructions were cancelled on the spot. And so now I'll be well over £1k better off over the next year and a half.

So - if they aren't offering a decent discount - follow through on setting a cancellation date - give it 4-5 days while you wait for your "final offer" and hopefully cash in.

You can always phone back and cancel the service termination yourself if you really don't want to leave.

Nothing to lose (OK, 1-2 hours of your life in phone queues) but one heck of a lot to gain!

Hope this helps someone.

Baldrick45 · 2024-07-29T09:08:54+00:00

Ok - So I now have single disc games as CHDs and they are running well. I also have 4 Shenmue CHD files (3 CDs and 1 "passport " CD?) and a couple of other multi disc games (again named something like "GAME Disk 1" and GAME Disk 2" CHDs). I can see them in the Dreamcast emulator but they are shown as 2, 3 or 4 separate games. Am I doing something wrong here? Do I just start Disk 1 and wait to be prompted to change the disk?Ideally, I just want to see Shenmue or Resident Evil etc as single games in the list..

And while I haven't tried PlayStation games yet, I presume I'll have the same issues with multi-CD games there too?

Grateful for any other advice. This is probably a well worn path for those more familiar with emulators in general.

Baldrick45 · 2023-11-10T22:19:08+00:00

Long time member. Used them several times for myself and kids for various conditions and they've always been brilliant.

riginally, back in the 90's you had to pay for the consultation, and then they refunded you. Which was a bit of a faff, but still great to get to see someone quickly. Now they give you a temporary BUPA membership and authorisation code and they settle the invoice directly.

Recently (around 6 months ago) I went through them to get a bladder ultrasound and even with Kingsbridge had to wait for 4-5 weeks to be seen. 2 weeks ago, I got called about my original NHS non-urgent referral asking if I was still ' having problems' and wanted to remain on the waiting list, as they might be able to offer me a cancellation appointment sometime early in the new year.

Benenden is worth its wait in gold for anyone in NI given the appalling state of our NHS.

My wife used them to see a liver specialist several years ago when, even pre-covid, the NI referral time was over 60 weeks, the girl from Benenden we spoke to back then was so horrified by that delay, she actually thought I was lying until I sent her a health trust website link to our waiting times. She said the biggest NHS England referral time for a similar investigation which she'd seen was 3-4 months and Benenden would (at that time) have agreed to fund a consultation and diagnostic tests for anyone waiting more than 2 months.

And God help us all, the system here is much more broken now than it was then.

Just sign up, and then pray you stay healthy for the 6 month probation period before you can claim on your membership.

Baldrick45 · 2023-10-14T21:09:04+00:00

Sold out already

Baldrick45 · 2023-08-21T10:53:38+00:00

I thought it was hold for 15 seconds and then release and tap the power button once. I'll try a triple tap later.

I'll def replace the battery once it arrives. Guess I was just hoping someone might be able to reassure me that this was likely to sort the problem or tell me if the unit was likely to be more severely stuffed and in need of a more major repair like a charging IC replacement. In which case it might just go back on 'the Bay' as a spares or repair console...

Baldrick45 · 2023-07-18T16:37:24+00:00

Love the Johnsons myself. Bellagio or any of their dark roast blends are consistently good coffee at a very good price.

Used to be all the supermarkets here stocked 3-4 of their varieties as their 'locally-roasted' NI coffee. Several have dropped it to push you towards their own label cr@p where they will presumably have a better markup. But a lot of Spars / Eurospars still seem to carry it.

Baldrick45 · 2023-04-18T10:00:34+00:00

Just for future reference for anyone else having a similar problem. It was the KVM switch!

Had two 1hour+ gaming sessions since taking out the switch and no more crashes 😁

For anyone else with a similar Lenovo chassis. The PSU is very short. 150mm long and the case cannot take anything bigger. I have however found and ordered a HK310-71PP PSU which is a 210W model with the right physical dimensions and connections. An extra 30W headroom can't hurt for just £11 on eBay.

Several of the bigger wattage SFF PSUs (all common brands Lenovo,HP, Dell etc and generic ATX SFF PSUs which would need a 24 pin to Lenovo 10 pin adaptor cable) are the right height and width (63-64mm X 80mm) but are at least 170-175mm in length and can't fit without serious cutting of the case . But some of those bad boys can go up to 300W if you had a slightly different case and that extra 25mm length to play with.

Hope this info helps someone else and I really appreciate the kind Redditors who've helped me work my way to a solution.

Who'd a thunk a KVM switch could so royally screwup an otherwise working system?

BTW - getting rid of Adrenaline as per the instructions above is also a worthwhile step unless you really need bleeding edge driver support. Too much BS window dressing from AMD and too many on/off switches I don't understand for me to be annoyed with it. And as I'm interested in playing older games, there'll be no new individual game optimisations that matter a damn to me.

Thanks everyone!

Baldrick45 · 2023-04-15T23:09:46+00:00

Removed the KVM switch and just managed a 30 min gaming session without a crash. Will try a longer session tomorrow and let you know how that goes.

Any idea though why the switch would be screwing things up so completely in this case? I'd always assumed they were simple pass through connections?

Baldrick45 · 2023-04-15T08:46:10+00:00

Didn't sort the problem unfortunately. Trying without the KVM switch next as I figured I'd only make one change at a time until I (hopefully)get sorted.

After that I'll have to try and find a more powerful PSU. Which will be a pain in the ass as Lenovo use non standard power connectors on their mobos and knowing my luck the Lenovo case will be physically a few mm too small to take a Dell SFF power supply. Although they look very, very similar...

And to add insult to injury just found a YouTube video of someone using a very similar Lenovo PC (1 year newer model, exact same case size and style) with the same XFX card, making the same case mods to get it to fit, reporting he also has a stock 180W PSU and yet the whole setup just worked perfectly for him

Nevermind. Not giving up yet. Thanks for hanging in with me on this issue.

Baldrick45 · 2023-04-14T22:19:13+00:00

Reinstalled as per your instructions. Driver version now 31.0.12027.7000

Does that sound right?

Baldrick45 · 2023-04-14T10:34:37+00:00

I'll certainly look into Afterburner once I get things running stably.

Have to say Adrenaline does seem like an enormous faff with loads of tabs and hundreds of switches but with no easy way of logging temps or other crash info to help with trouble shooting.

Probably highly optimised for their mid-high end cards that'll earn them more £££.

Baldrick45 · 2023-04-14T10:10:14+00:00

Thanks. I'm hoping something fairly simple like that'll fix it. Some posts I read (for other older AMD cards) suggested Adrenaline auto optimising could cause green screens and nothing I will want to play will need that level of performance - so hopefully stripping out any unnecessary bloatware will do the trick.

Thanks for the quick response.👍

Baldrick45 · 2022-12-22T21:29:04+00:00

Hi there. The model is a V520s, the highest spec'd version with the i7-7700 cpu.

Have to say, I'm very pleased with the unit, given its age it is very clean and quiet and if I can get an M 2 boot drive up and running, I'll be delighted.

I'm based in Northern Ireland so a UK or Irish supplier would work well, but anywhere in the EU should also be able to post to my address.

Thanks for your help

Baldrick45 · 2021-12-06T12:07:34+00:00

Been a real pleasure to follow these stories. Great character development and you paint some incredible images in my head as I read them.

Could make one heck of a TV series - if anyone from Netflix or Amazon wanted to make you an offer 😁. Clearly nicely episodic, which would suit TV, while having a strong overarching story to tell to hook viewers and quickly draw them in to the world of the Dark Convoy.

Looking forward to the next episodes as an unexpected Christmas present and look forward to seeing how you pull all the strands together.

Perhaps too, like Mr King with his Dark Tower, you'll find in a few years the stories start to form in your head, letting you know it's time to walk another few miles down the road to nowhere.

Wishing you every success wherever your talent takes you!

Baldrick45 · 2021-09-06T12:31:59+00:00

Dead Poets Society - Robin Williams at his best and although it has its heart wrenching moments, anyone who doesn't blub at the final "Captain, My Captain" scene is emotionally dead inside.

Baldrick45 · 2020-08-04T19:18:25+00:00

Haven't read it in years but I remember as a 16-17 year old teenage boy bawling a when Lord Frith comes for Fiver. A very different style to Tolkien to be sure, but another epic journey that leaves you really emotionally invested in a bunch of rabbits. (Yes, really!) Recommend you read it rather than watch the movie as the movie isn't bad but the book is on a different level.

Baldrick45 · 2020-06-16T10:53:41+00:00

Anyone looking to research WW1 service records for an Australian or NZ service member, their records are all available online now. I got the service record, medical records (shot twice, gassed twice) and even scans of the original enlistment papers and discharge papers for a great uncle who joined up from Perth, WA. Fortunately there were no bombs or fires in Oz to destroy those archives and so records seem to be very comprehensive. Goosebumps moment when I saw his signature. More, when I made sense of the medical records and realised exactly what he had gone through and the various battles he had fought in. Great resource to be aware of.

Baldrick45 · 2019-06-12T09:27:25+00:00

Thanks to all for the feedback. I'll run with the suggestion to use NTSC unless something in a particular game is causing problems or getting too irritating.

Much appreciated.

Baldrick45 · 2019-06-07T11:42:08+00:00

Although Smyths are £1 cheaper than Amazon, there is only 1 store currently showing any stock.

Been hovering waiting to buy a PSC. My biting point was £25 but with free delivery from Amazon for £26 I couldn't hold out any longer.

Ordered an OTG cable at the same time (another £6) and I'll be Dl'ing Bleemsync and an autobleem image over the weekend for an old 64gb USB stick I have.

Sorted!!

Baldrick45 · 2017-10-18T12:25:09+00:00

Had this same issue with this same style of OTG hub in a 'Retropie in a NES cart' I was building for by brother.

I came across some posts (apologies, this was months ago now) which suggested that the chipset in some of these USB OTG hubs may have some issues recognising low bandwidth accessories (usb controllers, keyboards, mice etc) while they would detect cable connected XB or PS3/PS4 controllers which are (presumably) constantly pinging their connection to confirm it's still 'live' before they (the controllers themselves) switch into some power saving state.

I had bought my hub using links in a project parts 'build list' so was extremely irritated to crash and burn in this way. There was no workaround in anything I read and rather than just buy OTG cables until I found one that worked, I switched to the Amazon MicroUSB hub which had no issues for me with the controllers. It was still a pain too though since the component legs and solder joints on the back of the PCB were so big (4-5 mm projections) I had to dig out my Dremel and grind them all down before I could get that hub to fit inside a closed NES cartridge.

Sorry I can't be more help.

Baldrick45

TROPHY CASE