Poxnor

Is that better than McAfee? If so, why? Thanks

Thanks for the update link! I didn't realize it was available. What a hassle to download it though

I'm now using PM7 with WinXP, WinME, and DOS. So far, so excellent As per the problem mentioned in an earlier post, I'm not really sure what could be causing that, though I did have a bit of an experience like that at first. Originally, I had set up a few partitions with FDISK. When I installed PM, and tried to edit those partitions, everything went to heck in a handbasket, and I had to load FDISK and wipe everything (delete all partitions); after that, I booted from the PM recovery disks, made my partitions from scratch in PM, and everything has been running smoothly since. So, I guess, perhaps it helps if you start with a fresh, unpartitioned disk for PM to go at? Just my own experience. Cyas

Hey, I happen to be having this exact same problem on one of the machines I installed WinXP on. But I haven't been able to pinpoint its cause. I thought it may have been some of the Windows Updates that I had downloaded, at first, but I just downloaded them on this computer and this one is still working fine. I've read about this problem on another board, and I'm sorry to say, but I really have no clue how to fix it. It is possible to make the error messages go away, if not the problem, by turning off the error reporting service. From what I've read on other boards (though I can't confirm or deny this as fact or just hogwosh), Microsoft is aware of this problem, and are working on a way to try and make it go away. I guess this is just the growing pains of a new OS. I'd just ride it out until a patch comes If you have any other questions, feel free to ask, and I'll post what I know! --Poxnor

Thank you very much for your responses I appreciate all of your help and suggestions! One other question...I was reading that PartitionMagic has issues with the DOS Driver for the SBLive. Would not being able to load the Dos driver before entering Windows affect the SBLive under Win98? Or is the Win98 SBLive driver run completely independently of whether or not the DOS driver is loaded? It's been so long since I've used a 9x OS that I can't remember how that worked, hehe. Thanks =)

Thanks for your response AMDFreak Hmm, this is very odd. I wish we could isolate a fix somehow. Oh well, thank you for your attempts. Maybe it'll come to one of us someday Well, anyhow, I'm gonna move up to WinXP in about a week here, and I'm gonna grab PartitionMagic while I'm at it and make a small 98SE dual boot, since I can't think of any better way to make this work. Then I'll install FF7 under both OSes to the exact same directory (ie. FF7\ on my Win98 drive), and then I can run the game from both OSes (with only one copy of it installed). So I'll be able to play mostly from WinXP, and then whenever I need to race on big bird, I'll just switch on over to 98 for the race. Not the most elegant solution, but I'm sort'a stuck here, hehe.

I have yet to figure out a workaround for the chocobo races (besides dual-boot, hehe) Sorry

Heyo AMDFreak, Just one question for you: If the chocobo races crash on you (as you said they sometimes do), do you have to reboot your computer and try again, or can you just start up FFVII immediately again, and take another shot at it? I finally took some time aside to try out your method on my parents' computer (I would have used mine, but unfortunately, I'm still running 2000 -- haven't had the time to install XP on mine yet). Although all the other mini-games seem to work perfectly, the chocobo races still crashed as soon as I entered them (the music kept running, but there was no image, and the program died the moment I pressed Enter or Esc). And, another note that may be of use to some people: You may have to install the movie player from the FFVII install menu in order to view the movies (That is, if you didn't install DirectShow during the installation process). Thankies!

Well, while we've all been kicking around in this message posting, it would appear that someone (I presume AMDFreak) has been solving our problems behind our backs In the compatibility list, I noticed this posting under FFVII/XP. I assume it's the work of our good friend I haven't had a chance to try these instructions out myself, but I'll move them here to make them a little more visible. If anyone else can try these out, and post whether they have good luck or not, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks AMDFreak (I think that's who posted these instructions, as they're reminiscent of his earlier suggestions) --------------------------------------------------------------------- Works 99.9% perfect! Ocasionally the Chocobo Racing will crash the game, so make sure to svae before you try. If it does crash, restart the game and try again (trust me it DOES work ) Also, ALL subgames work flawlessly One last thing, DISABLE FSAA and Atmospheric filtering, these SEVERLY degrades picture uality in the game. Here's the instructions! 1) Install, Maximum Install, exclude DirectX5 and the Yamaha SoftSynthesiser. 2) Install the Application Compatibility toolkit from the XP CD (ACT2.exe). 3) Reboot 4) Apply the following patch to make the movies the right way up - http://www.eidosinteractive.com/support/patchinfo.html?ptid=16 5) Start the Application Compatibility Toolkit (START > PROGRAMS > Application Compatibility Toolkit > QFIXAPP 6) Click BROWSE and select your ff7.exe, click OK 7) Double click Win98 from the list of settings in the ACT. 8) Click Run! If you have any specific problems, post a message to me in the forums, im always lurking around there

Hey guys, I know I said that I'd do some tests with different video cards and some different fix attempts in WinXP to see what results I could come up with. I'm sorry I haven't gotten around to doing so; I've been bogged down with midterms and other stuff But, I haven't abandoned this fight yet. People have said that they've gotten it to work in WinXP (fully), and I'm gonna try to narrow down exactly how it was done. Has anyone tried using Microsoft's supplied drivers, as opposed to a Detonator / other DLed driver?

Thankies

Yeah, I just looked it up, and AMDFreak got it running with an Asus V8200 (GeForce 3). But I figure it's still worth a shot to see it with different video cards. I'll post my results with the Cirrus Logic card when I get around to trying it out (hopefully within a few days, but I'll have to see how work goes). In the mean time -- AMD Freak, did you do anything extra special that may be helping you out? In other words, could you please post the exact steps you used to make it run, including whether or not you used QFixApp (which you seemed to allude to) or not? Thank you very much!

Yeah, a lot of the fixes were built in, I see, hehe Hmm, yeah, both my friend (under WinXP) and myself (under Win2k) use nVidia based cards -- a GeForce 2 MX and a Riva TNT respectively. I was planning on installing XP on my parents' computer over the weekend, so I could try FF7 on that computer. But it has some cruddy Cirrus Logic video card (no name) that doesn't support all of the features required for hardware acceleration in Final Fantasy VII. Does anyone here have both WinXP, FFVII, and a non-nVidia (actual) graphics card that they could attempt this with? (ie. A Radeon for example) so we could see if the video card is the reason it's all screwed up? I'm not sure how likely this is though, because I thought I say someone else post in the compatibility listing that they got it running with a Ge3 But it's worth a shot. Maybe Eidos will release a patch..ha...ha...<groan> Thanks for your help and responses. Let's get this great game running under what looks to be a promising operating system BTW, I have one final question for anyone who may know: Is there a difference in the core functionality between XP-Home and XP-Professional? ie, would which version you use affect compatibility? Or is it basically the same OS with a different name and a few different, user-end features? Thanks!

Hmm, I went over to a friend's house who has XP, and we couldn't get it to work. Could you please post the steps that you needed to take and what you did in ACT2? (We just downloaded it, installed it, rebooted, ran QFixApp, and chose Win98 compatibility layer and ran it. Is there anything we were missing? We got the upside down videos as you predicted, but no luck with the chocobos. It still crashed Win2k-style) Thanks for any thoughts!

Hmm, this is gonna be funky. Cause under the compatibility listings for games on ntcompatible here, it shows that someone was able to play FFVII from start to finish with no problems on XP. I guess we'll see what LSD comes up with here. Are you using the final release (2600) or a beta?

Xiven had posted a save game for me earlier while we were working with Win2k. It's still available at: http://www.ffseven.com/saves/save01.ff7 Thanks, Xiven And thanks for testing, LSD

I tried it in software as well (actually, I could only use software) and that unfortunately didn't fix the problem either. Does anyone know if FF7 works ~perfectly~ under XP, or does it still have the problem with the chocobo race?

Oh <blink...> Hehe, well, there goes that theory of mine

Yes, the fact that you didn't patch FF7 (with, say, the TNT patch) on your second attempt would be the reason that it "works" now (note that the chocobo races still won't work). Using the TNT patch screws everything over. Even if you don't enable nVidia mode from FF7Config, even just using the patch shoots everything to heck The filesystem has nothing to do with it. When I was involved in creating the horrendously-complicated set of instructions posted by Xiven as above, I was running on the NTFS filesystem, with an FF7-maximum-install. So neither of those changes (going to FAT32 or doing a minimum install) were what allowed the game to work for you.

Yeah, technically it isn't fixed... But out-of-sight (hearing?), out-of-mind. So long as I can't hear any crackling (with the exception of a pop when Windows 2000 first starts), I'm happy enough

To whomever may be able to help me... My system specs are: Asus A7M266 Motherboard (AMD761 North / Via 686B South) 1400 MHz TBird Graphics Blaster Riva TNT (From Creative) (Det. 7.76) Creative SBLive! 5.1 Dolby Digital Pioneer DVD-Rom 16x Plextor 16/10/40A D-Link DFE-538TX 10/100 PCI Adapter Motorola 56k V90 modem Windows 2000 - SP2 Alright guys, I have the weirdest sound problem to date, hehe When I first start up Windows 2000, I get a sort of pop sound from the speakers (right after my opening music has played). But, this I could really care less about, hehe. The really weird thing is that I get all sorts of static and crackling when I try to play MIDI files. Now, this isn't the typical SBLive problem -- it plays MP3s, WAVs, CD-Audio all perfectly without any static. It's just MIDIs that it doesn't like <laugh>. I've tried upgrading to the 3300a drivers I saw a link to, but that didn't solve anything (plus it made a bit of a mess out of my gaming port, so I just switched back). Oh, and I have a Win98SE dual boot on this computer, and there's no problems whatsoever in Windows 98. If anyone has any suggestions, I thank you very much for your time =)

Uggh, I spoke too soon in saying that my fix worked perfectly. It appears I've been plagued with the same problem -- chocobo racing crashes straight out. I've tried combinations of fixes from the toolkit, but I found no way of making it work. So much for my previously-founded optimism

Thank you for your saved game, Xiven! I'm happy to report that the minigames worked perfectly However, I tried out the 7.xx driver series (Detonator 3, v7.76 specifically), and though it worked properly (no mucked up textures, as far as I could tell), there was still no support for 8-bit paletted textures

Thank you muchly Xiven! I'll give the mini-games a try and pass on the results to everyone Though I'm still unable to use hardware acceleration, even with DirectX 8.0a installed (it still fails the 8-bit paletted texture test). I think it might have something to do with my using an older version of the drivers -- I'm using the Creative Labs driver 6.34 with Blaster Control version 4.28.05. I tried installing nVidia's refrence drivers, but any version beyond Detonator 11.20 (which was a mucked up version anyhow -- textures were all miscoloured in games like Half-Life) that I could find would cause Windows 2000 to blue-screen crash on me during the bootup. I don't understand why. Maybe it's the card itself (Creative Graphics Blaster Riva TNT) that just wasn't designed to work with the newer drivers?

Bingo, I have it working! (I hope) A special thank you to Xiven for answering my requests and helping me along with information and ideas I'm not quite sure what exactly got it going, but I'll post, in order, everything I did: 1) I uninstalled the Whistler Compatibility Pack 2) I uninstalled the March 2001 Compatibility Update for Windows 2000 3) I uninstalled Final Fantasy 7 4) I reinstalled the March 2001 Compatibility Update for Windows 2000 (reboot) http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/downloads/tools/appcompat/ 5) I downloaded and installed the Windows 2000 Compatibility Pack 1.5 (Thank you DosFreak for the suggestion!! And thanks to Wolf87 for the link!) http://msdn.microsoft.com/downloads/defa...ompositedoc.xml 6) I enabled Compatibility Mode Technology: (Start -> Run...) regsvr32 %systemroot%\apppatch\slayerui.dll (Many thanks again! See http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q279/7/92.ASP for more details) 7) I reinstalled Final Fantasy VII (reboot) 8) I ran QFixApp from the ToolKit - Use the browse button to select ff7.exe as the program to run - Under Layers, choose Win98 - Then (to make my joystick work in-game), I had to switch to fixes and disable EmulateJoystick (ironic, eh?) - Finally, I hit "Run..." and Final Fantasy VII worked! 9) If this works for you too, you can make it so that you don't have to use QFixApp everytime you want to play FF7: - After inputting your settings as in point seven, click "Advanced" - Toggle one checkbox on for how the patch will recognize the file FF7.exe (Filesize works well enough) - Click "Create Fix Support," and choose Yes to install it. - Close QFixApp (~NOT~ by clicking cancel <laugh> Use the X in the upper right hand corner) Now, each time you run FF7.exe, the fix will be in place ***Important*** I DID NOT use the Riva TNT patch! Even though I have a TNT, I am relegated to using Software Mode. The moment I installed the TNT patch, this method went to heck and just stopped working (even when the TNT checkbox in FF7config was off!) So don't patch the game, if possible ;( (Note that this wasn't because the filesize changed -- I tried the fix from scratch without setting a filesize as in point nine, and it still didn't work with the TNT patch installed) ***Request*** Could someone please post a savegame from Final Fantasy in which they're at, say, at Icicle Inn? I want to try the snowboarding with this method. I read in some different posts that certain fixes had trouble running the 3D minigames. I would like to see if this fix works with the minigames. Thank you to anyone who is able to provide this for me to test ***Conclusion*** It's complicated, ugly, and restricting, but I hope this fix works for other people too. I'll work a bit more on trying to narrow down exactly what step it is that's decisive in making FF7 work, but for now my above nine point-list is about as specific as I can get. Best of luck to everyone in getting this wonderful game to work! And, if you have any questions, concerns, or feedback to improve this fix, please feel free to post it, for both myself and for everyone else who's looking to run FF7