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Poxnor

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Posts posted by Poxnor

  1. Posted

    I'm now using PM7 with WinXP, WinME, and DOS.

     

    So far, so excellent smile

     

    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 smile

  2. Posted

    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 smile

     

    If you have any other questions, feel free to ask, and I'll post what I know!

     

    --Poxnor

  3. Posted

    Thank you very much for your responses smile

     

    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 =)

  4. Posted

    Hello guys and gals!

     

    I was wondering if I may be able to get a bit of advice from all the friendly folk out there.

     

    I'm going to be installing WinXP Pro onto my box in a few days (after Christmas). But I want to keep a 9x OS around for compatibility purposes (Final Fantasy VII <grin>).

     

    I'm going to be using PartitionMagic 7.0 to manage by multiple OSes.

     

    So I'd just like to pose the question to all of you: Which would be the better second OS to keep around, 98se or ME?

     

    Personally, I've had some bad experiences with Windows ME becoming quite unstable (even to the point of it crashing on its very first boot after install). But I've heard that with proper tweaking, it can become a good OS. Can anyone offer any support or refutation to this?

     

    Also, another thing I'd like to know: Does ME provide any bonus, or added features over 98se? Is anything taken away, or lost from 98se?

     

    Are there any tweaks that would improve stability or performance on either OS? How about the order I install my drivers, etc. in? Would these things make a big difference, or is that mostly wives' tales and hype that order of install matters?

     

    Now, I know that this topic can get quite heated, so I'd like to personally ask everyone to keep this to a cool and reasonable discussion, hehe. Can you guys do that for me...flames scare me wink

     

    Thank you very much, in advance, for your advice, opinions, and help!

     

    --Poxnor

     

    AMD T-Bird 1.4 GHz (266)

    Asus A7M266 Motherboard (AMD Northbridge, Via Southbridge)

    256 Megs PC2100 DDR(266) RAM

    SBLive 5.1 Dolby Digital

    Creative Labs GraphicsBlaster RivaTNT

    Plextor PlexWriter 16/10/40A

     

    Umm, that's about all the important hardware I can think of, if it matters...drop a line if the hardware of my computer is going to play an important role in the 98se vs. ME debate, and I can post more specifics smile

  5. Posted

    Thanks for your response AMDFreak smile

     

    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 cool

     

    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.

  7. Posted

    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 smile

    (That is, if you didn't install DirectShow during the installation process).

     

    Thankies!

  8. Posted

    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 laugh

     

    In the compatibility list, I noticed this posting under FFVII/XP. I assume it's the work of our good friend smile

     

    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 wink )

    Also, ALL subgames work flawlessly smile

    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 smile - 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 smile

  9. Posted

    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 frown

     

    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?

  11. Posted

    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!

  12. Posted

    Yeah, a lot of the fixes were built in, I see, hehe smile

     

    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 frown

     

    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 smile

     

    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!

  13. Posted

    Hmm, I went over to a friend's house who has XP, and we couldn't get it to work. frown

     

    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!

  14. Posted

    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?

  18. Posted

    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 smile

     

    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.

  20. Posted

    Okay, this has to be the weirdest solution I've ever heard for the SBLive! crackling -- it was a suggestion I received from a little hole-in-the-wall-computer-shop's tech support...and it worked!

     

    One thing you have to understand about the SBLive! is that it doesn't like outputting high-volume line out signals. If it tries to output something at too high of a volume, it'll start crackling and popping. So go into your master volume control on the Windows 2000 taskbar.

     

    Set the Master Volume to less than half.

    And set all the other volumes (MIDI, Wave, CDAudio, etc) to half.

     

    Then just crank your speakers to get the extra volume back.

     

    This solved all my crackling problems (that I've tested so far). I was just so excited that I wanted to share this with all of you. I hope this helps some of you as well cool

  21. Posted

    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 cool

     

    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 =)

  22. Posted

    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 frown

  23. Posted

    Thank you for your saved game, Xiven! I'm happy to report that the minigames worked perfectly cool

     

    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 frown

  24. Posted

    Thank you muchly Xiven! I'll give the mini-games a try and pass on the results to everyone smile

     

    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? confused

  25. Posted

    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 cool

     

    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 smile

     

    ***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 laugh

     

    ***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 smile

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