Final Fantasy VII w/Bootleg crashes at beginning of first battle!

[[email protected]]

     When I start the game from Bootleg Loader, or from FF7 music folder (both installed to desktop when running bootleg to install mods) The Eidos screen plays and the sound starts but gets choppy and completely drops toward end of scene. Credit screen runs fine. Buster sword (start/continue) screen runs fine. Haven't been able to get to a save point yet so I have to watch the intro each time. Almost immediately FPS drops to about 5 while music is really choppy. FPS back up to 11 and music begins again, but from the beginning.When it finally reaches Aerith the music is far behind and when she walks the sound of her footsteps comes 5 seconds later. Shows Midgar, each time the train is shown the music is 5 seconds behind still. When the scene reaches the train and Wedge and Jesse jump off the battle music begins and is fine. Barret's field avatar looks great. He tells me to come "Come on, Newcomer." First time I played I reconfig my button layout here. Menu opened up fine. Config worked great. I didn't try any other screens. After reconfig I get the potion from the first Soldier. At second soldier I am attacked by two Soldiers running past Barret. Battle starts. Music is still playing fine. Almost as soon as the battle menu opens I have a weird number for HP/MP (they are combined) and battle freezes. "Ding" sound in the background. It says "Oops. Something terrible has happened" <---Or something like that. it tells me to send crash.dmp with APP.LOG (does not tell me where) I found both files and saved them in a folder on my desktop. I also took a picture of the screen that it freezes on. I will try and upload all three to this message. I have never posted to a forum before, but have read many. I've been petitioning for a final fantasy remake for a long time but have never had a computer to Mod the PC version. Now that I have one, i flawlessly followed directions in bootleg tutorial, but this is my first experience with the mods. I have seen several educated people in the forum. Hopefully, someone can help.

[PitBrat]

What video card is in your system?
Intel GPU's are not compatible with some of the current mods.

[Magicbob]

1.)What Operating system are you currently using?
2.)What kind of graphics card are you running on?
3.)When you say it's all on your desktop do you mean even your main squaresoft folder?

*1)Windows 98-7 all have different effects on the game, most issues are known to happen with Vista and 7, but are all fixable (even if it is a pain to do so)

*2)It doesn't require a monster to run the game at full capacity, but as Pitbrat stated, some mods have issues with Intel GPU.

*3)If the game was not installed to "C:/Program Files" then that may be the cause of the crash. some mods will try to access data to a folder that is not there (unless adjusted to correct location).


As for the APP.log location, it should be in your main Final Fantasy VII folder.

[[email protected]]

 PitBrat- as soon as I'm home I will reply with what video card I have. I am running on a 32-bit vista OS if that heps narrow down.

MagicBob- as I told PitBrat I am running on a 32-bit Vista OS. The squaresoft folder is in the root C: folder. The game was installed directly to the root of this drive. I had already found the crash.dmp file and the APP.LOG file. I took them from their original location and put them in a folder on my desktop for easy access in case one of you guys could use this to narrow down my issues. Thank you both for your help. I will find out what graphics card I am using this evening. I am replying from my job via cell phone.

[PitBrat]

Vista has a lot of problems running the game due to DEP/UAC.
It may be that some the files were diverted to the virtual store during installation.

[[email protected]]

     My graphics card is an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200 Series.

     I have tried running FF7, FF7Music, and Bootloader all in compatibility mode for Win 95 and Win XP SP2. In Win 95 none would open. There was an error code when trying to open bootloader. In Win XP SP2 it played, but I encountered the same problem that got me to write in the forum to start with. I went into the DEP Settings and selected ff7.exe, ff7music.exe and bootloader to "not run with DEP settings. It only allowed ff7.exe and ff7music.exe. It stated Bootloader had to always run with DEP Settings. I originally had turned on UAC so that I can mark each of these programs to always "run as administrator". Aside from that i have seen the intro more times than I want to count. The anticipation builds each time and still ends with a depression only members of this forum can relate to. Do you guys have any suggestions?

[ineedhelp]

Yep, I know what you mean. I just finally got done correctly installing the game after hm...5 days of installing and uninstalling with over 50 different ways of approaching it. My suggestion and what had worked for me was:
1. Turn off UAC.
2. Turn off all anti virus/anti malware.
3. Don't bother with running as admin or checking the compatibility box.
4. Restart computer.
5. Install FF7 cd rom into C:\WhateverYouChooseToNameThis (Make sure to uncheck the two ticks that were checked and do maximum install)
6. Then run bootleg. (Read the command prompt for further instruction; and don't forget readme's. I know we hate it but you'll be surprised at the amount of info you can find there...at least for future reference when you come across the next issue.)
7. Voila! Should be working, if not, repeat the process again, and again, and again! Third time is a charm, for me, minus 100.

[[email protected]]

    OK. So I broke down after many heartbreaking tries and Updated my Windows Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Home Premium. I have been debating doing this for a while now. I am going to start from scratch and see the outcome. i will search in the forums for a good Tutorial for the Installation. If anyone would like to post a link in this forum for a tutorial they used, that was successful for them, please do. Thanks for all the efforts thus far. If I encounter problems in Windows 7 I will start a new thread.

[PitBrat]

Here's a new tutorial that just popped up:
Tifa's Bootleg Tutorial

[[email protected]]

Thank you. I started another tutorial but for some reason I am unable to download from Google Docs. That is where the tutorial has me downloading bootleg. Firewall settings are off. Im going to play with some more security options. Any suggestions? Keep in mind I just downloaded Windows 7 and ran all the updates (minus KB971033). I was without a graphics card and several other applications.

[[email protected]]

Took me 3 hours but I finally got bootleg downloaded. Google Docs wouldn't download to google chrome for some odd reason so I downloaded Mozilla Firefox in a desperate attempt after hours of experiments. It worked finally. I am writing this post so that if anyone else encounters the problem "the download anyway button does nothing" they will know to download from Mozilla Firefox when using google docs.

[[email protected]]

We have success!!!!! Here are the measures I took to make sure this installation was correct.

1. Updated Windows Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Home Premium.  (Vista had finally pushed me too far.)

2. Started from scratch. I mean a literal blank slate. There were few programs installed on my laptop when the update was finished. I lost Microsoft Office, BitLord 2, WinRar, MagicIso, Bootleg (and all the many downloads of applications for Bootleg to MOD), the original installation of FF7.exe, and everything else. I chose a clean Install with the intentions of erasing and starting new.

3. Downloaded BitLord 2

4. Downloaded Final Fantasy VII for PC (torrent) I own two copies of the game.

5. Downloaded MagicIso (Virtual drive to Play .iso files (discs) from Final Fantasy VII for PC)

6. Installed WinRar (needed to extract some files prior to BootLeg) p.s. Don't extract or unZip applications downloaded for Bootleg MOD

7. Followed Instructions of this Tutorial (Verbatim) http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=13212.msg183580;topicseen#msg183580

8. Config Bootloader slightly different than Tutorial because of  some lag.

9. I want to end on 10 so disregard this line.

10. FINALLY PLAYING FF7WITH MODS. AND LOVING IT. I FORCED MYSELF NOT TO WATCH ANY VIDEOS OF ACTUAL GAMEPLAY WITH MODS. IT WAS WELL WORTH IT. THIS IS AS CLOSE TO A REMAKE AS I'VE EVER BEEN. KUDOS TO EVERYONE WHO PUT IN ALL THE HARD WORK TO CREATE THESE PROGRAMS AND MODS. TRULY EXTRAORDINARY. PLEASE CONTINUE YOUR QUEST TO MAKE THIS GAME LIKE PLAYING ADVENT CHILDREN.

PS: Anyone feel free to ask me about the installation process. I can share what I have experienced and hopefully help others enjoy this game.

[Magicbob]

Lol yea running it on Vista is rough, I'm currently running Vista 32 bit, I've head a LOT of issues that took me a few days to figure out what was wrong. I figured out everything that went wrong, a lot of it was issues with something being here when its not supposed to be, or something being there but renamed something else for no reason. But it works.... thank god lol

Happy you were finally able to get everything up and working though! and yea, watching Fully modded videos while you're game is still a work in progress is almost torture lol

Anyway I've been thinking of upgrading to 7 myself. (I'll actually be building a computer from scratch and will be buying Windows 7 for the OS). Is it all pretty straight forward? Just download and run and all that?  Or did you hit any kind of speed bumps along the way?

[[email protected]]

I did a clean install. Erased all my applications and programs. But I intended it to. If you have programs or files you want backed up be sure to do that before starting the installation.

[AnghellicKarma]

Hi, all,

I'm in the same boat as the original poster. I spent about 6 or 7 hours today downloading every single mod, just in case I wanted to toggle between a few! I followed the Tifa's Bootleg tutorial thread completely. I can even supply which boxes I toggled and all that (EDIT: See below). The start movie is just fine for me, everything else really is but, when the first battle starts, the HP is fine but the game freezes. Not sure why, or what to toggle off or to a different mod. Any advice? I'm itching to play this badly!
 

EDIT: There's definitely something funky going on. I rebooted just in case that was a potential issue, as well as so FFVII would basically be the only program running. I even closed down anything in the systray, including AVG antivirus and then tried again. This time, I accessed the in-game menu, hoping for at least a Save due to a Save Anywhere I thought I'd turned on, but it was greyed out. That's when I noticed the crazy text (see screenshots below). Then, as soon as I mosey'd into that first battle, the same thing happened for the third time: freezed.

I also armed up FRAPS for some screenshots:
http://www.wspentertainment.com/pics/ffvii/
 
Text is all kinds of condensed for some reason. For the sake of (hopeful) expediency in resolving this, I've included my settings as follows:
-  I am running Windows 7 Home Premium with an ATI Radeon 5700 graphics card on a 1080p monitor. The game is installed to C:\Program Files (x86)\Square Soft, Inc\Final Fantasy VII and Bootlader is set up at C:\Users\Jason\Games\Bootleg

- Bootloader Settings
  - Main tab
  - System tab
  - Plugins tab

- Bootleg Settings
  - Player
  - Models
  - Textures
  - Avatars
  - Game
  - Overhaul
  - Installation

[PitBrat]

Windows Vista does not like to install Bootleg in a system folder-- Program Files (x86).
Instead install the game to a folder like C:\Games\Final Fantasy VII

[AnghellicKarma]

Well, I was using Windows 7, not Vista. But I reinstalled the whole thing and it seems to be working now. Only things I changed in the Bootleg Settings before clicking Run Bootleg was that I chose "Cloud with Sword" instead of "Cloud without Sword" for Cloud Field Model in the Player tab and, in the Models tab, I went with "Bootlegged (Best of Show)" instead of "Squallff8's Rebuilded (Full)" for Base Field Models. Not sure if either of those was the culprit, but it was working last night and amazing me at every turn. Let's hope this is resolved!