Vista - No Movies

[Prince Lex]

Hi all,

I'm sure you're all sick of these topics and requests for help etc. but I'm really at a loose end as to what to do with this.

I got a new laptop for christmas (FF7 runs like an absolute dream with all mods on my desktop PC) which has Vista Home Premium. I decided I was gonna install FF7 again over the weekend there, finally having a day off work. I've spent hours and hours before installing FF7 and trying to get it to run, I usually end up with success and thats that, but for the first time I'm at a complete loose end as to what to do.

Heres my system:-

CPU                        Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.67GHz
RAM                        4GB
Graphics                  ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3400

I've tried everything I can possibly think of. I've installed FF7, then tried to run it - no movies, get the title screen. Installed 1.02, ran it, no movies, title screen. Installed duck (already have k-lite codec pack), in ffdshow truemotion 1,2 was already disabled. No luck. Game was playable with all mods (aside from the SaiNts high res patch, which I've never been able to implement). Tried upside down movies patch, no luck. Changed FF7 config display settings to every combination imaginable. No Luck.

Uninstalled everything, started again. Tried all of the above in a different order with and without mods at least 6 times. I was actually at it from 4pm on saturday until 5am on sunday morning, before giving up and going to bed. I now have the game set up and running as i'd like it to be (without the games high-res patch) but with no FMV's! I've also tried uninstalling k-lite codec pack and all other codecs and reinstalling, with no luck.

I'd really like to know exactly what the problem is. Some people have luck with vista, others don't. Can anyone help?

Also, the maximum resolution on my laptop is 1280x800, which is why the high=res patch isn't working. I really want to be able to use this, I always have. I know some people can use it on laptops with this resolution and a bit of the screen is cut off.... I'm fine with that, I just want it to work! I'm getting the "flash"  when I install it. Is there a specific workaround to allow this to work?

Please, shed some light on my extremely irritating problem.

Alex

[dziugo]

No movies -> Uninstalling ALL the drivers/codec packs prior to installing TM2.0 has worked for some time. You can install the codecs later, just make sure that the FMVs play fine in FF7.

HiRes -> You can play it in the window (FF7w or Cetra patch), just make sure that the desktop color depth is 16bit.

[Prince Lex]

I used your suggestion for the movies.... no luck. I removed all codecs from my system and installed tm2.0 only, no luck. Then installed k-lite codec pack, disabled truemotion, no luck.

Put ff7 in windowed mode, got "ff7.exe has stopped working". Thats with the high res patch. Tried in both 16 and 32 colour. I'm gonna go insane!

[dziugo]

Did you, by any chance, tried to put your movies to the HDD and forgot to add a backslash ('\') at the end of the path?

[Prince Lex]

Did you, by any chance, tried to put your movies to the HDD and forgot to add a backslash ('\') at the end of the path?

Oh, my dear self. I am an utter moron.

As it turns out, I installed FF7 from a different drive than the one I had my gamediscs in - so the registry entry was just plain wrong! I moved the movies to my HDD and fixed the path. This sorted the problem. Let this be a lesson to me in the future. It was one of those stupid things I mustv just overlooked in my sheer frustration! Thank you, dzuigo.
 
Any tips on the high-res patch? I'm not altogether clear on how to get it to run in windowed mode without cetra, I know you add "w" at the end of the shortcut path or something but I can't remember exactly where to put it and in what manner. Patching it with cetra seems to be giving me the "ff7.exe has stopped working" error. I hate vista with a burning passion.

EDIT: I tried just patching it without using cetra to window it or adding -windowed to the end of the target path. It seems to be the high-res patch alone thats causing the "ff7.exe has stopped working" error. Any clues?

[Prince Lex]

I managed to get the high-res patch working.... but I've no idea how.

Oh well... my ati card can now uber AA ff7's sweet behind! The only issue I'm having now is with the movies.... its like they're fragmented?



So I don't really care that this is happening to the movies, because I can FINALLY play FF7 in High-Res!

I apologise for the double post, it seemed a bit much to just "edit" the last one.

[dziugo]

Set the color depth to 16bit.

[Prince Lex]

Problem solved.

Sorry for being such a moron, seriously!