Skip to EDIT2, I solved my problem.
Argh. This is quite frustrating, but bear with me. I'm giving as much detailed information as I can, and seeing as how the problem started when I used the latest FF7Music installer, I figured this would be the best first place to post about my problem. Please let me know if I should repost this in the Team Avalanche, PRP, or Aali's Custom Graphics Driver threads.
I have a Samsung laptop with a Windows 7 64-bit Home Edition installed and an NVIDIA GEForce w/CUDA 310M graphics card and Intel Core i5 dual-core processors. I have my FF7 PC isos, and I used the install CD to install FF7 with the DirectX5.0 and DirectShow filters. Because of the Phoenix Rejuvenation project's readme file, I set the install path to "C:\Program Files\Square Soft, Inc.\Final Fantasy VII\" instead of to the Program Files (x86) folder, and the game worked as it was. I then installed the following patches and mods according to
www.finalfantasy7pc.com YouTube video instructions without any hitches whatsoever:
I did also change the resolution in ff7_opengl.cfg to 1366x768 with no preserve-ratio and yes to full-screen, as well as allowing the 9999 limit break, expand battle viewport and transparent dialogs to on, and mdef fix to no. It all still worked beautifully.
Here's where I started to encounter problems:
installing the latest FF7Music executable (1.51.3). It would install successfully, but when I clicked on the Final Fantasy VII shortcut it created, it would start with the first two seconds of the Eidos intro screen and then alt+tab out onto my desktop with my taskbar and a black screen until I pressed a button. When I tried to click on the FF7 tab in my taskbar, it would revert back to fullscreen, and then back to the desktop view after a second. The FF7Music dialog box was still up as well as the DOS window. I could still play the game, but without sound effects. If I closed the FF7 dialog window before pressing a button, I would then play the game without any music or sound at all.
I managed to fix this temporarily by either just waiting a while or by spending the time making sure that full permissions were admitted for every profile for the C:\FF7Music\ folder and the C:\Program Files\Square Soft, Inc\ folder, and then it suddenly worked. But then when I installed the
latest build of the FMV Restoration project, it reverted to the same problem. I figured "f*ck, maybe if I install something else it'll forget it had a problem" and went ahead with the latest
FF7 Retranslation project installer. The problem still wasn't fixed.
So I retried a few times and then let it stew while I went looking around for solutions to my problem for a few minutes. Once I had gotten tired of looking, I just figured I'd try the FF7Music shortcut again and see what happened. It suddenly worked. I didn't do sh*t, and it just worked after a brief rest period.
After about 10 minutes, I decided to try again, and it somehow decided to stop working again.
The only way I can get it to work 100% of the time is to set the fullscreen option in the ff7_opengl.cfg to no, without changing the width and height or anything, and it would work. FF7Music only seems to have a problem with full-screen, but not with windowed resolutions. Finally, I did reinstall the Team Avalanche, PRP, and FF7Music mods (in that order without uninstalling), and the problem persisted.
Here's a video of me starting the game with the aforementioned problem, followed by a DxDiag.txt file and the APP.LOG and ff7_opengl.cfg files. Where the Eidos logo just stops cold, that's where the screen went black for me and the taskbar reappeared on the screen:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=OLHAZ6SY <== FRAPS video compressed in Avidemux
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=FAH5JY04 <== APP.LOG
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=Z2VBMLBU <== DxDiag.txt
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=MTBH53OO <==ff7_opengl.cfg
EDIT: Unbelievable. So, I started a new game to see the cutscene, after changing a line in shaders/yuv.frag, and then when I closed a random tab on my taskbar, the game just suddenly slid back into place and I had sound n' everything. Now that I'm trying to do it after quitting and then loading from the first save spot, this result is not repeated and I'm left with music, but no sound effects. Good lord. Maybe I should just restart and not having any other programs open or something.
EDIT2: Speak of the devil. As soon as I closed Firefox, the system was fully focused on the game and I had sound and everything. It turns out that if you have
one or more more than two or three windows or programs running, like Firefox or Explorer or Word, FF7 w/the Music patch just spazzes out and defocuses when full-screen is set to "yes" in ff7_opengl.cfg, mitigating either sound effects or both the sound and the music. For some reason it doesn't like running when anything else is open. Once I closed everything, it would run just fine. No problems at all. Well, except for Cloud's mouth being disfigured, but that's either for another topic or perhaps just for a bit of fiddling with LGPTools.
EDIT3: Yeah, Cloud's disfigured mouth is caused by Millenia's Cloud Weapons mod. It's already been discussed in the thread. Doesn't happen if I use APZ's Cloud, but I'd rather use the regular battle model for now.