Final Fatasy VII and Final Fantasy VII PC on Windows Vista

[ceramiclion]

Well M$ is going to bring out a new OS this year promising lots of changes and improvements (not that we believe them). SO I was wondering if anyone with the "longhorn"Beta. Has tried playing Final Fantasy VII and VII and whether or not the game works at all. Anyone working on a patch? I would gladly donate.
thanks

[AOD]

I dont think anyone is going to try. First of all Visa is nowhere near ready so give it a few years

[Leiw]

it crashed on ff7, but that may be because of the beta video drivers

I wouldn't really try it atm, at leat wait itll Vista is final and decent vista drivers are out

[Aaron]

Actually, Vista has been making nice improvements with each build, I think it will be ready in the timeframe they are shooting for.  I've been enjoying using the latest build.

FF7 and FF8 both work for me.  (I have not tried them with WDDM display drivers, I was using established Windows XP display drivers.)  I imagine compatibility issues will be very similar to those with Windows XP.

[Myonosken]

I used the latest build for a few days on a partition- I can safely say it DOES run FF7. Just make sure you've set up the PC right and its fine.

[Borde]

Didn't expected FF7 to work on Vista. Less after trying with XP-64 and finding out it seems to be unable to find the registry branch for the game.

[Aaron]

...It also works fine in Windows XP x64 for me.

[ChaosControl]

I played FF7 on the last Vista Beta.. worked for me.

[Ohmeohmy]

Well, I can tell you that FFVII works on Vista beta 2 build 5342, but FFVIII does not.

edit: Aaron, how did you get FFVIII to work? It crashes at startup for me.

[jamesyfx]

I'm going to be testing every game I can think of on Vista Beta 2.

And if they don't work.. it's my job to make them work. Sort of.

Thats my goal for the next few weeks anyway.

[Cloudane]

Hi all!

Got it to work (under the free Beta 2 of Vista) with some help from the XP-based tweaks mentioned in this forum (the links in your FAQ are way out of date and broken, though!)

Here are the problems I encountered and the workarounds I used.

I refer to a FAQ a couple of times - that's here:  http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=2670.0


Setup won't even start, it just hangs for a bit then something related to User Account Protection crashes and tries to send a report

Go to Start->All Programs->Accessories->Command Prompt - but right-click on it and choose 'Run as administrator' then type the following:
c:
cd \
copy autoexec.bat autoexec.nt

It should say '1 File(s) copied' - if it says access denied, you followed step a) incorrectly or didn't reboot I guess.


Setup gets further, but now it crashes at the next stage!

Go directly to the setup.exe file on the CD drive, go to properties, compatibility tab.  Set compatibility mode for Windows 98/Me and tick ALL the other compatibility boxes.  I'm not sure which one works, but ticking them all worked for me.

Run setup again - the screen will flick a lot as it switches modes, but it should work.  Don't install DirectX or anything, the results could be catastrophic.



Install the Eidos 1.02 patch from the FAQ.  I didn't even try FF7 without it.[/i]



Now it's almost working, but all I get is a black screen

Apply the upside-down patch from http://www.eidos.co.uk/support/patchinfo.html?ptid=16

Voila, it should now work 

Hopefully I haven't forgotten anything.

The 3D settings didn't need any tweaking on my NVidia card, and I have the latest Vista drivers installed from www.nvidia.com.  Midi music worked out of the box.

Hope this helps someone!

[Aaron]

Have you tried leaving UAP on, and running the installer elevated?  (Right-click on the setup executable and select "Run as Administrator.")

I don't have access to my Vista machine at the moment (out of the country ), but I believe it is possible to modify the shortcut to always run elevated (you will need to agree to the silly box every time you run the game though).  However, I don't remember UAP interfereing with FF7 (aside from the install), but it has been a while since I tried it.

[Cloudane]

Yes, however that didn't allow part b) to happen.  UAP currently doesn't seem to work through the command prompt, which was the best way I could think of for copying autoexec.bat to autoexec.nt  (required to run setup, seemingly) without going through various hidden-files hurdles.

As you say, after it's installed, you probably don't need UAP.  I only needed it for creating the autoexec.nt file.

Also I find that after the first reactor explosion, sound dies.  I'm open to suggestions, but searching of course.

Edit: Works again on the next scene *shrugs*   hopefully not all the FMVs do that.

[Cloudane]

Update: tweaked the above guide.  Rather than disabling UAP in order to create the autoexec.nt file, you can run the command prompt as administrator.