Final Fantasy VII (PC 1998) No Movies - No Audio - Black Screen - Windows 10

[ToddyG]

Came upon on this forum yesterday as I had a strong urge to play FF7 on my PC (found 1998 discs still in FF7 sleeve).
However, I ran into issues on Windows 10. The install went through fine but the game was not playable.

Needless to say, I'm in debt to this forum for getting this game back up and working on Windows 10.
Thank you to all authors who devote their time, love, and energy into bettering this game and assisting users that come here for guidance.  Your work is appreciated.
Also, thank you to all users who left their stories on the site - specifically those who expressed their gratitude and relayed their issues respectfully.

NOTE(S): This post is specific to installing FF7 from the 1998 discs on Windows 10.
- Installer ran from Disc 1 of 4 - No Issues during install
   - Left defaults checked
   - Selected Maximum Install
   - Selected following location for Install: C:\Games\FF7

Initial Issue: When I launched the game, an error message popped up saying "Please insert FF7 game disc 1, 2 or 3 and try again"
- Disc 1 was already inserted when error appeared. Ejecting and re-inserting Disc 1 made no difference.
- Inserting Disc 2 lead to black screen, then closed out and returned to desktop. 
- Inserting Disc 3 landed me on the 'New Game/Continue' screen but did not play any audio or intro movie.
  - Selecting New Game from Disc 3 lead to black screen, then returned to desktop

My steps to make game playable utilizing multiple areas from this forum:
1) Insert Disc 1 and run setup.exe (Setup did not auto-load)
   - Ran installer as admin

2) Corrected issue of movies not running - Thanks to this site for helping me locate the registry path and specifying what I needed to change.
Copy all movie files off each disc (D:\ff7\movies) into the following directory - C:\Games\FF7\Movies (Created 'Movies' directory in 'FF7')
   - My CD/DVD drive was D:
   - I found all movies on discs 2, 3, and 4.  Disc 1 contained no movies.

Opened the following registry entry by launching Start -> Run -> REGEDIT
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Square Soft, Inc.\Final Fantasy VII.  The only edit I made was to the MoviePath. Required ending backslash "\".
   - AppPath - C:\Games\FF7\
   - DataDrive - D:\
   - DataPath - C:\Games\FF7\Data\
   - MoviePath - C:\Games\FF7\Movies\

3) Patch Game following Install
   - Included Patches on disc 1 didn't allow game to work (D:\Updates\ff7cyrix1)
   - Downloaded patch ff7_v1.02_official_patch (http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=12503.msg173807#msg173807)
   - Extract all files and place ff7.exe and FF7Config.exe inside your FF7 install directory - C:\Games\FF7

4) Installed Aali's Custom Graphics driver
   - Downloaded ff7_opengl-0.8.1b (http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=14922.0)
   - Extract all files and paste them inside your FF7 install directory - C:\Games\FF7
   - Edit ff7_opengl.cfg with Notepad++ or some other text editor to match your screen resolution, confirm all settings below
      # set the window size (or full-screen resolution) of FF7
      # 0 means use original resolution in window mode, your current desktop resolution will be used in full-screen mode
      # preserve_aspect adds black borders as needed to preserve a 4:3 aspect ratio
      window_size_x = 1920
      window_size_y = 1080
      preserve_aspect = yes
      fullscreen = yes

5) Update MIDI Music (optional)
   - Downloaded ff7music_install_15113 (http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=12503.msg173805#msg173805)
   - Run the installer (Adds 'FF7Music into your FF7 install directory - C:\Games\FF7\FF7Music)
   - Download audio files FF7 OST Remastered Ogg Fix v4.zip (http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=12503.msg173805#msg173805) and extract it into the OSTRe directory - C:\Games\FF7\FF7Music\OSTRe
   - Run FF7Music - Select Configure - Select Files tab - Change profile to OTSRemastered - Select 'Save and Exit'

6) Run the Game
   - Place DISC 2 into the CD/DVD drive (May vary here - My 4-DISC set installed off DISC 1 but DISC 2 needed to be inserted to lauch game)
   - Launch FF7Music (FF7Music must be launched in order to use remastered music files)
   - Run FF7 from within FF7Music
      - If you did not install FF7Music just launch the game from FF7.exe from within your install directory

My System Information:
OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Home
System Model:  Inspiron One 2330
Processor: Intel Core i3-2130 CPU @ 3.40GHz, 3400 Mhz, 2 Core/4 Logical Processors
Graphics: Intel(R) HD Graphics
Sound: Realtek High Definition Audio

[unab0mb]

FF7Music is deprecated. The drivers include ogg support, or just disable them in the config to use midi. Also no need to do all these steps manually for that matter. Even if you don't want to mod your game, I'd suggest downloading 7th Heaven 2.0 and click Play Without Mods. That'll do all the manual stuff for you automatically in a few seconds. After that, continue to use 7H as a launcher, or a modding tool, or not at all, but after that you can run ff7 and you don't need to do anymore manual stuff.

[ToddyG]

Had a chance to return and download 7th heaven.  I'm blown away by the world and battle textures. 
And of course the EDMusic FF7 Soundtrack.  Makes this game a whole different experience.

I'll have to do some searching around here, I am running into an issue with the game freezing sporadically when entering of leaving a battle.
Didn't have any issues until I hit the Shinra building, but until I get past it I've turned off mods.

Thanks for setting me straight there, I was living in 2010 there with the manual stuff.

[unab0mb]

I am running into an issue with the game freezing sporadically when entering of leaving a battle.

Freezing or crashing? The crashing is occurring when too much RAM is being used, I've found. The game is an old 32-bit game with limited memory available to it. If you see your RAM usage increasing to the 900's or 1 GB, crashing is imminent. Basically, when the driver needs more memory to store textures or 3D models, etc., it sends a request to allocate that memory to the Operating System and the OS responds saying "no, you can't have any more than what I've already given you", then it crashes. I see spikes in RAM usage after battles until it normalizes and is probably why crashing frequently happens after them. You can monitor your memory/cache usage by turning on the Stats Overlay and/or Stats Titlebar options under Settings>Game Driver.

Try switching on and off different mods to see how it affects your memory usage. Sometimes the issue occurs with going over your texture cache limit. By default, that is set to 2GB and shouldn't be set any higher, but if you see the cache approaching that, again, start expecting crashing. Unfortunately the game (Aali) driver is not great at managing RAM or texture cache (cache is completely broken) either. Both issues are being looked at to see if they can be improved, but ultimately, newer mods are pushing the limits of what this old game can handle.

[ToddyG]

Freezing or crashing? The crashing is occurring when too much RAM is being used, I've found.

Game Freeze.  My definition of a crash would be an instant termination of the game when performing some action. 

However, in this case, the "freeze" most often occurs when entering a battle.  The sound to initiate the battle fires, the screen then begins to transition into the battle as expected but remains at a black screen.  If there is music already playing, it will continue to play.  The only thing I'm able to do is type "Q" for quit.  When selecting "Q" the blue prompt will appear asking if you want to quit to Windows.  Selecting Yes will close the game, without saving your progress of course.  Selecting No returns you to the black screen. 

No other battle sounds or menu selection sounds can be heard while on the black screen (Quite certain I tried every key on the keyboard).  I've had it occur once when transitioning out of a battle encounter as well.  So far, all freezes have occurred in the Shinra building.  Windows remains responsive.  I can Alt + Esc out and select the FFVII application, still running in the task bar, but only to return back to the black frozen screen (and music).  Let sit for 10+ minutes but no change.

Took your advice and was running both Stats Overlay and Stats Titlebar while the freeze occurred (Image captured and shared through Imgur in link below).  I did not see a spike in RAM during this time.  RAM always seems to be remain consistent once it gets up to about 1.2 MB. 


If I find something definitive in turning off specific mods I'll post back.  Thanks   

[unab0mb]

I've not heard of anyone having an issue like that before. Did you uninstall and delete your entire FF7 folder after you tried setting up everything manually before? Something you installed may have screwed something up. I'd recommend starting fresh with a clean install/directory and just run 7H 2.0 to have it do all the work for you. Then at that point, try clicking play without mods and see if you have the issue on the vanilla game. I'd also be curious about the music possibly causing issues. Try going to Settings>Game Driver>Advanced and change your music option to the Original MIDI.

[Linux Potato]

Best of luck OP. 7H 2.0 will have the latest support and automates a lot of the nitty gritty mod process. If reinstalling from scratch I hear cc cleaner is still good to run on registry after uninstall if on Windows (back that registry up)