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