HELP! I installed the AnimeVamp patch without knowing! What now?

[nat089]

Hello, I'm kind of new here but I hope someone could help me.

My laptop computer's running Windows XP Home Edition on Service Pack 2.
Anyway, I wanted to play FFVII on it and a friend of mine directed me to the AnimeVamp patch to fix the compatibility issues and stuff.

Anyway, being new to this sort of thing I didn't know any better and I installed the game and then the patch. After I finished installing the patch, I got presented by a computer notification that some files had been replaced and that I had to reinsert my Windows XP Home Edition CD to restore them.

Problem is, my laptop came pre-installed with Windows XP Home Edition when I bought it about 6 years ago and I wasn't given any Windows XP Home Edition CD, only a "recovery CD" and a "system CD". I tried inserting both of these and got prompted that I'd inserted the wrong CD. In the end I clicked the button that said Cancel and didn't do anything about the replaced files.

Directly after this, I uninstalled first the patch and then the game itself. Then I did a system restore to the time just before I installed the game itself. I'm not sure if this undoes any of the changes that the AnimeVamp patch did to my computer though.

So I have a few questions:

1. Has installing the patch damaged my system seriously? I'm kind of panicking at the moment because I really have no way of backing up my files in the event of a computer crash (I don't have an external hard disk drive or CD burner or anything)

2. How I can restore the files without an XP Home Edition CD? Does the XP Professional CD work? (I think I have a copy of that lying around somewhere)

3. What if I can't restore the files? Will it be compromising my system very much? Do the replaced files matter very much to the functioning of the system?

Hope someone can help and advise me on this soon, thanks!

[*:.Griever.:*]

1. The AnimeVamp patch contains a virus, use an Anti-Virus prog and scan your whole system before doing anything drastic.

2. If you have the XP Pro cd lying around and your that worried, why not just install Pro over the Home edition?

3. For the modified files, you could always try a further back restore point.  And also, if your laptop came pre-installed with XP (as mine did with Vista), you should be able to press F12 or something on the boot screen, and go do a destructive restoration from there (Put the laptop back to factory settings, restoring any lost files).

[stormmedia]

Well, I didn't know about the virus.  Anyways, I played with this patch nearly one year without knowing it was kinda "bad".  Basically the changes it did to your system is replacing the default DLS file.  So your midi will sound a bit different.  Beside that, I've never experience any problems in my time with this patch (and to be honest I haven't noticed at the time, I know this only because it have been said somewhere in these forums).  So I don't think there is much to worry about(especially if you have gone as far as to do a system restore).  You might want to check for virus just to be sure, but beside that I'm pretty sure you are just fine.

[dziugo]

Virus, huh? Do you happen to know it's name? And the recovery partitions were not that much popular 6 years ago, he probably doesn't even have one (it doesn't matter though, the system restore should work just fine).

[nat089]

Hmm okay I ran a virus scan on the entire computer and it came up clean... So is there a virus in the patch or not?

And actually, does the file replaced affect system functioning at all or just the midi playback thing?

If it's just the midi playback thing then I guess that's OK since I don't normally playback midis. And all my ripped music are mp3s.


As for installing XP Professional over Home Edition, well if I do that it's practically the same as doing a reformat of the entire computer and frankly, I think it's more trouble than it's worth (especially since I should be getting a new laptop in about a month's time).

I just don't want my system to crash now before I can transfer all my documents to the new laptop.

[stormmedia]

Personally I don't think you should worry about that as I said I ran my ff7 with that patch for like a year or so before I read here that there were problems with this patch.  I never really noticed anything unusual.

[nat089]

Ok then. Thanks so much for your help and advice.