I'm using FF7 retail images, ripped from physical discs (none are scratched at all). My OS is Windows 8.1 Enterprise x64, with all updates installed. All the latest drivers are installed as well. I've run an sfc /scannow, no corrupt system files were found. I also scanned both of my drives for disk errors, both are clean.
Alienware M14X R1
16GB DDR3 Corsair Vengeance RAM (dual channel)
i7 CPU
NVIDIA 555M/Intel HD 3000
Samsung 850 EVO SSD, 1TB
Seagate 2TB (in optical disc drive caddy)
I am using Whogie's 1.02 no CD crack, I hate mounting images to play. But mounting images hasnt wprked either, I still get the same "FF7 has stopped working" error.
Other files I'm using:
Aali's driver (tried 2 different versions but same error no matter what)
ff7inpur.cfg (I dont have a numpad)
FF7 movie directory changer (I copied files to a folder called "movies" in FF7's "data" folder, then used said util to change the Registry entries for the movie files
No mod are being used, this is a clean vanilla install
At first I thought that maybe the game was trying to use ny Intel HD 3000 instead of NVIDIA, but the log files produced by Aali's driver clearly and correctly lists NVIDIA as my primary card. I've also forced NVIDIA as the default card in NVIDIA control panel. I can play new 2015 games like Grand Theft Auto V in medium/low settings at max resolution and with no lag, yet FF7 is one of my very few games that wont launch. It used to work on Win7, but not on 8.1 now. I dont think this is a graphics driver issue.
I've also tried disabling Data Execution Prevention,and adding FF7.exe and ff7Config.exe as exceptions. I didnt bother trying to edit the .cfg file that came with Aali's drivetlr, leaving everything on the defaults. Before launching the game I chose "custom driver" in FF7Config.
I'm all out of ideas, thanks for any help/ideas!
EDIT:
Contents of APP.LOG:
INFO: FF7/FF8 OpenGL driver version 0.7.10b
INFO: Auto-detected version: FF7 1.02 US English
INFO: NVIDIA Corporation GeForce GT 555M/PCIe/SSE2 4.5.0 NVIDIA 353.30
INFO: OpenGL 2.0 support detected
INFO: Found swap_control extension
INFO: Max texture size: 16384x16384
INFO: Number of texture units: 4
INFO: Original resolution 640x480, window size 1366x768, output resolution 1366x768, internal resolution 1920x960
INFO: FBO extension detected, using fast scaling/postprocessing path
INFO: Shader limits: varying 124, vert uniform 4096, frag uniform 2048
INFO: FFMpeg movie player plugin loaded
INFO: FFMpeg version SVN-r25886, Copyright (c) 2000-2010 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
LOCK UNLOCK TEST
MATRIX INITIALIZE
INITIALIZE DD/D3D END
initializing sound...
creating dsound primary buffer
reading audio file
loading static sounds
sound initialized
INITIALIZING MIDI...
selecting device 0:Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth, mid=1, pid=27,
midi data type: GENERAL MIDI
using midi data file: G:\Gaming\SquareEnix\Final Fantasy VII\Data\midi\midi.lgp
midiOutGetVolume returned: ffffffff
MIDI INITIALIZED
Contents of cfg.log:
INFO: NVIDIA Corporation GeForce GT 555M/PCIe/SSE2 4.5.0 NVIDIA 353.30
INFO: Auto-detected version: FF7 1.02 US English
2nd edit: It looks like the game not launching may be audio related, as reflected in the last few lines of APP.LOG. What can be done about this?
Edit: I just installed FF8 from my ripped discs and it works fine. I'm using Aali's custom graphics driver. Since both games are able to use his driver, this makes me wonder why FF8 works but FF7 doesnt. I'm assuming that both games use essentially the same graphics technology and are quite similar in that respect. I'd really appreciate some help with getting this game to work. Thanks again!
