Sorry about that, I was posting from my phone while heading off to work.
First gripe before you ever know what's going on...
It would be nice if either of these apps were open source, or if the process that they execute were described in detail. Otherwise I'm left to diff the directory and registry for changes to try to figure out what you're doing.
My GC is not intended as open source, but it is a self-extracting WinRar archive.
So you can unpack the EXE with WinRar or (maybe) other packers.
The most important file that I have made, is the "FF7_GameConverter_0.9b.bat".
Anyone who knows anything about bat files can very accurately comprehend everything, including the changes to the registry.
It made me wonder why it's still necessary when we're using Aali's opengl driver. I'm tempted to diff the registry and document all the records necessary for the game to run so we can make that file obsolete.
Aalis driver works
exclusively with the old (1998) version of FF7.
For this reason, the conversion of the Rerelease or Steam release is mandatory.
A converter (no matter which one) will never be "obsolete"
But I have hope that my converter is taken over by PitBrat and will be integrated in the next bootleg.
Second edit: I can run ff7.exe without running ff7config.exe at all by setting the following registry key:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\VirtualStore\MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Square Soft, Inc.\Final Fantasy VII\1.00\Sound]
"Sound_GUID"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
Congratulations!
You have one (of two) keys found, which causes the old FF7.exe to start the FF7Config.exe if there is an empty value.
With the FF7Config.exe the
correct value is then entered.
The value 00 is wrong and leads to a crash.
Another problem is that the key among the different requirements has to be at various positions.
Even to start with admin right or not makes a difference.
I have FF7-old installed under many different conditions and checked the registry.
I think I have covered all the conditions and the matching keys, but I'm only human
My GC deletes exactly this value in (hopefully) all positions, so FF7Config.exe is called automatically.
Problem is that all of its programs must be started with the same conditions, otherwise sets FF7Config.exe the keys in a different position, as they be read from the FF7.exe afterwards.