Well, that's about the only suggestion I can give you.
And by checked off, ...I meant turned on.
The steps of getting Hardware mode with my Nvidia 6600GT are:
Use the newest driver of 71.89.
Download the TNT Patch.
Copy the two files of the TNT patch into the main FF7 directory.
Open FF7config.exe
Select Hardware mode and check the Nvidia box and TNT box.
As for anti-alasing...I have it set to determined by application... I'm sure it's off.
That should be it.... I may have gotten some of the terms wrong, I don't have the FF7config.exe open in front of me.
Another thing that may stop crashes, is putting Direct Sound Acceleration into Basic mode. Do that by typing Dxdiag, and going into the Sound Tab, and moving the bar till it says basic. Think the bar is also in multimedia, in Control Panel...or somewhere in Control Panel...I never do it that way, think you need to reboot, if you do it that way....or you had to in Win98, anyway.