Black Screen W/ Sound, Then Crashes

[mavirick]

I recently wanted to pull FFVII back out, because, and I think we all agree, it's the greatest game ever made.

However I'm having lots of problems and I'm more than a bit frustrated.

Specs:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor 4600+ (2.4GHz)
3GB DDR2 RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS Video Card
MS Windows XP Home Edition SP2

Symptoms:
The game starts, but only plays the sound of the Eigos Logo intro video. I can play the video fine off the CD, but I get nothing in game. Then (I suppose) the game crashes, because the sound of the intro cuts off a bit early, then nothing happens. I know it goes to the New Game or Load Game screen, but pressing up and down (Num8 and Num2) does nothing, nor does Ctrl+Q. Ctrl+Esc shows me my mouse on top of the black screen as well as resize mice when (I guess) I hover over the edges of the FFVII window, but I can't quit the program or anything. I've tried Alt+F4, Ctr+Alt+Del, and the Windows Start button, none of which can exit the program or show me anything other than a black screen. I have to restart my computer every time (which in itself is quite frustrating).

What I've Tried:
I've installed 1.02 patch, tried every video option (Riva and TNT, Software Renderer and Direct3D, 320 x 240 Full, 640 x 480 Quarter, and 640 x 480 Full) all of which produce the same thing--black screen, sound only.
I've edited the registry so every movie will run off my hard drive. No result.
I've run RivaTuner and turned off 8-bit palletized textures. No result.
Most recently I tried installing The saiNt's high res patch, but it says "wrong filesize or already patched! nothing patched!" even though I'm using the 1.02 executables right from the download. Obviously, no result.

What else could it be? Now it's not even so much that I can't play the game but that I can't make my computer work with it. How frustrating!

Thanks,
Mav

[Elfiran7]

I had something similar happen to me.  I had to completely uninstall any codecs I had installed.  I had recently installed K-Lite Codec and my symptoms started happening immediately after that.  Once I uninstalled, it worked, even though I had deselected ffdshow (I think that's what I deselected).  Anyway, now it runs fine for me and I have a system not as powerful as yours.

[mavirick]

I had something similar happen to me.  I had to completely uninstall any codecs I had installed.  I had recently installed K-Lite Codec and my symptoms started happening immediately after that.  Once I uninstalled, it worked, even though I had deselected ffdshow (I think that's what I deselected).  Anyway, now it runs fine for me and I have a system not as powerful as yours.

Wow, that was too easy! I also had K-Lite installed on my computer, as well as the Div-X Codec, but after removing the two the game started up perfectly. Thanks so much!

Are codecs mentioned in the stickied known problems post? I thought I'd tried everything... if they're not, they should be! Again, thanks so much!

-Mav

[Terid__K]

Removing K-Lite from your computer was completely unnecessary.
 
In the properties page of the ffdshow codec (the video/audio decoder of the K-Lite codec pack, assuming you have the standard version), go to "Direct Show control". There's a list of applications there that you can prevent ffdshow from acting on (Which is what was preventing your ff7 movies to start). All you have to do is add "ff7.exe;" to the end of the list in both the audio and video ffdshow properties pages. Also, make sure you choose the default AVI splitter (Windows one) when installing the codec pack.

And there's no need to have any other codec installed toghether with the K-Lite pack (in your case, Divx).

[Elfiran7]

Removing K-Lite from your computer was completely unnecessary.
 
In the properties page of the ffdshow codec (the video/audio decoder of the K-Lite codec pack, assuming you have the standard version), go to "Direct Show control". There's a list of applications there that you can prevent ffdshow from acting on (Which is what was preventing your ff7 movies to start). All you have to do is add "ff7.exe;" to the end of the list in both the audio and video ffdshow properties pages. Also, make sure you choose the default AVI splitter (Windows one) when installing the codec pack.

And there's no need to have any other codec installed toghether with the K-Lite pack (in your case, Divx).

Well, I actually tried putting the "ff7.exe" in the list of applications that I didn't wan't to use ffdshow and it still didn't work for me.  I didn't however select the default AVI splitter when I installed the codec so maybe that's the problem.  I'm going to try installing K-Lite again and use your suggestions and see if that works.  Right now my game crashes on disc 2 where weapon appears so maybe this will fix it.

[Elfiran7]

Removing K-Lite from your computer was completely unnecessary.
 
In the properties page of the ffdshow codec (the video/audio decoder of the K-Lite codec pack, assuming you have the standard version), go to "Direct Show control". There's a list of applications there that you can prevent ffdshow from acting on (Which is what was preventing your ff7 movies to start). All you have to do is add "ff7.exe;" to the end of the list in both the audio and video ffdshow properties pages. Also, make sure you choose the default AVI splitter (Windows one) when installing the codec pack.

And there's no need to have any other codec installed toghether with the K-Lite pack (in your case, Divx).

Well, I actually tried putting the "ff7.exe" in the list of applications that I didn't wan't to use ffdshow and it still didn't work for me.  I didn't however select the default AVI splitter when I installed the codec so maybe that's the problem.  I'm going to try installing K-Lite again and use your suggestions and see if that works.  Right now my game crashes on disc 2 where weapon appears so maybe this will fix it.

I had to copy biglight somewhere else and then rename one of my known good movies to biglight to get past this part.