FF7 issues on win98se AND 2kSP4 - I just can't win!

[Nemesis Destiny]

I buildt an older system a while back to play 'legacy' games like FF7PC, Revenant, X-COM Apocalypse, and older DOS stuff, but I ran into a huge problem: despite all my legacy software and hardware, the game crashes a lot and randomly corrupts certain background graphics.  The corruptions go away or are lessened if I reinstall the game, but I don't want to do that every time I play it, and that still doesn't fix the crashing (FF7.EXE has performed an illegal operation and will shut down).

Then I found all the neat stuff on these pages and got it running on my Windows 2000 system under SP4.  Works great in Win95 Compatibility mode, but that disables my USB joypads.  Without the Compatibility mode running, the joypad works, but the game runs extremely unstable (unplayable).

Does anyone have a clue as to why this is happening?  It used to run fine on my old system running Win98.

Here are my specs:

Legacy Box:
AMD K6-2 533 (underclocked to 500)
DFI K6BV3+/66 Revision B+ (VIA MVP3 chipset)
160MB PC-100 SDRAM (1x128MB, 1x32MB)
ASUS AGP-V3400 Deluxe (Riva TNT) 16MB SGRAM
Soundblaster AWE64 ISA (latest drivers)
USB to dual PSX controller adapter
D-Link 10/100 530TX Network card
4.3GB Quantum Fireball ATA-33
Windows 98SE
Direct X 9.0a
ASUS nVidia driver 21.81a
VIA Hyperion 4-in-1 4.45

Main System:
AMD Athlon, Thunderbird C 1000MHz
MSI K7 Master (MS-6341) AMD 761 Northbridge, VIA Southbridge
512 MB PC2100 DDR (2x 256MB Hyundai)
ASUS AGP-V7700 Deluxe (GeForce2 GTS) 32MB DDR SGRAM
SB Live Value (latest drivers)
USB to Dual PSX controller adapter
Intel EtherExpress Pro 100 Network card
30 GB Western Digital Caviar ATA-100, 7200rpm
Windows 2000 Pro, SP4
Direct X 9.0a
ASUS nVidia driver 44.03

Old System (worked perfectly):
500MHz Intel Pentium III, Slot 1
EPoX EP61 BXA-M (I think...)
192MB PC-100 SDRAM (1x128, 1x64)
ASUS AGP-V3400 Deluxe (Riva TNT) 16MB SGRAM
SB Live Value (original drivers, circa 1998)
Intel EtherExpress Pro 100 Network card
8.4GB Quantum Fireball ATA-66, 7200rpm
Win98SE
Direct X 8.0
ASUS nVidia driver (I can't recall what version, whatever was going in 1998-2001)

I gave this computer to my sister, and it now uses a Voodoo3500 (or something) and still runs the game perfectly.

So, to reiterate, my big beefs are the graphics corruption and crashing on the system I built to play the game in the first place, and the fact that my controllers won't work under my newer system and if they do the game poops out constantly.  If anyone knows how to solve either problem, they will have my eternal gratitude!  You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours!

 

[Srethron Askvelhtnod]

I probably can't help that much, seeing as I'm not near as "tech-articulate" as someone like Threesixty or Jari, but I'm going to go ahead and take a gander at this because my 2 FF7 setups are very similar to your own. (P3 w/ Win2k, SP2 and P3 w/ Win98SE)

the game crashes a lot and randomly corrupts certain background graphics

I need a little more info. Is this on a full or partial FF7 install? Are you running the game in accelerated mode; and if so is your ff7.exe Riva TNT patched; and have you tried just software mode?

Works great in Win95 Compatibility mode,

On my win2k machine, both Win95 and Win98 Compatability modes run the game just fine...is this not the case with yours? If you haven't, at least give Win98 Compatibility a shot. It seems far too easy, but, hey, maybe it'll solve your controller problem. I once tested my Win98 machine with my Wingman Rumblepad, connected to a 1->4 port USB addon. That worked fine, but I've never tried to see if that worked in win2k with software compatibility.

Best of luck to you,
-Srethron

 

[halohalo]

I guess VIA MVP3 chipset is one reason that crashes ff7pc. If possible, don't install VIA 4-in-1. If you really want to install 4-in-1, just install VIA AGP vxd driver.

According to VIA's advice, VIA 4-in-1 version 4.35 is the last driver for win9x.
http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=300

However, you can install new detonator for TNT.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I need a little more info. Is this on a full or partial FF7 install? Are you running the game in accelerated mode; and if so is your ff7.exe Riva TNT patched; and have you tried just software mode?

Both systems have a Full install performed on them and are attempting to run in D3D hardware rendering mode, however the problems still occur under software rendering mode.

On the legacy box, the TNT patch is applied correctly and should be working.  On the Win2k box, the TNT patch Config file only is patched as per the instructions on Eidos's website.  Chocobo patch is also applied.

As I said, the game runs great in compatibility modes (tested both Win95 and Win98 modes), but it has no joypad support when doing so.  Does anyone know a fix or workaround?

I guess VIA MVP3 chipset is one reason that crashes ff7pc. If possible, don't install VIA 4-in-1. If you really want to install 4-in-1, just install VIA AGP vxd driver.

I will try uninstalling it and see if it works any better, but can you tell me why the 4-in-1 drivers would cause problems?  Not that I don't believe you or anything, but I was under the impression that the Hyperion drivers were supposed to fix problems, not cause them.  Without the chipset drivers, disk access lags, AGP support has issues, USB compatibility is crappy, etc.

I know that 4.35 is the last VIA driver specifically optimised for Win9x (I am fairly familiar with Via's website; I've read that part before), but it also says that all Hyperion 4-in-1 drivers are universally compatible with all VIA chipsets on all Windows operating systems.  Still , I will try reverting to version 3.35 and see what happens.

Thanks for your help guys, I'll keep trying... but please, don't stop now.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Some good news and some bad.

First the good.  On the legacy box, I believe I have found the source of some of the corrupt data.

Now for the bad: Scandisk revealed to me that one of the Final Fantasy datafiles (flevel.lgp) was cross-linked with not one, but TWO other files on my hard drive.  I am attempting to fix it using the DOS version of scandisk (the Windows one sux) but it is taking forever, so it'll be a while before I can let you know the progress.

Please keep the suggestions coming.

 

[halohalo]

I will try uninstalling it and see if it works any better, but can you tell me why the 4-in-1 drivers would cause problems?  Not that I don't believe you or anything, but I was under the impression that the Hyperion drivers were supposed to fix problems, not cause them.  Without the chipset drivers, disk access lags, AGP support has issues, USB compatibility is crappy, etc.

I know that 4.35 is the last VIA driver specifically optimised for Win9x (I am fairly familiar with Via's website; I've read that part before), but it also says that all Hyperion 4-in-1 drivers are universally compatible with all VIA chipsets on all Windows operating systems.  Still , I will try reverting to version 3.35 and see what happens.

 
Because WIN98se has default drivers for old VIA MVP3, you should give it a try first

 

[Threesixty]

It's your DX9. On your legacy. For those old game DX5.1 is what you should stay at. I wouldn't go any higher than 7.1 and even that is 'IFy'. As for the Det. Drivers, I'd go with the 6.50.

It's Win2000 on your other....Winxp is a more tolerable OS...
Win98SE is the most forgiving of the bunch.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

It's your DX9. On your legacy. For those old game DX5.1 is what you should stay at. I wouldn't go any higher than 7.1 and even that is 'IFy'. As for the Det. Drivers, I'd go with the 6.50.

I would be inclined to agree, except it was screwing up (it used to crash immediately after leaving the first screen) even when I first started this little experiment, with DX6.  Then, I upgraded to DX7.0a, and it allowed a little progress (wouldn't crash until I got to Aeris' house), but the graphics were glitchy in some areas.  The whole time I was using ASUS driver 6.31c.  I got more and more functionality back the more I played with driver versions and newer DirectX versions.

 

[Srethron Askvelhtnod]

Both systems have a Full install performed on them and are attempting to run in D3D hardware rendering mode, however the problems still occur under software rendering mode.

Just to clarify, you've tried *every* software mode? And are backgrounds the only ones that get corrupted, or do other textures as well? I guess I'm interested in quarterscreen in particular, because that uses a partially different texture set.

(flevel.lgp) was cross-linked with not one, but TWO other files on my hard drive.

I'm not smart enough to know how that could happen (bad partition? spyware?), but that gives me an idea...

I would be inclined to agree, except it was screwing up (it used to crash immediately after leaving the first screen) even when I first started this little experiment, with DX6.  Then, I upgraded to DX7.0a, and it allowed a little progress (wouldn't crash until I got to Aeris' house), but the graphics were glitchy in some areas.  The whole time I was using ASUS driver 6.31c.  I got more and more functionality back the more I played with driver versions and newer DirectX versions.

The little cash-register in my head that talks to me randomly is making little "chu-ching" noises...which means this probably won't work. But it's still worth suggesting. A long time ago my Win98 machine started having problems with FF7 (sound issues and the Cosmo Canyon bug where you can't get past Bugenhagen's planetarium) when I upgrade to DirectX 6. An upgrade to DirectX 7 made things worse. Eventually I ended up downgrading to 5 again which was a pain, but the problems went away. Ironically, now that same machine has DirectX 8.1 and still works fine, though. =/
Just in case, you might find this worth a try on your legacy machine: uninstall, downgrade to DX5, do a partial install, and try it in software without applying the TNT patch.

This way, (DX5, software mode, and unpatched ff7.exe) you are getting as close to FF7PC's native environment as you can.
The partial install is just as important because that will leave flevel.lgp off your hard drive entirely (it'll access the copy on your game discs.) Yeah, it makes scene loadtimes a lot worse (even on fast machines), but it might just do the trick ending your cross-linking problem.
-Srethron

 

[Rubicant]

I'm assuming he/she has a non-pirated copy. If not, that could pose a problem..

 

[Threesixty]

FF7 could be a bad game to try experments on. Even when it was first released...people had trouble playing it. And it's been a real long time....but the AMD's back then were a hit or miss deal for running FF7.

Let's see....back in the day...Detonator 6.50 was the last driver that had the 8bit pallet disabled in it. So with that driver, you would load the full TNT patch and be done with it. This would include checking the Riva TNT option. (This has to be done with Nvidia's 6.50 drivers, variants... are... well... unpredictable.)
 
Then after the 6.50, they enabled the 8bit pallet in the drivers. But, the 8 bit pallet wasn't compatible with FF7. You had to disable the 8bit pallet with Rivatuner (still can be done, too), and then load the Full TNT patch just like with the 6.5's.

When the Detonator XP drivers came out, Nvidia finally got there crap together. The 8 bit pallet was enabled and worked with FF7....but the problem was that the FF7config.exe file wouldn't let you select 3dmode. So this is when we/I started saying to just use the FF7config.exe from the patch...and use the FF7.exe from the game. And inside the FF7config, "not" to check any of the Riva boxes. And that is how we Configure FF7 for Direct3d, today.

And then Win2000 came around....and the workarounds were a hit or miss deal. With no real answers on why FF7 worked there but not here.

And then WinXP came around....it was more forgiving...but still seems to have the hit or miss thing for a minority of people. And then Qhimm's (or did someone else figure it out...and Qhimm refined it. I don't remember anymore.) patch for the Chocobo Races surfaced.

So that's, pretty much, the History lesson of FF7 and Direct3d Hardware mode.


I really believe you would have better luck with FF7, if you dual booted your newer machine with Win98. Mainly because of that hit/miss problem with the old AMD chips and FF7.

I used to be able to get Xcom3 to work on my machine (1.2 athlon, Win98SE, G2).....I still have the game somewhere. But I had to configure the Config.sys, and the Autoexec.bat a certain way, to get it to work (don't remember anymore what it was) I did't do it very long, though and it's been a real long time. I don't really, like that game...it was a let down, when I bought it. I liked the first one...and the second was the same as the first.... But I just couldn't get into protecting a single city....and have my whole squad die because the building colapses on them.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

First off, thank you all for your help.  And thanks to threesixty for the wonderful history lesson.  I always appreciate that sort of thing (It's the kind of thing I'd do in a post).

I think I have things under control, finally!  No more corruption.  No more crashing (so far, so good).  There was one background which would cause a crash 100% of the time and I tried going there (the bar in Kalm) and NO CRASHES!!!! WOO-HOO!!!

Now for the issues...

Just to clarify, you've tried *every* software mode? And are backgrounds the only ones that get corrupted, or do other textures as well? I guess I'm interested in quarterscreen in particular, because that uses a partially different texture set.

Yep, every software mode still caused problems.  Only certain backgrounds were affected and only non-battle ones.  Tifa's Bar, Sector 5 Slum near the Church, Outside Aeris' House, Wall Market North near Gun Store, Roof of Shinra Building, Midgar Mayor's Office (Shinra 63rd Floor?), J-E-N-O-V-A Lab (Shinra 65th floor?), Detention Area near the Lab, and a few others that I forget.  All battle and character textures were unaffected.    Most of the time, quarter screen mode would fail to work entirely, causing a crash during startup.  In fact, this happened often in any mode, during the EIDOS video, which is partly why I figured that it had nothing to do with DirectX, or my drivers, or my TNT card.  It turns out that iccvid.dll is a file that has to do with audio/video playback codecs, so now it all makes a little more sense.

do a partial install,

and

I'm assuming he/she has a non-pirated copy. If not, that could pose a problem..

and

partial install is just as important because that will leave flevel.lgp off your hard drive entirely (it'll access the copy on your game discs.) Yeah, it makes scene loadtimes a lot worse (even on fast machines), but it might just do the trick ending your cross-linking problem.

I have a 100% legit, purchased-right-about-when-it-came-out copy.  I remember having a B*tch of a time getting it to work back then (on Intel hardware even).  I had considered a partial install to combat the corruption problems.  Alternately, since I doubt that file needs to be written to, I could append the file properties of flevel.lgp as "Read Only" in Windows and see if that helps, should it happen again (gawd forbid).

Anyway, here's what was wrong and how I solved it:

1) booted up in DOS mode (F8 at startup, select "command prompt only") and run scandisk.  Scandisk found three cross-linked files; flevel.lgp (122MB), iccvid.dll (108KB originally), and Windows Hell Desktop Theme.zip (1.8MB originally).

2) Had scandisk repair all files in question.  The files were cross-linked 48 times in 63 chains.  "Fixing" it took several hours.  Good thing I was going to bed so I could leave it on overnight.

3) Booted back into Windows in the morning to backup the "repaired" files.  The iccvid.dll and the zip file were many times their original size.  Extracted into a temporary folder the original iccvid.dll from the Win98SE CD image on my other system's hard drive.

4) Deleted the corrupted files.

5) Copied the fresh version of iccvid.dll to where it was stored before (C:\WIN98SE\SYSTEM).

6) Backed up FFVII savegames, and patched versions of FF7.exe and FF7Config.exe.

7) Uninstalled the game.  Deleted all the folders and registry keys.

8) Ran Defrag on the drive.  Good thing it was time for work - defragging takes forever on this old beast.

9) Reinstalled the game and restored the backup saves and executable files.

10) Rebooted into DOS mode as in step 1, then ran scandisk AGAIN.  Repaired the new damage (file fragments; Residual damage from the problem and the solution).

11) Loaded Windows, then loaded FF7 to test out my "fix".  Everything worked fine.  All conditions that were previously 100% sure to cause a crash went without a hitch.  Graphical corruption in locations (Tifa's Bar, Aeris' House, Wall Market, Roof of Shinra Tower, Sector 5 Slums near Church) is gone.

12) Rejoiced and did a little happy dance.

I don't know what caused it (not spyware; I use AdAware) but whatever it is I am going to monitor my hard drive very closely and let you all know what comes up.  Direct X seemed to have nothing to do with it, and neither did the drivers.  I have a feeling it could have been my virus scanner (Trend Micro PC-cillin 2000), which I removed (not really needed on my Legacy Box, since I browse the internet and receive all email on my primary system).

Once again I'd like to thank Threesixty, Rubicant, Srethron, and halohalo, for all your help!  Let me know if there's anything I can do to help you in return.  I'll do whatever I can (filehosting? troubleshooting?).

 

[Srethron Askvelhtnod]

Nemesis Destiny: Hey, nice to hear. =)

8) Ran Defrag on the drive. Good thing it was time for work - defragging takes forever on this old beast.

It takes forever on every Win98 machine with X.XGB of space I've seen so far. Doesn't mean much, really, probably just a low RPM issue.

I don't really, like that game...it was a let down, when I bought it. I liked the first one...and the second was the same as the first.... But I just couldn't get into protecting a single city....and have my whole squad die because the building colapses on them.

I haven't finished Alliance yet either. It's extraordinarily micromanagement intensive (on a macro level), but I still have a measurable amount of fun with it. The main thing that annoys me is that, if you destroy a building (trying to, say, to eradicate the Cult of Sirius), it just rebuilds itself. I guess you can't criticize it for lack of options, though; on the whole there're too many.
Still, being able to pay real-time *or* turn-based, not mention watching city interests start to use the advanced equipment I was selling off for profit were pleasant surprise. I still prefer the first, but Alliance isn't *that* bad.
-Srethron

 

[Threesixty]

Well, I do have my eye on the next Xcom.....
Sounds like a remake of the first, but with a small twist.
It doesn't have Xcom in the Title...but it sure looks like the first one....

The Preview is at Gamespot....at least the one I read.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/ufoaftermath/index.html

due 9-13

 

[Srethron Askvelhtnod]

Thanks for the info. I can remember reading about it back when it was Freedom Ridge around a year ago, but I thought it had been cancelled. It does look interesting, although it is a bit disappointing that there's no turn-based option. All in all it sounds good, although the interface looks a little weird to me.

the next Xcom.....

I guess, technically, Laser Squad Nemesis is the next X-COM, but it's been changed substantially as well. It's pseudo-real time; you pretty much have to subscribe to keep playing (since the free options are pretty thin); and it's play by email.

Right now I'm still content to just go back to the original every now and then. I have a copy of Interceptor I need to try sometime, too.
I guess Alliance was the game I was really rooting for--after it got nixed, the series pretty much died.
-Srethron