Halo 2, Windows 7?

[Dave-Mastor]

Hello all, I'm having a fairly annoying problem; the other day I picked up Halo 2 Vista in the store, because I figured that it would work with my copy of Windows 7.

There have been confirmed reports and videos of H2V working with Windows 7 build 7100; which is what I have.

I'm having the typical 'initialization failed: insufficient system resources' error. But that's the thing; most of the people who get that error are either trying to run it on XP, or actually don't have the hardware to run it.

I have a nVidia 260 GTX, an intel Q9550, 8gigs of ram, and of course 64bit Windows 7 build 7100... more than enough.

I've tried reinstalling(too many times!), updating drivers, different compatibility modes, running as admin, running through the map editor.... I just can't get it to work!

Does anyone have any suggestions?

[Aus_Karlos]

Make sure that the setup.exe is not running in any compatibility modes. We had someone with a similar problem, he was installing it on an earlier versions of Win7 but he had enabled compatibility mode in XP SP2.

[Dave-Mastor]

Nope, still have the problem.

[Mcninjaguy]

Hello Dave-Mastor,

Have you tried running it in compatibility mode WIndows Vista , SP1 or Sp2?

[Dave-Mastor]

I have tried both, and I just tried both again, but no luck.

[Mcninjaguy]

I've looked on the Bungie forum and basically a guy got it working by installing it on his Vista computer, updated it and then copied the files and over wrote the installed version on his Windows 7 build.

Source:

I could try right now for yah if you wanted me to. But I'm paranoid about spending my CD key again. It only can have so many attempts before it dies =\

Edit: Got it working, w3wt!

But not without a little bit of work. The game installed just fine, and I could launch the game just fine. But H2V has had a couple of Title Updates since its launch, and I needed to get an update for H2V, and an update for the GFWL (Games For Windows Live) redistributable.

When I tried to update, it would say it's downloading my profile, then it'd say an update is available. I'd hit "Yes, update.", and after a moment, it would complain I'm not connected to the Internet or something. When clearly, I am.

Since I'm dual-booting between Vista and W7, and have H2V installed on Vista, this was easily circumvented. Just copied all of .exe files from H2V's root directory in my Vista partition, and overwrote them on my Windows 7 one. Thus, updating the H2V files. I updates the GFWL files by copying any and all files with the word "xlive" in them. There were a few files, and a xlive folder in System32, and the files from AppData\local\XLive.

Basically, just copied the files from these folders on my Vista partition, and copied them over to the corresponding folders on my Windows 7 partition.

I copied all the files from Vista (I have Vista on drive J)

J:\Users\<your_username>\AppData\Local\XLive (AppData is a hidden folder)
J:\Windows\System32\ - with any files that have "xlive" in them.
J:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Halo 2\ - copy any .exes/files (except maps/movies)

and overwrote them on my other partition. And that was pretty much it. GFWL was updated, and my profiles were there, too. Only problem being was that I was missing a DirectX (d3d.dll) file, so I simply copied it from one System32 to the other.

Just in case you guys wanted to know, or if anyone else wanted to try this out.

[Dave-Mastor]

I don't have Vista... I was forced to upgrade to Windows 7 because XP was causing my new system to lock up almost immediately after boot-up. I don't see how this can fix my problem when I just have W7.

[Mcninjaguy]

Sometimes It just installs correctly too.

[Dave-Mastor]

I just tried again... I even removed the entries in Regedit... but still, no such luck.

[Dave-Mastor]

Surely there's a fix for this! I have a completely compatible system and it won't work!

[mibnelius]

For me it works fine... did you patch the game to the latest version after installing?

http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...718/Update.exe

Give that a shot... and for the record, it works fine for me on Win7 RC1 x64... no special settings.

[Dave-Mastor]

I already patched it... no luck.

[Dave-Mastor]

Can't someone help me? Why is it, that my tech problems always just fade into the distance without ever being solved! :(

[Mcninjaguy]

Sorry for not replying earlier,

I would in your case, try running the game's setup.exe as an administartor and uninstall the current installion with revo uninstaller. The game's installation might be corrupt becasue it requires administrator levels to install it.

[Dave-Mastor]

I just tried uninstalling the game with revo, and then reinstalling as admin; still no luck.

[Aus_Karlos]

Doing some searching around it seems to be your Build of Win7. Build 7000 runs Halo 2 with no problems and yet Build 7100 many users are having problems just trying to install the game. While Build 7127 works fine again.
I would suggest trying a different version of Win7.

[Dave-Mastor]

But then I'd have to reinstall the entire system, and everything on it. Simply not an option! I'd probably spend more time re-installing and activating programs then I would playing the game.

Unless there's some other way to update 7?