Well it's been sometime since I have posted anything, which makes me very sad. I really would like to post everyday on here, but as of lately college is eating up most of my hours. Still though, I should be better at time management I guess :(... Well that aside, I still have a test coming up this Friday, so I cannot post a large post complaining about stuff, but you can certainly hope to see one by Friday night, as I type it during my Dynamis run. Don't worry, it will be worth the wait. It's about carebears, suicide, kids with porn, and guys with large turds. Stay tuned!
For now though, how about I write about Vista. I am an avid computer person. I mean my two majors are Comp. Engineering and Comp. Science. I'm excellent in both! Well I migrated to Vista about a month ago on Enterprise version that was released to businesses. I scored myself a legal copy and have since been using it. Of course I could not migrate to an OS that cannot run FFXI. As many of you have heard, Square Enix has failed to run FFXI efficiently on Vista. Well where SE has failed, I have shined through. So here I am to let you guys know some nifty things about Vista and make FFXI run.
First off, SE has announced that for now you cannot do a fresh install of FFXI on vista. Well this is very very easily avoided.
First thing you want to do is put your installation CD in, then explore it. Don't run it, just open it to view the files. Find setup.exe, and right click it. Go to Properties. Here you will see several common tabs. But you will also see some tabs you have never seen before. One of such tabs will be Compatibility. It is exactly like it sounds. Here you can select to make the program run in pseudo-XP. Basically if it worked in XP, it is guaranteed to work in Vista. Nifty isn't it? Microsoft did something right, I have never seen anything be so backwards compatible. Anyways, after you install, you have to do the same thing for pol.exe before you run it. Once you go through the whole update process, your FFXI will be ready to run in Vista.
Seriously though, who really reinstalls and updates the game from scratch now days? Why not just back up the files and move them to Vista? I mean hell you don't even have to do that for Vista. You can do this to run your FFXI off of iPod (that's what I do).
Well the essential step is to manually copy all the FFXI files to your new hardware, pc, ipod, or whatever. It does not have to be in the Program Files folder, but it you do need to write down where you placed the files. All the files need to be copied in the same folder structure as installed by SE, obviously. Once that step is accomplish you want to add the following code to your registry. To do so open a text editor and paste the following code and save the file with the extension .reg and then double click the file. This registry structure is for NA version, but you can similarly extract the PlayOnlineXX registry folder (XX being your language version, JP, NA, EU) from your previous installation. If you have question on that, just post in comments and I will be happy to explain the process.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PlayOnlineUS]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PlayOnlineUS\InstallFolder]
"0002"="C:\\Program Files\\PlayOnline\\SquareEnix\\TetraMaster"
"1000"="C:\\Program Files\\PlayOnline\\SquareEnix\\PlayOnlineViewer"
"0001"="C:\\Program Files\\PlayOnline\\SquareEnix\\FINAL FANTASY XI\\"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PlayOnlineUS\Interface]
"0002"="0170e049"
"1000"="0170df22"
"0001"="002209a4"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PlayOnlineUS\SquareEnix]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PlayOnlineUS\SquareEnix\FinalFantasyXI]
"bFirst"=hex:00
"0001"=dword:00000320
"0002"=dword:00000258
"0021"=dword:00000001
"0000"=dword:00000001
"0003"=dword:00000400
"0004"=dword:00000400
"0007"=dword:00000000
"0011"=dword:00000001
"0017"=dword:00000001
"0018"=dword:00000001
"0019"=dword:00000001
"0020"=dword:00000001
"0022"=dword:00000000
"0023"=dword:00000000
"0024"=dword:00000000
"0028"=dword:00000000
"0029"=dword:0000000c
"0030"=dword:00000000
"0031"=dword:3bc49ba6
"0032"=dword:00000000
"0033"=dword:00000000
"padsin000"="6,4,11,5,10,2,3,1,0,8,-1,-1,9,33,33,32,32,34,34,37,37,12,14,15,13,7,-1"
"padmode000"="1,1,1,0"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PlayOnlineUS\SquareEnix\PlayOnlineViewer]
"FirstBootPlayMovie"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PlayOnlineUS\SquareEnix\PlayOnlineViewer\Settings]
"ResetSettings"=dword:00000000
"PlayOpeningMovie"=dword:00000001
"FullScreen"=dword:00000000
"PlayAudio"=dword:00000000
"UseGameController"=dword:00000000
"WindowX"=dword:00000211
"WindowY"=dword:000000d5
"WindowW"=dword:0000027e
"WindowH"=dword:000001df
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PlayOnlineUS\SquareEnix\PlayOnlineViewer\Settings\Controller]
"AnchorUp"=dword:00000030
"AnchorRight"=dword:00000032
"AnchorLeft"=dword:00000036
"AnchorDown"=dword:00000034
"ChrCsrNext"=dword:00000007
"ChrCsrPrev"=dword:00000006
"PageNext"=dword:00000005
"PagePrev"=dword:00000004
"Navi"=dword:00000003
"Menu"=dword:00000000
"Ok"=dword:00000001
"Cancel"=dword:00000002
"ID"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PlayOnlineUS\SquareEnix\TetraMaster]
"LOADDIR"="C:\\Program Files\\PlayOnline\\SquareEnix/TetraMaster/"
Also, it is very important that you modify every C:\\Program Files\\ to the location that you installed to. Do not change anything between the [ and ].
Once you got the registry set up, it's time to register your DLL's. You need to open the DOS command prompt (in Vista you want to run it as Administrator). Now you want to execute the following 5 commands. Make sure to replace %%DIR%% with location leading up to the files (just like you replaced C:\\Program Files\\ in registry, but only use single dashes this time).
regsvr32 "%%DIR%%PlayOnline\SquareEnix\PlayOnlineViewer\viewe r\com\app.dll"
regsvr32 "%%DIR%%PlayOnline\SquareEnix\PlayOnlineViewer\viewer\com\polcore.dll"
regsvr32 "%%DIR%%PlayOnline\SquareEnix\FINAL FANTASY XI\FFXi.dll"
regsvr32 "%%DIR%%PlayOnline\SquareEnix\FINAL FANTASY XI\FFXiMain.dll"
regsvr32 "%%DIR%%PlayOnline\SquareEnix\FINAL FANTASY XI\FFXiVersions.dll"
Well now you are all set to play again! If you have questions or anything just post it in comments and I'll get back to you!