Final Fantasy VII PC on Windows 2000 SP4

Well, I dusted off my old copy of Final Fantasy VII for PC on a whim early this week. Mainly cause I was impressed with all the fan based patches that were coming out for it. I was flabbergasted by the lack of support for windows 2000 SP4. Not to mention that there's conflicting opinions about what patches to use; what makes playability better etc. What Annoys the hell out of me is that to finally make it work under windows 2k you need Micro$oft's Application Compatibility Toolkit V3.0; not surprisingly enough you can't find it simply anywhere... (wouldn't want people to get the idea that they don't need to upgrade to window$ vi$ta would we..) Well after googleing around much of the known universe I managed to find a copy. Then it was a simple matter of patching the hell out of the game to make it work. Since there's a lot out there and it's a popular TFH starter, i will refrain from telling exactly which patches I used. Suffice to say theres quite a bit of information floating around out there and you can decide for yourself what you would like to run.

Here's the ACT (Application Compatibly Toolkit) settings

Start the ACT Compatibility Administrator Tool - hit fix, Enter Name and Publisher (FF7//Squaresoft and browse to the ff7.exe Hit next. Select None, hit next, enable: Shrinker, EmulateWriteFile,Virtual Registry. Hit Next. SelectAll and then finish. Run should do it now! (thanks to: http://www.ffseven.com/faq.php).

After that you might want to save the database... I don't know if you have to but it worked for me. From here on out you can run FF7.exe by clicking on it and it will work. I don't know about the High Res Patch or the Sound Replacement projects I will be trying those later.

Usefull Links:
This is were the settings for the ACT came from.
Get All (most of) the patches here

Files:

The_SaiNt_High_Res_FF7PC_Patcher.7z (I had problems with alot of the distributions out there ... this one works)
act30pkg.7z ~ managed to pull this off a Russian tech help site... heres the download without the Russian

OH AND ONE OTHER THING:

Stay away from the XP patch... it's a hack of 2 different fan patches and it was done without permission, it has also been known to cause problems with midi playback.

Vampire The Masqurade ~ Redemption (on windows 2000)

OK, here goes! The Activision web site says you have to use a replacement .ins (setup.7z below) file and copy the setup directory from the first disk to your hard drive. Go ahead and follow those directions. THEN, what you need to do is download the modded registry files below and run that. You should then be able to patch the game's files and go from there. PLEASE NOTE, you may have to edit the .reg file to your system settings in the notepad before installing it or the patch wont work AND the game won't run. Pay special attention to Drive letters... if you install to C:\ then leave it the way it is but for certain, unless your CD drive letter is E:, your gonna have to change that. YOU WILL RUN INTO A LARGE NUMBER OF ERRORS while installing, this is OK as far as I can tell you just click through them. The game runs splendidly at 1024x768 32bit color; with all the settings at there highest levels, on the presario 2100. Better than i remember it running on my first athalon (733mhz).

Files:
vtmreg.7z - Modded Registry file
setup.7z
VampirePatch.7z