Bizarre Fixes for PC Games? (Consoles welcome too, if you've ever needed a weird fix for one)

Owyn_Merrilin

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May 22, 2010
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The following story just happened to me, and I figured it'd worth sharing, and getting a discussion going about crazy things you've had to do to get old (or even new) PC games to work. Console stories are welcome too, if you've ever had a console that needed a weird fix for something. I just specified PC games because typically a console game either works with the hardware or it doesn't.

Here's a weird tale of PC compatibility for you. I recently got the urge to play Betrayal in Antara, which was the first RPG I ever owned, even before FF7, which was the first one I was exposed to and my first JRPG. Unfortunately, Windows Vista, 7, and potentially 8 (haven't tried it and apparently neither has anyone else, since the game is on GoG) can't read the third disc. Just something about the way it was authored makes it show up as nothing being in the drive. Not that I'd be likely to actually get to disc three, but it still bothers me, and it's what's prevented me from replaying it in the past. I've been able to get it to run both natively in Windows 7 and in various virtual machines, so it's not like that's the problem.

Anyway, I did some poking around, and found out that to this day the only way to get disc 3 to work on a Win7 computer was to find an old XP machine, copy the files, and burn them to a CD, which has been the "fix" for almost 10 years now. I remembered that I had a Windows XP virtual machine knocking around on the hard drive, and decided to try something. Sure enough, the virtual machine can read it. Why, I have no idea, but it can read it. So I transferred the files to a flash drive, and will make an ISO out of it at some point down the road. Probably the weirdest compatibility issue I've ever had, and the most nonsensical fix. I mean, why can the virtual machine read the disc? It doesn't have direct hardware access, it's all routed through Windows 7. Makes no sense.

Edit: It's worth noting, this game was originally made for Windows 3.1, and it's the spiritual successor to Betrayal at Krondor, which was a DOS game. XP was just the last version of Windows that could read that disc.

So for discussion, share your weird compatibility stories.
 

Elfgore

Your friendly local nihilist
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Dec 6, 2010
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This is for Fallout: New Vegas for the PS3.

If you sides with the NCR, there was a famous bug for awhile that would cause instant-lockup whenever you entered the Strip. Since I had to go there to beat the game, I went online to look for a solution. I also didn't have high-speed internet connection at the time either, so patches were out of the question. Some guy online said if you equipped your character with an old cowboy hat, the game would not lock up. Since it appeared to be the only solution, I decided to give it a go. I honestly didn't think it would work, but to my surprise, it worked perfectly. Best fix for a bug in history.
 

Weaver

Overcaffeinated
Apr 28, 2008
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Betrayal at Krondor was the shit! I remember playing it with my dad when I was younger. Such a moment of bonding!
 

Liquidprid3

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Jan 24, 2014
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About a month ago I was replaying some old PC games, most of them educational Point & Cick games. Anyways, I tried playing a version of Dinosuar 3D, and I should've went into XP mode, but I didn't. Therefore, the colors were all messed up. However, if I paused and unpaused the game, it would be mostly normal. So I just did that whenever I got to a new area. Pretty weird, I think I'll try it again in XP mode.
 

shrekfan246

Not actually a Japanese pop star
May 26, 2011
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I don't remember exactly which game it was (and I think it may have been an older one; I've played too many games to remember anything anymore), but there was a game a year or two back I played which would run like molasses unless you had something like an internet browser window up maximized behind it while playing, even if the game was running fullscreen.

There were a few games which had issues with some of the extraneous USB drivers and extra webcam drivers the computer had installed, too.

Beyond Good & Evil requires very specific graphics settings to run at a steady framerate, which if I remember correctly are actually slightly different depending on if you have an Nvidia or ATI graphics card, and deviating even slightly will just tank your framerate in many sections of the game. Quality port.
 

OneCatch

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Jun 19, 2010
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I had a rather weird one for Splinter Cell Blacklist. I bought it on Steam, and it will not run if Uplay is active on my computer.

That's right; the Ubisoft game will not run if Ubisoft's DRM is running correctly. It's like an anti-anti-piracy feature!
The only way to get it to work is launch it from Steam, kill Uplay with task manager, then relaunch from Steam.
 

munx13

Some guy on the internet
Dec 17, 2008
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Back when Battlefield 4 was in beta, I had constant stuttering and frame drop issues (like so many other people).

A friend later suggested that disabling hyper-threading/cores fixes most of the issues, so I disabled half the cores on my fx 6100 and the game ran perfectly.
 

LordOmnit

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Oct 8, 2007
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When I recently built my new computer so I could finally play all the games I've been buying on Steam I installed a bunch of games and all but one of them worked. Bioshock. I tried reinstalling it, running as administrator, verifying the game files, and even going onto the official 2K website for fixes, but nothing worked. After much looking around I found a thread deep in the Steam forums saying that it didn't run properly on Windows 7, but if you went into the program files and set the properties on the actual executable file to run in Windows Vista compatibility mode then it would work, and sure enough that was the fix.
 

Angelous Wang

Lord of I Don't Care
Oct 18, 2011
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Elfgore said:
This is for Fallout: New Vegas for the PS3.

If you sides with the NCR, there was a famous bug for awhile that would cause instant-lockup whenever you entered the Strip. Since I had to go there to beat the game, I went online to look for a solution. I also didn't have high-speed internet connection at the time either, so patches were out of the question. Some guy online said if you equipped your character with an old cowboy hat, the game would not lock up. Since it appeared to be the only solution, I decided to give it a go. I honestly didn't think it would work, but to my surprise, it worked perfectly. Best fix for a bug in history.
I had this bug too on the 360, but I did not get it from siding with NCR since I was independent.

I got it from decapitating a guy with old cowboy hat on who tries to kill you after completing a certain quest. This then breaks the game because it tries to load the old cowboy hat when you re-enter the area, fails and breaks the game because the guy has no head to load it on.

Hence equipping one on yourself and loading into the area works as a weird fix.

A better solution was to not decapitate that guy (or melt/dust him) in the first place, he needs to die intact not to break the game.
 

Tuxedoman

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Apr 16, 2009
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Ok, I have one.

Star Wars Battlefront 2 on the PC has a bug in which it will crash instantly upon loading into a map.
The way to work around this and 'fix' it, is to plug something into your headphones jack.
Thats it.

It doesn't have to be headphones. Hell, you can even plug it into your mic jack or the multimedia one. I personally have a male to male cord which is my battlefront 2 cable that must be in my computer in order to play the game.

Good job Realtek.
 

syaoran728

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Aug 4, 2010
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Not that many people have played this game, but in Ar Tonelico 2 on the PS2 one of the last bosses will freeze the game when she uses her special attack. The problem is that she will always use that move on her third turn so you have to beat her before then. Luckily the game runs on a sort of active time battle and there is an easy way to cheat it. First you have your two melee characters use their fastest attacks(I think those would be Left+Cross) and once they begin the attack animation you have one of your two mages begin casting a healing spell. The casting start up freezes the timer while the melee attacks are being preformed and once the timer starts again begin two more melee attacks and then cancel the first healing spell by having the other mage begin theirs and the cycle repeats itself.
 

Trunkage

Nascent Orca
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Jun 21, 2012
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Not a game but I fixed my video card last week by pulling out everything from the USB slots. Go figure
 

KarmaTheAlligator

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Mar 2, 2011
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Here's a recent one for the PS3. Disgaea D2 has some glitches that will freeze the console if certain skills are used (which skills depend on who you ask, it seems to behave differently between versions) that should have been patched by the recent patch (again, that depends on who you ask since it introduced the glitch for some who didn't have it before). Anyway, before the patch, many things have been tried to fix it, with a lot of placebo fixes being found. Until someone suggested double loading your save (loading from the main menu, then loading it again when in-game). That one seemed to work for everyone. Even with the patch (since it doesn't always work) I've gotten into the habit of double loading my saves and had no freezes.
 

IamLEAM1983

Neloth's got swag.
Aug 22, 2011
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OneCatch said:
I had a rather weird one for Splinter Cell Blacklist. I bought it on Steam, and it will not run if Uplay is active on my computer.

That's right; the Ubisoft game will not run if Ubisoft's DRM is running correctly. It's like an anti-anti-piracy feature!
The only way to get it to work is launch it from Steam, kill Uplay with task manager, then relaunch from Steam.
I was mostly saddled with that myself, but even this didn't stop my game from crashing after about 45 minutes per play session. My one and only working solution was a crack.

A crack for a game I'd purchased. A crack which, incidentally, locks me out of about two thirds of the game's content. I'm pretty much stuck with the main campaign, Kobin, Grim and Charlie's missions, and can't access the map-hunting segments or Briggs' co-op sections.

Or, rather, I could - if the game ran as it's intended. Check my Steam library if you want proof, but I do have this game legit!
 

OneCatch

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Jun 19, 2010
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IamLEAM1983 said:
I was mostly saddled with that myself, but even this didn't stop my game from crashing after about 45 minutes per play session. My one and only working solution was a crack.

A crack for a game I'd purchased. A crack which, incidentally, locks me out of about two thirds of the game's content. I'm pretty much stuck with the main campaign, Kobin, Grim and Charlie's missions, and can't access the map-hunting segments or Briggs' co-op sections.
Wow, I got off lightly then!
If it makes you feel better, the 'gone dark' minigame (assuming that's what you were talking about) is kind of crap. It just gives you a bonus to subsequent income - doesn't affect the game in any other way. I haven't played the coop missions myself either - completed the campaign and then got sidetracked by Crysis 3.
 

ThePuzzldPirate

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Oct 4, 2009
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Legend of Dragoon, It was my fault mind you but scratched my disc so it wouldn't load up a certain area. The game seems to share the map data on at least three of the discs, so I would save on the world map, load up another disc, enter the area. I would than remove said disc while it was on and pop in the right one and continue like nothing was wrong. Did I break them worse? Most likley. XD
 

sovietmisaki

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Sep 2, 2012
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Fallout New Vegas: the game kept crashing when I tried to load a recent save file from the start menu, and it kept doing that until I tried to start a new game, and then I finally managed to get it to load properly from there.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood: I couldn't turn worth a damn with the hang glider until I turned on V Sync in the settings since the game was running relatively well until then.