System Shock 2 - I know the solution, but..

[Dog--]

..I don't know how to get to the solution..

First I want to say that before I took my computer in for a virus removal, I could play the game just fine, but they put in a bunch of stuff, and I think they put in some Windows XP updates that screwed it up, it's an unstable game as it is, but with all these updates it's a hundred times worse.

Ok, so - AFTER I got it back I tried to play it, but every time I do, I get an illegal operation at runtime, so I went on the forums for Through the Looking Glass, and found this:

My System: Windows XP-SP2, Core2 Duo e6400, Nvidia 6600GT Driver v163.44
beta

'ffdshow' is fast and feature filled codec and filtering tool. It is
installed with many codec packs by default and can cause problems with
certain applications including System Shock 2.

After MUCH effort (most of it in the wrong direction), I resolved my
problem.

Problem: After Install, game crashes on launch. It verifies the copy
protection, then the screen would go black, and a few seconds later I
would get "System Shock 2 has encountered a problem and needs to close."
Clicking on more info reports it was related to the LGVID.ax node.

What DID NOT work:
I tried the multi-player patch, same problem.
I tried all versions of SHOCK2.exe I could find. All failed to solve my
problem.
I tried all compatibility modes on all SHOCK2.EXE's I found with cold
boots in between each test, and still no love.
I tried adding 'safe_texture_manager' to user.cfg, and/or cam.cfg, and/or
shock.cfg.
I tried renaming the cutscenes directory to something else.
I even re-encoded the cut-scenes to use Xvid instead of Indeo with no
success.

What DID work:
I finally tried renaming LGVID.ax to 'Copy of LGVID.ax' and FINALLY was
able to start and play the game, but this stopped all cut-scenes from
playing. I missed the cut-scenes too much to give up on them yet.

The cause turned out to be ffdshow. When a video is played on my system,
it went from the indeo codec filter, then to ffdshow, then to the renderer.
To fix my problem I had to run the ffdshow Video Decoder Configuration,
select 'Info & Debug' from the options on the left, and then in the Debug
section of the menu I placed a check in the box for 'Don't use ffdshow
in:'. I then added 'SHOCK2.EXE;' to the list by typing in the field
provided. a semicolon should separate program names if you have more than
one in that list.
example: 'Oblivion.exe;explorer.exe;shock2.exe;'

Since I have a Dual core processer, I had to use the 'imagecfg.exe' tool
to set shock2 to use only one core.
From the command line:
imagecfg.exe -u "C:\path\to\SS2\Shock2.exe" ; to set shock2 to
uniprocessor mode.
then:
imagecfg.exe -a 0x1 "C:\path\to\SS2\Shock2.exe" ; to set affinity to
processor 1

I can now play the multi-player version with all the mods for better
textures sounds and bug fixes.

Now before, I couldn't even get to the menu, then I tried renaming that file to 'copy of lgvid.ax' and I can get to the menu, but when I play, it screws up (illegal operation thing), and I'm 95% sure that it's the cutscenes playing that is screwing it up (it screws up when the cutscene is supposed to play, I can't play the game at all as of yet).

So what I'm asking here is how do I get to the menus for FFDSHOW so I can do that debug thing that this explains. I'm positive that debug menu thing will fix my problem, allowing me to play my game. I did a search on my computer for ffdshow, and got zero results.



P.S. This was edited into a very, very old post on TTLG forums (a help thread), and it was just recently added, so that might mean that this is a problem with a recent Windows XP update.

http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=69958


Thanks for the help, people.

 

[Dog--]

Come on, someone has to know SOMETHING about FFDSHOW..

I want to play SS2 god dam you!

 

[lanceleader]

It seem that ffdshow is a software that you need to install to have some codec http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ffdshow
If you don't have it installed it's surely not your problem. If you have dual core processor or hyper threading processor you should try the solution in the last part of your post, this is what I did a couple of year ago to make the game work.

 

[Dog--]

I know about the dual processor, I did that before I took my computer in (set it to only 1 processor), even with that problem it lets you play the game for about 10 seconds before the game freezes, I don't get to play at all with my problem.