Game loads forever - won't start or stop!

[RokuroCarisu]

I reinstalled this game today and after trying to start it, nothing happens. No error message, the game just won't play, but Steam thinks it's playing. And strangely enough, I can't even stop it without shutting down my PC!

Any ideas on how to fix this?

[Thomas Müller]

Sorry my English, but I try help. I have this problem, and I found solution - in Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Delete) you should found RunDll proccess, and kill him.

[RokuroCarisu]

Originally posted by Manuel Neuer:

Sorry my English, but I try help. I have this problem, and I found solution - in Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Delete) you should found RunDll proccess, and kill him.

Well, that at least gets the game to stop loading. But I still would like to know how I get it to actually start.

[Thomas Müller]

Well, this is a very interesting question. How I can found, this problem is not a very popular... I dunno, why this is happening, but, if I found answer - I wrote about that.
Sorry my English again))

[bentongrey]

Hello Rokuro. I'm afraid I don't necessarily have an answer (though I've got a possible suggestion), but you'll likely get better support and help if you go to the FF community at freedomreborn.net. Chances are someone there has run into your issue.

What I can offer is to try to run the game (and also Steam itself, if necessary) in compatibility mode for XP SP 2. That took care of a range of issues for me.

[Cormellion]

Not sure what the community came up with but have you tried reducing your CPU affinity cores to 1, this often solves old game issues. Do this via task manager.

[Dezuel]

Try run the game in windowmode.

You do this by selecting the game in your steam library, rightclick it, select properties and launch option. Write -windowed in the launch option. Try if that will fix it.

[halvt sexuell]

Playing it in Windows XP compatible mode?

[loudog1234]

If you are on windows 7 (or even if not this is worth a try) then you should try this. I was having the exact same problem as you have described here: steam would you show it as running even though it had not ever launched, and even exiting out of steam wouldn't fix this.

This is what I did ...

Restart computer so steam stops showing the game as running. Through steam, uninstall the game and reinstall it (should only take a minute). Go to library, find the file for steam, right click, select manage, then select browse local files. In the window that pops up, find the application file for the game. It should be the only one with a colored icon which is the freedom force logo, the file might be called "ffvt3r". Right click on the file, go to properties, and then click the compatibility tab at the top. Check the box that says "run this program in compatibility mode for" and select the Windows 98/Windows Me option. Then, check the box for Disable Visual Themes and the box for Disable Desktop Composition. Click apply and then okay.

At this point, I was able to play the game with no problems but I would not start the game through steam. I would instead start the game through the application file that you just edited. Just to be safe, right click the file and Open as Administrator and start the game that way.

I really hope this helps. I stumbled upon this thread looking for a solution to this same problem but I was able to solve it by doing this.