Final Fantasy VII, crashing problems.

[Kamran]

I am haveing problems with FFVII crashing near the very beginning of the game. The problem occurs when going down the second set of stairs in the reactor. As I hit the last step a battle sounds is made, it swirls, then it crashes. This happens in both ePSXe(v1.5.2) and AdriPSX(v1.0.5).
My Version of FFVII is: Final Fantasy VII Platinum Edition PAL(bought in sweden, think it's the UK version though)

The are 2 error messages I get when crashing, the first one is:

opcode 16 unk <PC 0000b070> <35547,154>
Opcode 3f UNK <PC 00006144> <35592,43>

and variants there of but those are the 2 main ones I get

and the second is a crash due to "too much to load", doesn't happen often though, like 1 out of every 30 crashes, can't remember the exact error msg.

the plugins I use are as follows:

Graphics:

Plugin: Pete's OpenGL Driver 1.1.68
Author: Pete Bernert
Card vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
GFX card: GeForce4 Ti 4600/AGP/SSE2

Resolution/Color:
- 640x480 Fullscreen - Desktop changing [32 Bit]
- Keep psx aspect ratio: off

Textures:
- R8G8A8A8
- Filtering: 3
- Hi-Res textures: off
- Palettized tex windows: on
- Garbage collection: on
- VRam size: 32 MBytes

Framerate:
- FPS limitation: on
- Frame skipping: off
- FPS limit: 60

Compatibility:
- Offscreen drawing: 4
- Framebuffer texture: 2
- Framebuffer access: 3
- Alpha multipass: on
- Mask bit: off
- Advanced blending: on

Misc:
- Scanlines: off
- Line mode: off
- Unfiltered FB: off
- Dithering: off
- Screen smoothing: off
- Screen cushion: off
- Game fixes: on [00000003]

Sound:

Eternal SPU Plugin 1.30
Enable Sound(ADPCM): on
Enable CDDA: on
Enable XA Sound: on
Enable SPU IRQ hack: off

Sound buffer size: 15
Audio out method: thread
async mode: simple
Wait For XA bufer is free: on
show realtime config window: off
Fine tune: 0
Update before accessing register: on
SPU IRQ - Wait CPU action: on
SPU IRQ - Force interruption flag7: on

CD-ROM:

P.E.Op.S CDR Driver 1.2
Interface: Win2K/XP IOCTL SCSI reading(have also tried raw reading)
Read mode: autodetects to BE_2(ATAPI Spec 2)
Cache mode: Read Ahead
use additional 4mb data cache: on

both misc. options: off

Try again after reading error: on, set to 5
show message box on reading error: off
Use PPF patch file: off
Subchannel reading: Don't read subchannels(have also tried with reading subhchannels)

BIOS:

SPCH1001.bin(have tried it)
SPCH7502.bin(currently using this one)

misc other options:
country: autodetect(detects PAL with original CD-ROM, NTSC with ISO)

cheat codes: none


My Specs:

Windows XP, home edition, version 2002, service pack 1
Pentiuym 4 2.53GHz
512mb RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 4 Ti 4600 128mb, Drivers: 4.1.0.9
ELBY DVD-ROM SCSI CdRom device(tried it)
HL-DT-ST DVD-ROM GDR8161B(currently using this one)





tried all tricks and tips I could find on these forums when searching for FFVII/FF7/Final Fantasy VII/Final Fantasy 7, none of them made any noticeable change.
Tried using Kane's guide, big improvement on sound which was nice, otherwise no difference.
Spent 6h trying different combinations of configurations.
Also tried turning every single option off and turning them on one by one, didn't find one that works(obviously)

Have also tried turning off anti-aliasing and different levels of gfx acceleration +combinations there of. Have tried running the game from the original CD on both CD drives, from 2 ISO files(tried once with CloneCd and once with CDRWin), as well as with mounted ISOs(first time with Daemon, second with CloneCDs program).

I am aware that I could just download a save-state past this point but I'd rather not miss out on the action/story or have to catch up on the story via an FAQ or walkthrough. As a side note I have not tried FF8 or FF9 yet, but FF6 works perfectly.
I am a grateful for all the help I can get as I am a self proffessed n00b when it comes to emulators and their programs.

Thanks in advance

//Kamran

[Kurbster]

I think you might have to use a save-state. Because if it wasn't in Kane's guide, the error was never heard of Also try to clean the CD, or make a proper ISO and check for bad sectors

__________________

[Kamran]

fixed it, dumb thing wasn't reading subchannels off the CD, made an SBI file from an ISO and it works fine now.