Windows Vista Halo 2 and Vista/XP

[Archangel]

Okay, heres the lowdown:

I dual-boot both Windows XP Professional and Windows Vista (OEM), both 32-bit. Both are freshly formatted.
Both operating systems work great, no issues to report. Both have their own partitions.
I have installed Halo 2 on both operating systems. Naturally, the game is supposed to be only available for Windows Vista, but through my networks of pirates and hackers, I have come across a hack that has allowed me to install and play it on Windows XP.

Now, the problem:

When I play Halo 2 on Windows Vista (Which it was made for), the graphics are extremely slow and buggy, as well as choppy and jagged. Windows Vista allows me to use the NVidia control panel to adjust the 3D settings of various installed programs on the computer. It doesn't matter what I have it on, default or otherwise, the graphics are always dumb like this on Vista. Halo 2 also allows me to change various video settings in the game, and I change them to reflect 'best performance' (such as disabling anti-aliasing, turning down effects to Low, fixing the screen resolution at 800x600 -- full screen or windowed).

Now, when playing on XP, there are no options like this available except for inside the game, so no NVidia control panel. The game runs absolutely flawlessly on the absolute highest settings. However, in an effort to play online, the hack does not allow for various things such as GFWL (Games for Windows Live) to work, therein my dilemma.

What can I do in Windows Vista to make the darn game work? XP is fine, but is there maybe some kind of hotfix published, or someone who knows how to decode the problem?

Here are my system specs:

Processor 2.0GHz AMD Athlon X2 Dual-Core QL-62
Memory 2GB DDR2
Hard drive 250GB SATA 5,400rpm
Chipset AMD RS780M
Graphics 256MB Nvidia GeForce 8200M
Operating System Windows Vista Premium (32-bit)

NOTES:
(Vista)
Computer is fully updated, Windows and Microsoft products, including updates to GFWL for Halo 2.
No anti-virus installed. Security center and all applets disabled. System restore and Windows Backup disabled.

(XP)
Also fully updated.
In Windows XP, the system specifications show that the GeForce 8200M has 512MB dedicated video memory.
Both XP and Vista are using the same version of the driver, just downloaded the seperate versions for the OS' respectively.

 

[Celestra]

My Guess

Hi! My guess is it's a RAM related problem . Besides the games, what else is installed on your machine?

 

[Jimbo22]

For what ever reason, in vista the windows experience graphics score is what controls how your game graphics look. Why? Who knows but it does. On the game it self it will tell you the minimum score. Then check your graphics and gaming graphics index score to see what it is. Example: Assassin's Creed minimum score of 5.0 my graphics card is a 4.0 and my game play is sluggish and jittery at best. The fix for vista is to upgrade to new graphics card. As for your XP issue, I couldn't say.

 

[kemical]

Have you tried running Halo2 in compatibility mode for XP? (I know it's supposed to to be written to run under vista but try it anyway)... I've run that game under vista and it ran fine...
Also try increasing your pagefile as well as ensuring you have the latest drivers for all areas of your machine...eg Sound, chipset as these can make it run like a pig just as much as the graphics can..

 

[Archangel]

@Celestra - Which installation are you referring to, the XP or the Vista one? I've got a long list to go down for both, but since I'm having problems with the Vista one, I'll assume that one for now. The brunt of it is that all these programs, before starting Halo 2 are shut down, including all their processes and services minus the ones that Vista needs to run (their DLL's are also booted out of the kernel sector resulting in absolute memory for one program). Out of the 2GB of ram on the computer, Halo 2 requires 1 and once all the programs are shut down I have approximately 1.35GB to play with.

@BassFisher
My lowest score on my Index is 3.9 (making my score a 3.9 overall). All the others are 5.0 and above except *Desktop performance with Windows Aero*. Halo 2 requires a 3.0 .

@kemical
Yes, I have tried to run it in XP compatibility mode before, it gives the same error message it did in XP before I applied the patch. Your computer has an extra 1GB of ram, an extra 1.3GHz of processing power, 2 hard drives that run at an additional 1600RPM than my ONE, and a video card with 256MB more memory than my p.o.s. I imagine Halo 2 would run quite well on yours Quick question though. How will increasing my page file help? Wouldn't that put a poorer performance effect on Vista?

And oh yeah, trust me, everything that can be updated has been updated... I've gone to the manufacturers websites for every piece of equipment in this thing. Their drivers are newer than HP's, so I took em and ran. But this problem occurred before I updated them all as well.

I suppose the only thing I haven't tried to do yet is install H2 on Vista using the XP crack... Maybe that has something to do with it. Even though Vista uses twice as much memory for everything than freakin XP does... I had the same problem when I used the 7100RC build of WIndows 7. If Microsoft doesn't fix this by the time I get the final version, I'm gonna get my money back I think...

 

[Highwayman]

Is Halo 2 really that important than using a superior OS? Seriously? one (very badly) ported console game is your argument for using XP over windows 7?

 

[kemical]

Vista still uses a pagefile and increasing it just means there's more available, quicker, if it needs it... I find if I increase mine with Crysis it helps put out a few more fps..

Oh....and I didn't play Halo2 using vista on this machine..but your right, it does run Halo2 great..

 

[Highwayman]

My main gripe with Halo2 was the horrible force POV....seemed like you couldn't see a wide field of vision compared to other FPS....really spoilt the game for me, like playing half blind.

 

[kemical]

I was disappointed with it I must admit... The guns were awful and it was a down right sacrilege to take away the original weapon that the master chief used... It's still one of the best sounding machine guns around..(IMO)

Anyway...I don't want to hijack the guys thread..

 

[Archangel]

Is Halo 2 really that important than using a superior OS? Seriously? one (very badly) ported console game is your argument for using XP over windows 7?

I may have worded that wrong... If Microsoft doesn't do something about Halo 2 on Vista/7 then I will be getting my money back for Halo... Not for W7, which I've preordered and Quad-boot into.

I'd take 7 over XP ANY day if it weren't for my games working flawlessly on XP and not on 7.

 

[Highwayman]

I may have worded that wrong... If Microsoft doesn't do something about Halo 2 on Vista/7 then I will be getting my money back for Halo... Not for W7, which I've preordered and Quad-boot into.

I'd take 7 over XP ANY day if it weren't for my games working flawlessly on XP and not on 7.

LOL thank god for that

 

[Archangel]

Update:

Tried to install H2 on Vista using the XP crack. Doesn't work, error messages during the install.

Guess I'm SOL... This sucks, I guess I'll have to get my money back for a game who's minimum specs I meet but can't play.

 

[Jimbo22]

I'm in the same boat w/ Assassin's Creed.