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Vista-only game cracked to run on XP

arstechnica.com — Both cracking and software development groups have come up with ways to run certain Vista-only games on Windows XP, showing that there is public demand for games that run on both operating systems.

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zaibatsu 1 year 30 days ago, made popular 1 year 30 days ago

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yongke, on 10/11/2007, -21/+9Of course you can, it's software mode, in fact you can even run anything on a 486 if you really wanted to, frame rate might be a bit slow.
- mustacheo, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6I think 486 is a processor type while here we are talkin about Operating systems (XP and Vista??).
LakeshoreBaby, on 10/11/2007, -1/+49Yah you can play Halo 2 on XP with a combination of both the crack and software patch. I bought the game yesterday and got the patches from Filefront. You use a special loader from abcba to install the game on XP from the Halo 2 Vista DVD and also run the exe once installed. But the guy who made the loader couldn't solve the activation problem. I was unable to activate the game even tho I had a valid product key. And without that you can't play online and you can't play the campaign past the first level. But if you add the RAZOR patch as well, you can at least play the campaign mode. Explained well on Firefront forums.
http://forums.filefront.com/halo-problems-errors-help/316160-run-halo-2-xp-10.html

For the actual links to the abcba patch and also the RAZOR patch, just go back a few pages.
http://forums.filefront.com/halo-problems-errors-help/316160-run-halo-2-xp-6.html (abcba DBG patch)
The name of the RAZOR patch is "razor1911 halo 2", search for it on P2P

But please buy the game.

Alky should be out at the end of July.
- potp, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2no point in buying a old crappy game that microsoft had the ballz to cripple it only to one os in order to force people to move to a new OS that isnt offering much anyways. Halo 2 for the most part can run fine with even a 4 year old computer running windows XP. Its MS greed that made the crappy halo franchise even crappier.
crazybugger, on 10/11/2007, -7/+22Microsoft thinks they are very intelligent.
"HEY MICROSOFT"
There are more intelligent people who can give a run for your money.
- baldr, on 10/11/2007, -6/+1there are more intelligent people on digg and arstech, but the vast majority of windows users are not going to know how to use software emulation to play vista games on xp, and will just upgrade to vista instead.
- Dustmuffins, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2"There are more intelligent people who can give a run for your money."
  
  Unfortunately that's a lot of running for a LOT of money =(
- yournamehere, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1those aren't DX10 games... move along
- Genma, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3its not so much they think they are that intelligent, they just consider everyone else stupid. if they're going to use cheap hacks to lock those titles into the new OS then people will just reverse engineer them the same way. seeing how quick and easily this was done just proves how full of ***** they are.
vampireblood, on 10/11/2007, -12/+4Shadowrun and Halo 2 both can now run on Vista thanks to Razor 1911! Horay Razor!
- nihility, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5Well they were able to run on Vista before Razor1911 did anything, but they did provide it to the masses. I think you mean XP though.
- championchap, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Vista only games have been cracked to work on XP for a while now.. well, one of them at least.
  Geometry Wars is Vista only, but it runs just fine on my XP PC with a little patching.
Phocion55, on 10/11/2007, -2/+24Thanks for the lame vendor lockin attempt, Microsoft!

"While Microsoft has made the argument that adding DirectX 10 required an architectural change to the operating system that could not easily be backported to Windows XP, this argument falls flat when it comes to Halo 2 and Shadowrun, neither of which use DirectX 10."
- yournamehere, on 10/11/2007, -7/+5neither of those games are DX10 so i don't see where this is coming from.
- zeptobyte, on 10/11/2007, -0/+9It's still vendor lock-in. -_-
- BlackKnight6, on 10/11/2007, -3/+3Yournamehere is right though, neither Halo 2 or Shadowrun are DX10 games. DX10 games on XP is hard due to driver issues as well. Nvidia and ATi are not releasing XP drivers with DX10 extensions, why would they? So even if you got a DX10 game to "work" on XP, you still have the problem of getting the video card drivers to actually work as well. I am surprised even arstechnica.com can not distinguish between Vista games and DX10 games.
  
  I still think its stupid of Microsoft to make these games Vista only though, they both run in DX9. A game like Crysis is one that is making a smart decision, well Crytek is. XP and Vista compatible, DX9 and DX10 compatible (and great use of DX10), 32-bit or 64-bit version of the aforementioned OS's. Alot of people don't understand how DX10 relies on Vista's vastly different way of handling the computer's resources.
  
  I doubt we will ever see a good hack to get DX10 on XP, if anything, it will have performance hits and issues. Goto Gamespot and look up some articles on Vista and DX10, you will see why. Again, I still think both these should be XP and that games should be DX9/DX10 as much as possible, like Crysis.
  - MioTheGreat, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2It's even more than just the drivers. First you need a D3D10 API, then you need the drivers. The only directx10 api in known existance is tied down to WDDM drivers, in Vista. So you can't just pull it and run it on XP.
- yournamehere, on 10/11/2007, -3/+1Did you digg me down because you didn't want to hear the truth? lol wtf
- Phocion55, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3MS is trying to lock-in users to Vista with **crippled games that would normally run fine in XP**
  
  This is the truth.
- yournamehere, on 10/11/2007, -2/+2Both games suck anyway so it sort of backfired on them
loganhid, on 10/11/2007, -8/+3how many times has this been on the front-page
BrandonMills, on 10/11/2007, -0/+22Game developers that aim DX10-only need to consider the current Vista installed base, and the fact that a DX9 game can look pretty sweet and will run on XP. XP, which is still supported till 2013 by MS themselves. Furthermore, the OS has a smaller system footprint that Vista.

I don't understand why Microsoft doesn't just make a 'gamer mode' boot that has only things gamers want enabled on startup. Yes, you can do it on your own, but it would make so much sense to have this already there in the OS.
- SaxxonPike, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2A "minimalistic" installation option? That kinda reminds me of the Windows Server 2k3 Experience Edition. A barebones installation that loaded up obscenely fast. They need something like that for Vista as well as future releases. Price it accordingly as well. People might actually buy it then.
- awhiteflame, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Compared to Vista, that's basically what XP is.
  - halleyscomet, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2No, compared to Vista, that's what 2000 is.
    
    What has MS added since Windows 2000 that's worth keeping? System restore, which rarely works anyway, and a bunch of graphical hooks that could easily have been back ported to Windows 2000.
    
    Oh, and a bunch of animations that I could have gotten form a $20 shareware program.
- Lassan, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2MS is supporting XP till 2011, not 2013
deftech, on 10/11/2007, -23/+3VISTA ROCKS< DONT DIG ME DOWN PLEASE! BUY VISTA!
- Phocion55, on 10/11/2007, -0/+8You forgot to include your PayPal information so Microsoft's marketing division can drop you some money.
- brokensocialste, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1OK Bill, Will do.
- zapa, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2fu I digg u up
noctu, on 10/11/2007, -4/+16if they can hack DX10 to run on xp then it will be like vista never existed.
- fugazi, on 10/11/2007, -5/+3There is one problem. Both games are not DX10....
  - BlackKnight6, on 10/11/2007, -5/+1It seems like even arstechnica.com didn't even realize they aren't DX10 games...
  - noctu, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2this was already known and is an after the fact comment, please upgrade your thoughtware.
- Phocion55, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4Exactly. So there's NOTHING stopping people from playing those games on XP, except some extra layers of good ol' fashion MS crippleware.
  
  Which begs the question: What else isn't MS telling us about DX10 and XP? Are we supposed to trust them?
  - spudnic, on 10/11/2007, -2/+1I prefer Vista to XP
    *shrug*
- nOOBert, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2Vista's kernel is different then XPs so it wouldn't surprise me if getting DX10 to run in XP is a challenge. However I wounder if it is as hard as MS say it is.
- halleyscomet, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2We can just wait for the WINE implementation of DirectX 10. At that point, we can create a DirectX 10 runtime for Windows 2000 AND XP, not to mention Linux and Mac.
  
  Windows ME on the other hand, let's leave that bastard step child in the gutter.
- bagboyrebel, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2http://www.nukescripts.net/modules.php?name=News&op=NEArticle&sid=3885
  
  apparently it's already been done(I can't verify myself because I got vista from my school and already have it installed, so I don't know if it actually works)
flamyngo, on 10/11/2007, -16/+1if only someone would make WoW run on Xp... then maybe I would make the switch, but as long as I can't play WoW, I will NOT be using XP!
- FrederikNS, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Uh? What?
- Destinatus, on 10/11/2007, -0/+21st you mean "Vista" not "XP," 2nd you're wrong
- nOOBert, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2WoW (World Of Warcraft) does work on XP. Works on Vista too.
- SupremeBeing, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Works on Vista, sucks on Vista with Nvidia card. I just bought a new ATI card because Nvidia's Vista drivers suck so bad, and they show no sign of release a decent driver.
carl25, on 10/11/2007, -2/+5if they backported dx10 games, that would be something. This isn't
- Urusai, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Figure the odds of Microsoft, a game publisher, backporting games to an OS they want you to replace with a shiny new copy of Vista.
RAiNsTorm, on 10/11/2007, -4/+4I have a close friend who does game development work and his DX10 box was XP from day 1, so it sure as hell runs on XP... but what else does Vista have going for it besides locking people in for DX10 games? Even worse, the upcoming blockbusters are going to be fairly low req mass-appeal games like Spore. FPS/Crysis/Alan Wake ain't going to cause a huge rush to Vista.
- MioTheGreat, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Uh yeah. Unless your friend was working on Microsoft's DirectX team, and even then, working only with early versions of DirectX 10, he's full of crap.
  
  DirectX10 has _never_ been released for XP. The API itself is so tied down in WDDM on Vista that it'd be impossible to rip it and just run it on XP. You'd have to write your own DX10 API for XP, which is a task unbelievably mind bogglingly complex. Then there's the fact that none of the DirectX 10 stuff is even in the XP drivers, so hardware support is out of the question. Yeah. He's full of crap.
- NerdyNinja, on 10/11/2007, -2/+2I think Spore was delayed indefinitely.
  
  My question is whether Microsoft does this as a way to make people update to Vista faster. I've been hearing a lot that the one thing Windows still has Apple beat on is gaming (I think it's pretty difficult to argue that Apple has as many game developers, so at least THAT part of the statement is true - whether it's the last thing or not is up for debate in my mind) - so is forcing gamers to update to Vista a solid marketing hook (albeit unappreciated by the consumer) or a very bad business decision? I don't see the rush - gamers are going to update to it eventually anyway, and it's not like Apple's focusing that much on gaming (They just let you install windows to play games instead! =D )
- toppgun, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3give me the phone number of this friend and I will believe you.
Destinatus, on 10/11/2007, -3/+1a DX10 game is already out - Lost Planet. The DX10 demo of it has been out for it a while too. I've been looking forward to the new DX10 features for a while now, and thats just barely enough to keep me with Vista.
- Optimaximal, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2The DX10 version of Lost Planet suffers from crippled frame-rates with little to no improvement in visuals - after all, it's a DirectX 9-ish game on the Xbox360 with DX10 code crammed in to get some sales...
  
  Same for Call of Juarez...
  - sirmasterboy, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1The 360 has an ATI R600 GPU complete with DX10 paths...
- BlackKnight6, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Something like Crysis or Alan Wake would be a much better example of DX10 benefits.
- carl25, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1lost planet was in dx9 first, so yea not a lot more features
- Destinatus, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1I didn't say it was good, I just said it was out, heh. The only DX10 games I'm looking forward to right now is Crysis and Alan Wake, as I'm sure is the case with everyone else.
OpCzar, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6But you're still encouraging this practice if you're buying vista-only games.
nicko68, on 10/11/2007, -10/+2Meh, if you want to play games, get a console.
- Urusai, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Sad but true, ever since the original Xbox was just a stripped Windows PC developers have been jumping on the console bandwagon, which is too bad because consoles have yet to have a decent mouselook. The games are usually shallower, too. I played Halo on an Xbox all the way through, and for a console it was pretty good. For a PC, it was pretty mediocre. Developers prefer consoles because they are a fixed hardware target and the market is apparently larger.
- Destinatus, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2I think the few people that play WoW would disagree with you. I don't play it, but I still disagree with you.
Wiinii, on 10/11/2007, -3/+7So they are trying to shove Vista down gamer's throats when the gamers are the ones smart enough to know that Vista SUCKS ASS!
Wiinii, on 10/11/2007, -10/+2Do people still play games on PC?

Go ahead, Digg me down...
- isamuelson, on 10/11/2007, -1/+0Yup. They just look better whereas console games are on a smaller resolution unless your on HiDef. I can't afford HiDef right now. Just blew my money on upgrading my PC! ;)
  - Wiinii, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1So all of the smart people have stopped PC gaming then, my bad. :)
    
    PC gaming is an endless circle of new games that require new hardware that promote new games. Waste of money for hardware that only plays games as an afterthought.
stympman, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3How about Microsoft lowers the price and fixes all the compatibility issues. Then people will buy their new OS.
Puripong24, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Actually, I don't like Windows Vista, I tried it and given up because it cannot support many programs I'm using for my works. I don't understand why windows vista is not backward compatible with programs based on windows xp. I also do not see any different in performance between them.
- MioTheGreat, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4The thing you have to remember is that under XP, no one felt the need to bother with dealing with user privledges, and not running as an Admin. For like 6 years, you had software coming out that did this. Now, you've got Vista, which has some pretty strong seperation of privledges for processes, and things break. There's no way around it. It was either: Break a few apps that were coded very very poorly, or stick with ***** security.
- loneraven, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Yea, you would think with the long public beta period, that more software developers would at least have upgraded their software to work with vista by the time of retail release.
  
  But nope, so many programs were broken or crippled. I was running vista for a couple of months, and I realized the only new feature that I really used was the integrated search. I can do the same thing with so many other applications on XP. For me, Vista isn't necessarily useful yet, and the changes they've made seem to be mostly trivial. Personally I wasn't concerned with an interface update (although apple users love these updates it seems) when I will just get bored of it in a couple of months anyway.
  
  But yea, end of my mini rant.
mogdor, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4I'm still pissed that they took freakin' Internet Checkers out of vista. Bastards!
totorototoro, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6"showing that there is public demand for games that run on both operating systems"

Its more that people don't WANT to have to worry about "which OS" to use to play a ***** game. This whole Vista is for Gamers campaign would be more credible if, you know, Microsoft had more convincing arguments as to why Vista is "better" for games.
- Phocion55, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3There IS a "better" reason for using Vista for gaming, according to this article:
  
  MS crippled the games so they couldn't run on XP.
  - totorototoro, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Phocion55...:lol:, well..besides that one :p
BrandonMills, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Unless somehow surfing the internet becomes highly more taxing on PCs that it is now, I can't imagine many of the 2GHz+ PCs just being 'tossed' when XP support is over. Sounds like the perfect time to promote Linux - as MS drops support for perfectly functioning versions of Windows just to try to move OSes.
fibreoptix, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3What kills me is Halo 2 or Halo in General is a sub par FPS on the PC. Why bother trying to make it work on XP anyway. Play Half Life 2 to see a great FPS. Now if they could make Direct X10 run on XP now that would be an achievement.
necbone, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1***** VISTA and EVIL MARKET PRACTICES
skrowl, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1What good is a NON-INTERNET-MULTIPLAYER version of Shadowrun or Halo 2? They should mention in the title of this submission that you CAN'T PLAY THESE VERSIONS ONLINE.
HolyChimp, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2I'm pretty sure that the reason MS gave for Halo 2 and Shadowrun being Vista only is the Games for Windows Live thingy. I assume they put in a quick hack to stop people installing it on XP just so the average Joe doesn't install it on XP then bitch when multiplayer doesn't work. This will be news when the Windows Live thingy is ported to XP to allow multiplayer.
specialK16, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1OpenGL vs Direct3d 10... Someone please answer me.
- nolifesuicide, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0OpenGL
  - fibreoptix, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Your either nuts or a Mac user, DX10 is 100x better than Open GL.
hordak, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2I'm still on Win2K because 99% of games that work on XP work on Win2K --- does this mean that I can play Halo2 on Win2K or are there WinXP dependancies? Thanks!
nolifesuicide, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0I knew it!
gingerdoe, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0Can anybody help me? If I buy a child's game (let's say a game from Kid Pix) and it does NOT list "Vista" and only lists "Windows XP" and my kid's lap top is Vista, will it run the XP versions?
- otakushark, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1You should probably check with Kid Pix support to find out for sure.
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Vista-only game cracked to run on XP

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