WowLoader Source Code Discussion

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Originally Posted by Fireflyfilms

Solved my installation issue, it was a bad copy. Redownloaded elsewhere and now it works fine :D

Now my concern is the bloody activation... ill search around.

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lol.

Hi all,
I am successfully running halo2 on xp using the abcba's wowloader.
The only problem I am facing is that of frame rates. I am getting avg of 5fps making it really difficult to play it. Even the opening menu looks really slow. Looking at my sys config: athlon64 2800+, fx5200 one might say that its a heavy game and 5fps is reasonable.

I have also read on many posts on the net saying it is heftier than f.e.a.r.

But has anyone tried running taskmgr in bckground to see how much sys usage is halo2.exe using???

well, I did, I found avg processor usage to be only 20%. My CPU is running colder too as compared to other games. This surprised me.

Can someone suggest what is happening? what can I do to make halo2 use my maximum hardware resources?

Regards

I'd say it's probably your graphics card...most of the fx5200's are only 64 bit cards that don't support higher than OpenGl 1.5 so I gather you would most likely not have Shader Model 3.0 support, if you even have Shader Model 2.0 support...
on top of that, the fx5200's typically only have 4 pixel pipelines
also, i'm not certain how well we can judge how processor intensive the game is...i mean...if i minimize Halo, i can play FEAR just fine...i think the game pretty much pauses itself when you alt-tab out of it
i just had an idea...gonna look for a program that logs cpu usage...

used perfmon...
i've an Athlon X2 3600 running at 1.9ghz
cpu usage during gameplay is an interesting thing for Halo2
virtually maxed out 1 core (95% was the highest)
but the other core peaked at about 60%
not sure what resolution i'm running the game at, i know my effects settings are on medium
so i'd say your cpu could probably go for an upgrade to, if you're only on a single core 2600 while it maxes out one of my cores and gets halfway there on the other...
and then of course, once i alt-tabbed out of the game, activity on both cores dropped considerably and stayed around 10%

Ok, since i ha ve this working i can help people with things

here is a small q and a

Q. Whenever i start it up using wowloader it loads but after the screen where it loads left to right it crashes to the desktop why?
A. You need the latest version of directx9.0c *june or later* or you dont have the minimum requirements

Q. What are the windows xp minimum requirements?
A.
WINXP MINIMUM REQS

1.7ghz proscessor
512mb ram (low quality at 800x600, a little lag with meduim)
128mb gfx (256 reccomended)
Winxp sp2

Q. How do i use wowloader?
A. Either make a shortcut ,a batch file, or open halo 2.exe with it

Q. I cant get to level 12, it asks for my disc how do i fix this?
A. Make a copy of 07a_highcharity.map and rename Copy of 07a_highcharity.map to 07a_highcarity.map, the spelling mistake fixes this problem, and you do have to keep the original.

Q.I cant Start a lan game, why is this?
A. Most likeley due to network implementation issues

Q.Why cant i copy the 32kb mf.dll into my system32 folder, it wont let me replace it?
A. Restart your computer, this will make sure that no proscesses are using it, if you still have the problem, start in safemode

Also fyi greenxmodding.net would probably liek this

First of all abcba, allow me to congratulate you on a job well done...It's great that someone proved to the world that Microsoft was just shoving BS down our throats when made Halo2 Vista only. Your method is great, yet it's fascinatingly simple in it's implementation.

I tried out your patch on 2 systems, one worked like a charm...But I didn't have much luck on the other one :(
Funny thing, I can get the loader.exe to work in safe-mode, but once I start windows up normally I get an error launching startup.exe via the loader....(The send error report dialog box).

I tried disabling all other services running in the background, but still no luck so far. I understand that maybe there's another process interfering with the loader process?

I would be very grateful if you could give me a clue as to how this issue can be addressed...(Without reinstalling WinXP, of course lol ).

Thanks a lot and have a great day!:)

Someone's created a guide which pretty much covers every issue that I'm aware of: http://halo2xp.tk/
Beyond that, all sorts of software work by injecting one of it's modules into other processes.
Any code which is executed in the process started by the loader will "think" it's running on Vista.
So if you've got third party software which injects itself into the h2v process and assumes it's running under Vista, then that might be the cause of the crash.

Thank you, abcba....

I would like to know if there is any app that could let me monitor process activity, like sub process creation and injection...That would actually help me identify the offending process.

Thanks again for your response.

Well, the DBG builds (you can find those on the filefront forums) should tell you what processes are being created.
But when I mentioned module injection I was thinking of a dynamic link library (DLL) being loaded into the h2v process.
ListDLLs amongst others will allow you to get a list of the DLL's loaded into the process when it crashes.
When you have that, try comparing the lists between the two machines.

not really asking for a solution, just throwing this up in the air but...
ZOMG I'M STUCK ON GRAVEMIND!!!
lol
i beleive i've tried the map rename method, nah, didn't help me any
went to that link abcba mentioned a few posts ago and tried all that rot...
still nothin
so it looks like i'm just screwed for now as far as getting into that level. ((cries))