Thief 2 on vista 64bit

[Solarjetman]

Hello there,

I've just spent quite a while trying to get Thief 2 (premier collection) to work and thought I'd share some small but potentially useful information to save some other poor Garrett wannabe. Apologies if this has been mentioned elsewhere but in order to run Thief 2 v1.18 on Vista 64bit I:

1. Did not have to use the 'd:\setup.exe -lgntforce' run command. It installed fine.
2. Had to press 'show processes from all users' button in task manager to allow me to 'set affinity' as explained here
3. Did not need to change any compatibility options
4. Had to disable the windows sidebar.
EDIT: 5. Cutscenes stopped working so had to use fix in FAQ here.

I'm not sure this is universal for everyone so here are my machine specs:

Core 2 duo 2.13GHz
xfx geforce 7600GT xxx
Vista Home Premium 64-bit


Here's a little diary of my afternoon fun:
Thanks to the helpful FAQ here I got the 1.18 patch installed no problem but had much trouble disabling the second processor as advised here . The problem was that on right clicking to 'set affinity' I would get the error message 'This operation could not be completed. Access denied'.

Thinking I was doing something wrong I spent a good hour or so fiddling with compatibility options in vista with mixed success, the best of which was being able to knock out one guard before a freeze. (This success was what encouraged me to keep fiddling... sigh).

This was not all in vain however. In altering the compatibility options I discovered that there was a button to 'show settings for all users'. While this did nothing for my fruitless compatibility fiddling it did make me curious about the second level of menus.

Hurray when I realised the task manager has a counterpart 'show processes from all users' button.

The merry conclusion was that all I needed to do to 'set affinity' successfully was to 'show processes from all users' in the task manager first.

Now Thief 2 works fine (so far as I've played, half way through first level) at max res. all options on etc.


Hope this helps some of you out there

[Esme]

you sir are a lifesaver

my old machine died on me and I now have a nice shiny new laptop running XP Pro with 1Gb Ram, 100Mb Hdd, 17" X-Glass screen (not too keen on the reflections) at 1680x1050

It's got an Nvidea GeForce Go 7950 GTX 512Mb graphics, supplied driver version is 8.6.1.4 I haven't bothered looking at the catalyst drivers yet - needed to enable "safe_texture_manager" from user.cfg for this beastie

then I did the patch thing you mentioned to knock the game down to using a single processor (I owe you a pint)

perfection

... now I'm busily downloading the custom scripts and I can play fan missions again

[siegella]

4. Had to disable the windows sidebar.

I didn't have to do this. Why did you have to?

I still can't get cutscenes and I've tried the tricks in the FAQ.

[Somebody_Else]

I had to run Thief II in Windows XP (SP2) Compatibility mode and run it as an administrator to get the cut scenes to work. Also, some codec packages seem to break video playback. I had to uninstall the klite mega codec pack I was using.

[siegella]

OMG! I tested Thief Gold and Thief 2 by doing exacly what you said: setting it to WinXP SP2 and running under admin - and the cutscenes finally worked! I guess that means I can't use Darkloader/Garretloader to run the games, but that's ok.

I don't know if I missed other posts that said how to get the cutscenes to work under Vista, or if you are the first one to post it, but THANKS!

[Solarjetman]

I didn't have to do this. Why did you have to?

I still can't get cutscenes and I've tried the tricks in the FAQ.

I found windows sidebar likes to redraw over some of my 3D games, particularly Thief 2 and Morrowind (now that was almost as fun as thief2 to get working). Disabling it stops this for me and may also raise performance a bit. Could well be something to do with my graphics card/driver. Checking the forceware update notes nvidia are aware of many issues with vista that they are still planning to resolve. Fingers crossed the polygon flickering is just a matter of time.

Great that you can get the videos working. They worked fine for me initially but after I installed T2X and whilst listening to music I had to use the fix in the FAQ to download and reinstall the indeo5 drivers (using gom player update to get them). The only compatibility setting I need is to run as administrator. Not sure of the underlying cause but the codecs can be overwritten/ignored.

[Anatoly_Korenchkin]

Im having the same "flickering" polygons problem in SS2 on Vista 32bit, using a GeForce 7900. It seems like some polys just arent displayed, as you can see what's on the floor instead of someone's leg, or whatever. No idea how to fix it though...