Well the topic says it all so help away =)

For the PS1 game, use a PS1 emulator on your PC. For the PC game, save the disc image to your computer, download Daemon Tools, mount the image, and the game will start right up.

ok thank you but i mounted the disk 1 image and a file came up saying field and disk 1 but when i click those files it says i have to open it with the right program so im kinda stuck on that

Hmmm... Probably copy protection. Is Daemon Tools set up to emulate the correct copy protection used on the disc?

Also, make sure you're clicking on the right file.

i did click on the right file, i mounted the first disc img but it gave me a bunch of unknown files like what i wrote ^^ there...but no daemon tools don't say that it can emulate copy right protection... and i downloaded the ff8 file from Mybittorrent so i either think that was just a non working file or something idk...

Hmmm... I think I figured out what's going on here. You must have all 5 CD images (1 installer CD and 4 game CDs). I reckon the game trys to load CD1 from the drive you installed the game on (was the case for a few games I have, notably Sim City 4. I have two DVD/CD drives on my PC, and the game must always be run from the same drive letter it's installed from).

For me tho, I personally use the PSOne edition on a PSOne emulator (would be using my real PSOne if it wasn't broken - the video output is apparently fried). Less problems and no installation needed.

Here's what I reckon will work:
1. If you already installed the game, uninstall it first.
2. Mount the installer disc on daemon tools, and install from that.
3. Unmount the installer CD and mount the game CD, and try to start the game from the start menu. It should work now.

Good luck!

Actually yes you have to d/l the PC version on cd, The game launcher doesn't recognize virtual drives, only the real drives.

I have cd images of my FFVIII PC game on my computer and it works just fine.

Didn't work for me. We are talking about the PC version right.

Ha ha, if you're the same FAQ-writing split-infinity, then I've read a lot of your stuff :)

No im not that split-infinity. I tried mounting it but when i try to play it still gives me the insert disk one message.

....DAMN IT I WANNA PLAY!!

Didn't work for me. We are talking about the PC version right.
I've never used emulators so I'm talking about the PC version.

No im not that split-infinity. I tried mounting it but when i try to play it still gives me the insert disk one message.

....DAMN IT I WANNA PLAY!!
Okay, just to let you know, the PC game comes with 5 discs. The 'installation' disc is technically the first disc and the other 4 is the game. Did you make sure that you mounted the game disc 1 and not the installation disc?

Yeah like just place the disk and then pretend you didnt place it .

virtual drives never for me while I played FFVIII on PC

Which program do you use to mount images?

several daemon tools magic Iso, and WinXPvcdr

I've only used two for me. PowerISO and Daemon Tools and they both worked just fine.

If you must, you can download the program sd4hide (Safe Disc 4 Hide). It's used in case the game you want to play has that protection/back-up copy protection thing so you can't play the game unless it's the actual disc. I use this to play The Sims 2 because that message kept coming up for it, but not for FFVIII.

Try PowerISO because that was the first program I had that mounted disc images and it played FFVIII with no problems.

hmm perhaps I went about it the wrong way, I reformatted my HD so no going back now.

How you mount it on PowerIso, FFVIII image files are all .Daa

thanks for the help but i moved on to the ps1 version because that was just to complicated...but hey do you guys know any good ps1 emulators?

How you mount it on PowerIso, FFVIII image files are all .Daa
Not mine.
Mine are all .BIN and .CUE.

You bought yours?

No. Torrentspy.com is where I got mine. Came with all the necessary patches for the bug fixes too.

hmm, maybe I torrented another

Most likely. Not sure if it's the images you're using or not, but it should work just fine after you mount the images.

umm hello do you guys know any good ps1 emulators?

I currently use ePSXe, but also have good experiences with PCSX. Depending on your choice of plugins, ePSXe can be resourse hungry as hell. I personally use Pete's OpenGL 1.2, SPU and CD plugins, which works fine for FFVIII for me (Pete's OpenGL2 was glitching under FF VIII for me - maybe I can't force the emulator to use SLI for that to work?). You should also be aware that you need a PSOne BIOS, which shouldn't be too hard to find.

One upshot about ePSXe is it's native support for disc images. I believe it supports ISO and BIN/CUE out of the box, but not sure about DAA.

ok so where do i find the bios?

Google is your friend

How you mount it on PowerIso, FFVIII image files are all .Daa
I use PowerISO to work with .daa files. Make sure you have the latest version. (v3.7) I haven't checked if there have been any updates in the past few weeks. Go to Options > Configuration... to select the file extensions you want PowerISO to handle.

ok thank you...i need new patches for the ff8 because the file i downloaded was final fantasy 8.psx.pal and i read the epsxe read me thing and it said this :"You need to use a patched backup version, the original one is not working. To learn how to apply the so called "PPF Patches", consult the features section in this help me file, or Pete's CD plugin readme. " i only need to find the new patches for this game and then ill be set to play! so can someone tell me where can i dowload them at?

Did you read the help me file? I'm going to assume that it's in there.

well then guys i give up trying to install this game its complicated to install it the pc way and the psx way so its ok but thanks for all the help anyway

I forgot an important step to install the PC version (the regedit) and right now I'm writing up a guide on how to get the game to work.

I'll be posting it up on here whether or not you're going to use it. Others would like to know what to do I'm sure.




EDIT: Instead of posting again, I'll go ahead and post the guide here.

Okay, just to let you know, this is a step-by-step guide on how I installed and played Final Fantasy VIII on the PC (I‘m using Window‘s XP so you know). Please note, this is the PC game and not a PSX emulator. I won’t be holding your hand and explain every little detail on what something is and such. So I’m going to assume that you’ve mounted images and such before. Here we go!

1. Open up Daemon Tools (or whichever program that you use) and mount the installation disc of FF8.

2. Wait a little bit and a window will pop up titled “Final Fantasy VIII Startup”. I’m going to assume that you all have DirectX that’s above 6.1. If not, then you can download 6.1 here or you can get the latest version from the internet. Either one works fine. Anyways, highlight “Install” and click it.

3. This will get the game installed on your computer. It may take a while depending on your system.

4. Okay, congratulations, the game is now installed. You are REQUIRED to stand up, do the funky chicken, and spin around 3 times. After that, you can sit and continue.

5. Click on “Start” then highlight and click on “Run”.

6. Type “Regedit” in the text box and hit [Enter]

7. Now on here (unless you know what you’re doing), do exactly as I say and don’t go deleting random stuff or you might mess up your system. Okay? Okay.

8. Click on the plus sign next to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE on the left side of the window and click on the plus sign next to SOFTWARE. Scroll down until you find Squaresoft, Inc and click on the plus sign next to it. Then click on the plus sign next to FINAL FANTASY VIII and click on the folder 1.00.

9. Next, right click DataDrive and select Modify. On my computer, the C: is in there. Now this will depend on the individual computer, but you want to change the drive letter to the virtual drive that you will be using to mount the game on. In my case, the virtual drive that I will be using for this game is E. So I delete C: and type in E:. Click “Ok” and close the window.

10. Okay then, almost done. Open up Daemon Tools (or whichever program you use), unmount the installation disc, and mount disc 1. If a window pops up displaying files, don’t panic. Just close that window and go into My Computer, then Local Disk, then Program Files, then Eidos Interactive, then Squaresoft, Inc, then FINAL FANTASY VIII, then double-click on FF8. And that should get the game running! If you want, you can install the patches for this game before playing the game. Your choice.

If done correctly, you should now be able to play the Final Fantasy VIII PC game on your computer. I’ve written up this guide while I was doing everything at the same time, so none of it is by memory. Hope you found this useful!

Great write-up IDX Rider! maybe you should have written this as an separate entry after all. Then Agent can lock and pin it, and every other noob that comes by won't spawn any "how do I play FF8 on an virtual drive" threads in the future.

I'm sure that if Agent felt the need then he could copy and paste it into a new thread if he wanted. I figured since I already posted it, it would be kinda stupid to do it again in a new topic.

Either way, glad to help :).

Nice job IDX very thorough. Though I would just buy a cd-rw and keep re-wrting the disk, That is a good alternative.

That is. But I'm lazy :P. I've already got a back-up of this game on a DVD-R (along with another game) and I'd rather just keep it on the computer. Plus, less load times because reading a disc and getting data are totally different when it comes to speed.

That is. But I'm lazy :P. I've already got a back-up of this game on a DVD-R (along with another game) and I'd rather just keep it on the computer. Plus, less load times because reading a disc and getting data are totally different when it comes to speed.

Yes, as a disk drive should compute faster than your processor, emulating a disk drive. My disk drive a a 40x CD-reader, I'm planing on buying the 48x light scribe but I digress. anywhoo, yeah a disk drive is faster.

Well, in my experience, drive emulation doesn't really take off much off the CPU. I used to do drive emulation on the laptop, and the speeds of reading off an image in the hard disk is actually noticeably faster than reading off a CD-ROM drive. On the other hand, most modern CD/DVD-ROM drives are fast (a PSX only has a 2-4x CD-ROM drive iirc, and when FFVIII was released for the PC in 2000/2001, iirc the fastest drive then in the market was only 24-32x, a far cry from the 52x++ speeds modern drives offer), so unless you specifically told an emulator/drive tool/windows to throttle the drive speed for some reason (battery life/heat issues on a laptop?), the games should load rather fast anyway. The only reason I used images or disc copies was because my gaming PC runs fever-hot when in full throttle, thus I don't want a disc in the drive in case the heat damages the game discs which is uber-expensive (US$25/~RM80 may not sounds like much, but it accounts for a week's worth of breakfast, lunch and dinner for me).

Yeah that is true on a laptop, but I've completely revamped my desktop, I buy new drives a lot, the faster the better.

I use a laptop too. I just assumed that it works the same for a desktop because I notice the difference in speed.

no the cpu is a bit faster on the desktop, but they are relatively equal in terms of loading time.

Yeah that is true on a laptop, but I've completely revamped my desktop, I buy new drives a lot, the faster the better.
Well, funny thing is, my gaming PC _is_ a desktop. Only that it's kinda packed to the brim with rather high-endian stuff inside (a dual core Athlon64 X2 CPU, a pair of 7800GTs SLIed, an X-Fi, a PhysX card and all 4 RAM slots populated with low-latency Ballistix 512MB bars). Pretty much a mess inside the case due to the density - I opted for a simple iCute ATX case which I modded in a acrylic window. All drive bays are fully populated - one DVD reader drive, one DVD superdrive, the X-Fi Front panel, a FrontX panel for all those extra headers, a classic floppy drive for diagnostic purposes, and the hard disk shoved into the second floppy bay because I got lazy. It's cooled by no less than 10 fans - four 8cms on the front, a 12cm on the back, one on each graphics card, one on the PhysX, one on the CPU and one on the chipset. And because of the Malaysian weather, it cannot be operated in non-air-conditioned environments.

Yeah you should downgrade, Your PC gonna burn out if it stays on too long. My cousin had a quad core proccesor, 2 disk drives, 2 HDD, And 1 gig of RAM on 2 slots, man did he fry his system. I believe he only had a fan or two for cooling.

Maybe he can get a liquid cooling system. Or huge powerful fans!

Well, I don't leave the PC on 24/7 (parents have a strict power-saving policy: if it's not in use, turn it off). And it only gets fever hot once it hits full use. Usually, when running ePSXe, it doesn't get too hot. I could stay on FF8 via ePSXe for 5 hours and it would still be pretty cool (only SLI is in use, PhysX would be idling and the X-Fi would only run minimal load as it doesn't need to do heavy audio processing)

Yeah, IDX is right. If you're going to go for a powerful system, make sure you have ample cooling (do not skimp on the ventilation accessories i.e. fans). I also avoided extra lighting as 1. I feel that it's a waste of power and 2. lighting generates more heat. And make sure the PSU rating is adequate - and try to not go for economy-brand PSUs. I've heard of cheap PSUs blowing out and taking the entire system with it. If you're already going to fork out lots of cash for a powerhouse, might as well fork out a few more for a peace of mind via a good, reliable PSU.

I'm the type that'll put my pc on stand-by, and I turn my monitor off if it's on stand-by, I doubt it uses much energy.

I always shut mine down when I'm done with it. There really is no reason behind it except that I've done that since I was a kid and is just habit now.

If you can, cool your computer's room down to a nice and comfortable 12�F ( =P ), though 65�F should suffice.

epsxe i think it sort of I don't remember the name exactly.

This emulator can launch isos without mounting it so you only copy yor cd in iso format (try whith nero, alcohol or cdclone) and you can load it XD

You guys downloaded the wrong FINAL FANTASY VIII. Mine has only one file, and I didn't need to mount anything. Just install and play.

this file has multiple folders right? The only way that's possible is if it were a DVD ISO, but don't believe there is a DVD ISO FF VIII.

I think the one I have is self-made. Hmm... I don't know how to put it, :(.