http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?p=2272354

File: http://rapidshare.com/files/38739037/Halo.2.XP.Patch-NoGrp.rar

Installation Instructions:

1) Extract the archive.
2) Insert the Halo 2 DVD
3) Run Startup.exe on the Halo 2 DVD using the included Loader.exe
Ie.: Loader.exe D:\Startup.exe
4) Install the game.
5) Install XLiveRedist1.0.6027.msi and vcredist.msi from the \redists dir on the Halo 2 DVD.
6) Copy the following files into the directory you installed Halo 2:
dwmapi.dll, mf.dll, MFPlat.dll
7) Finished. To play the game, run halo2.exe using the included Loader.exe
Ie.: Loader.exe "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Halo 2\halo2.exe"

Might Have to copy MF.dll into my win/sys32 folder, not the install directory

Hope This Helps Some People! Cheers, Note I Didnt Write This Give the above site credit! Have Fun XP Users!

Umm, it says somthing about deleting your files unless you get a premium account. Any chance of a filefront link, or even one hosted here on HALOMAPS if that sort of thing is allowed.

I am not against an emulator and as far as I can tell it does not appear to violate the EULA, however we will not host the files for it or offer any support for it. It is buggy, a hack and is unsupported by Microsoft or anyone for that matter. Even the people who are writing them are not supporting them. We will not either. In my opinion it is not worth it.

Yay!!! Dennis isn't against it!!! That makes our odds a whole lot better, I guess... Now I just have to get a DVD drive!!!!!! (and Halo 2 Vista)

BTW, your absolutely 10000000.99% positive??? I am not willing to go out and buy a game and it not work. (I already did with Battlefield 2, 40 bucks down the drain )

Mabye if someone I reaalllyy really trusted like Dennis would confirm it or something by sending in screenshots of it on XP?

BTW, people are saying that XP is getting really obsolete and stuff I 100% agree, but for Halo PC you could run it on Windows 98, now tell me that isn't obsolete.


Edited by The Spartan on Jun 27, 2007 at 11:31 AM

You are on your own there. Halo Maps does not endorse the use of an emulator and will not answer any question pertaining to them.

The Halo Maps website official position is that you should be running Vista in order to play the Halo 2 game and get the best user experience.

You can take games back you know..... i've done it.

actually running on xp gives you the best user expirience because it requires ALOt less hardware...and it runs alot faster.

No..... but when you have grandparents like mine you just get stuff..... mention it and you have it before you know it.

This is anecdotal eidence at best and other reports indicated that it is slower, buggy and of course it is unsupported. There is no hard evidence pro or con that runing the game in emulation is better or worse.



SCOPE OF LICENSE. The software is licensed, not sold. This agreement only gives you some rights to use the software. Microsoft reserves all other rights. Unless applicable law gives you more rights despite this limitation, you may use the software only as expressly permitted in this agreement. In doing so, you must comply with any technical limitations in the software that only allow you to use it in certain ways. You may not

• work around any technical limitations in the software;


• reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the software, except and only to the extent that applicable law expressly permits, despite this limitation;


• make more copies of the software than specified in this agreement or allowed by applicable law, despite this limitation;


• make more copies of the software than specified in this agreement or allowed by applicable law, despite this limitation;


• publish the software for others to copy;


• rent, lease or lend the software; or


• use the software for commercial software hosting services.

I am NOT going to get into he difference between criminal and civil copyright law as pertains to "legality" suffice it to say that item one could possibly be construed to cover the use of an emulator, since the use of an emulator does “work around “ the technical limitations of running it on XP. However it is, right now, an unenforceable restriction. Changes could be made in either the Vista OS or the Halo 2 Vista application that could make the current emulator non-functional: Then again maybe not.

Are you going to get sued: Very unlikely. Will they cut you out of Windows Live: possibly. There is no way to tell. Using the emulator is a crap shoot.

Most people, trusted sources that is, have experienced smoother gameplay on XP.
Truth be told, it is because the OS uses less resources than Vista does.

However, smoother does not necessarily mean faster. Where as in XP, most achieved framerates of 20 per second, they got with it better mouse response and found the game to be less jumpy. Vista gives higher framerates, but has been found to be a pain to use with the mouse and normally jumps.
While it is true that the emulation software is buggy, barely tested, and definitely not a replacement to the real thing, the main point in its creation was to offer the ability to play the game to those who do not wish to upgrade to Vista at this point in time, and it has served that purpose. Microsoft still gets its money through the game, and the user will inevitably upgrade at a later time.
Another important note is that the Wow Loader has opened doors to playing the game on more than just Windows operating systems (Ie, Linux through the Wine compatibility layer)

Imagine that...

The reason halo 2 vista wont work on XP is because the halo 2 vista executable is designed & programmed to use certain Dynamic Link Library files (.dll) located in either the halo 2 root directory, the windows folder, or the window/system32 folder. The DLLs it uses differ between both XP & Vista. Vista's DLL haves certain bits of code in them that the halo 2 executable can't run without. being if you install it on XP, the code it's looking for is missing and cannot run.

I followed these steps but it didn't work for me :(


Edited by Projectiles on Jun 29, 2007 at 05:34 AM

The only reason I'm not using Linux is because of Halo, only if people would make it compatible with Linux....

The newest version of Wine is said to run Halo quite nicely, don't ask me, though, I can't get past the opening vids (which don't work themselves, but you can tell they're there)

You need to ask the person who wrote it. There is no support for it here.

To fix this, delete the entire Halo 2 dir in program files, and then delete "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft Games", "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\SL", and "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Microsoft"

Now run the Startup.exe and the custom install option should work.

Dude, are you serious????? If it does, then I might just through my Windows disc out the window....

Wine can finally run Halo? Finally! When I tried installing Halo with Wine on Ubuntu Linux 7.04, I got up to the product key entry screen (apparently for some reason Wine would not load the DLL from the CD that checks the product key). Does Halo Custom Edition install in Linux too?

hmmm.... I know this is off topic to to this topic, but does HEK work with Wine??

I tried installing Halo on Linux, but it did not work. :-( The game installed fine, but when I tried running the game with a special program I had to download (for some reason Halo does not check the CD drive right so you have to download a program), but when I ran it the computer just froze. When I rebooted and tried again, I got that safe mode dialog (which tells me the program is running, but the problem must be hardware related or with my graphics card configuration), then it froze again. The My Games folder was created in /home/douglas. (the simulated My Documents folder) I wonder how long it is before Halo 2 works in Linux? Since we now have support for Halo 2 in Windows XP, maby Linux can support it someday...

When it locks up on the halo screen, it means you replaced MF.dll with Razor1911's crack, which does not work with the xp mod. You need to use the 32kb mf.dll that came with the crack. It will however grey out live and network, and there is no way around that at this time. Also, Im not sure, but people have had problems with the game locking up at about half-way through the campaign.

Edited by kenney001 on Jul 2, 2007 at 01:42 PM

Figures :P I just read the Razor1911 crack worked for activation so I used that instead. I'll start over using only the files in the WoWloader folder, and hopefully it'll work. Thanks for the info :)

It's a .zip or .rar that hold files depending on what you have.. <directed to gratka>

Edited by Miso on Jul 6, 2007 at 10:36 PM

hey,nobody said if or not if h2's sapien works for xp,
does it?
or does it really matter?....