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LEGO Creator: Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets - Won't Start on Windows 7 (64-bit)


KyuuGryphon
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KyuuGryphon

First post. Hi there!

 

So I'd been thinking about this game for the past little while, and thought I'd try reinstalling it to play through it again for nostalgia's sake. It seemed to install okay, but I can't actually get the game to run.

 

Per another thread here, pertaining to the first game, I've tried using dgVoodoo to help get things working. What's interesting is that the screen test program (for configuring the video display mode) works fine - the image shows up for a few seconds, then closes, with the config program asking if it appeared - but the actual game just... doesn't start. I've tried running it in various compatibility modes and with and without administrator permissions, but nothing seems to be working. According to Process Lasso, the creator.exe program starts, but is terminated less than half a second later.

 

It might be worth noting that, for disk space issues, I've installed the game to my D:/ drive instead of C:/.

 

I was wondering if anyone's managed to get the game working on Windows 7 or newer, and if so, if I could get some advice? Thanks. ?

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Hmm, I believe I managed to get one of the creator games working in a Windows XP virtual machine. This one might work with that method too. If you have Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate you can also download XP mode, which is essentially a Microsoft-endorsed virtual machine program, and give it a try in that. Good luck!

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KyuuGryphon

Ooh, I hadn't thought of that, thanks!

 

It seems to have installed okay, and it seems to be getting a bit further than it does on Windows 7 - now I'm being greeted with a message saying that the CD-ROM isn't inserted. I've tried mounting it through a virtual drive, through having XP Mode mount the ISO directly, and through looking for the physical DVD drive itself, but it won't launch.

 

...This game didn't come on two discs, by any chance, did it? Like, one for installing and one for playing?

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I doubt that it's a matter of two discs, in fact, these symptoms remind me a lot of the same issues I had in getting Lego Racers 2 to run. It may be possible that Creator: HP & The Chamber of Secrets uses SafeDisc protections, which due to security issues is no longer supported by modern Windows. There are ways to still get SafeDisc games to run without hex editing, but it's not recommended because of aforementioned security issues.

 

This is a simple theory, though, as I only own the original Lego Creator: Harry Potter, so I have no way of knowing for sure if LC:HP2 actually does use SafeDisc protection.

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KyuuGryphon

Ooh, I hadn't even thought about DRM, good point... A bit of poking around seems to suggest that LCHP2 uses SafeDisc 2. Might that be preventing it from starting up at all on Windows 7?

 

Either way, that gives me a pretty good starting point for working this thing out. Thanks! ?

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  • 1 year later...

Did you find a solution to the problem?

I have tried on VMWare Windows 98 and XP. They both show the videos, then hang in the background.

dgVoodoo on windows 10 does the same as you described.

What I found was that you can edit the lego.conf file to change the display mode from DX7 to openGL. This, however, just causes the program to crash. Maybe I need some drivers.

When I run the testdisp.exe (which is used in the display tester), it produces this info which might be useful to know:

C:\Program Files\LEGO Interactive\Creator HP CoS>testdisp.exe 640 480 16 >a
info|render|Surface Caps ZBuffer or Mipmap not supported (0x40200000) on Primary
 Display Driver
error|render|Draw::Renderer: can't open display driver: DX7
error|utils|Raising error: Failure #0x80000003
error|testdisp|Failed to create screen

Even though directX 7? should be installed...

This website seemed to get it working? https://hp-games.net/25290

Through google translate, they only seemed to get it to work on Windows 10 without virtualisation. I tried this through windows sandbox but I will try on normal windows 10 without dgvoodoo but I doubt it'll work. Perhaps I could email them.

 

I will also just try this on my old IBM windows XP computer. I'm pretty sure that was the one I used to play it back in the day.

There must be some graphics related driver missing but I'll post again if I get it working or find anything else etc..

Good luck.

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