My installation of Halo 2 on Vista is not working. I get to the part where the Arbiter gets pushed off the ledge when Keyes gets captured and he loses the icon.
The game complains about needing the DVD, I insert it and I have to repeat the whole level. Twice. I’m taking a break but that is really a pain in the ass. I may re-install it and see if that fixes the problem.
So far the game is “okay”.
Brimest0ne says:
This is the same spot I’m stuck at, same problem. How did you fix the problem? I reinstalled the game and inserted my saved game file and I still have the same problems
August 30, 2007 — 1:33 am
Jan Dembowski says:
Unfortunately it just started working. After a while I was able to get past that point; I did not do anything to make it work.
I recently had to do a re-install and I am starting over from scratch in the game. I’ll post here if I get stuck again.
Jan Dembowski
August 30, 2007 — 2:26 pm
Brimest0ne says:
Well that is very strange, I reinstalled Halo again and installed the patch and this time there wasn’t any problems, played right to the end this time. I read on one site, problems would occur if you installed using the “Play to Tray” feature instead of a full install.
The ending wasn’t very good, do you think we’ll have to wait another 3 years for Halo3 to come out on PC? LOL
September 1, 2007 — 3:33 am
Jan Dembowski says:
I’m glad that worked out for you. Not being able to get past that point had driven me nuts.
The ending was known to me (Wikipedia is my friend) but seeing it on my PC was a let down. The game play was okay but nothing to get excited about.
Knowing Microsoft I guess we’ll see Halo 3 on the PC in three years or so 🙂
September 1, 2007 — 9:04 am
Matt says:
ok i have this really big problem i got halo 2 vista a few days ago and the installation was ok but wen i try to play the game it just dose nothing no errors or anything just nothing at first it looks like it loads then nothing i reinstalled it twice and im gunna do it again but if any of u have information please tell me i would be very great full.
i am currently running windows vista ultimate
September 23, 2007 — 11:45 pm
Matt says:
sorry for double posting but it now comes up with a error message xlive.dll not found eny help
September 24, 2007 — 2:41 am
Jan Dembowski says:
Matt,
No worries on the double posting 🙂 . It sounds like your Halo 2 installation is really messed up.
First up, check out the microsoft support page. It can’t hurt and they may have a quick fix for you.
You may have tried this already (when you re-installed it twice) but use the control panel to uninstall the game.
Once that is done, go to the program installation directory and confirm that the files and directory for Halo 2 have been removed. I am not at my PC right now so I can’t confirm what those directories are at the moment. The reason I’m suggesting this is to make sure nothing got left behind.
Be very careful when you do this. If you delete the wrong directory you can really mess up your Vista installation.
Once you’re comfortable that nothing is left from the old Halo 2 installation, check that you are running the latest graphic driver. I use Nvidia and they sometimes release updates to fix bug their driver has with a specific game.
Once that is done, pop in the install CD/DVD (can’t recall but I think it’s a DVD) and do a re-installation. I had to create a short cut to Halo 2 when I re-installed it.
Run the game and wait for it to tell you it has an update to download. Let the update complete, exit the game (if it does not do so) and give it a shot.
Good luck. I hope you are able to play the game.
Jan Dembowski
September 24, 2007 — 8:57 am
Matt says:
um well i got the hot fix and it stopped showing me the error BUT it still dose not start up but i think i no whats wrong i have direct x 10 and the game dose not run on 10 only direct x 9 but you cannot uninstall direct x so that just raises further questions on what i should do
also i have a ATI Radeon 9250 (256 mb)and i recentley updated mine
September 24, 2007 — 9:13 am
Matt says:
please post again and help me out 🙂
September 24, 2007 — 9:34 pm
Jan Dembowski says:
Matt,
There’s not really much more I can suggest. Halo 2 for Vista runs on Direct X 10 not 9. Aside from doing a re-install, I don’t have anything else to suggest.
You might want to try going to this fan support forum and post your problem there; they might be in a better position to help you out.
Good luck.
September 24, 2007 — 10:42 pm
Matt says:
ok well im gonna do what you said above im just really annoyed with all this.
GAMES FOR WINDOWS WAS A STUPID IDEA
September 25, 2007 — 1:46 am
Matt says:
ok i signed up for that forum if u wan to know my user its bruteslayer
September 25, 2007 — 2:07 am
Matt says:
ok not to be rube BUT ALL THE PEOPLE ON THE FORUM ARE A******S they want me to use grammar and didn’t answer my question GOD DAM IT
September 25, 2007 — 11:40 pm
Jan Dembowski says:
Matt,
There is not really any advice I can offer. I did have a problem with Halo 2 but it was related to getting past a level.
Give Microsoft a call or e-mail them. It’s probably the best you can do.
September 26, 2007 — 6:45 am
MrD says:
Hi every1. Can someone help me to install the halo 2 on vista ? My problem is that when i start the autorun i go to customize game install, then Full install only, do not start i push the continue button and thats it. Nothing happens. I tried 100000 possibilities and no solution. So plz if some1 knows the answer heellppp
October 1, 2007 — 8:38 am
MrD says:
I forgot to say that i have Windows Vista Ultimate … 🙂
October 1, 2007 — 8:42 am
Jan Dembowski says:
This happens a lot, looks like.
DISCLAIMER! DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK! I’m not a support person, I’m just trying to help. If you feel uncomfortable with this don’t follow these steps. If any advice I send blows up your PC, I will feel a little bad for maybe 1 second, but I am not responsible. Seek professional help!
That disclaimer said, give this a try (read the whole thing first before actually trying): with all your programs closed, press the Windows key and the R key.
This will bring up the Run window. In the text box type %TEMP% and hit enter.
This will bring up your temporary files folder. Delete all the contents in your TEMP folder (ONLY YOUR TEMP FILES AND NOTHING ELSE!) and try rebooting (Start menu -> shutdown).
The reason I am suggesting this is because you are having problems installing. Sometimes the windows installer gets stuck on old existing temp files. By cleaning out your temp folder (don’t delete the folder, just the contents) this sometimes helps.
If it was that then when you re-install it should complete. If that does not work, your best bet would be to contact Microsoft.
Good luck.
October 1, 2007 — 9:29 am
Matt says:
i think i should upgrade my pc i currentley have a 1.7 processor 725mb of ram and so on
but im not that worried because windows has not yet gave minimal requirements for halo 2 vista but i think if i update my hardware it will work. 🙂
i also think if i reinstall windows vista it will work but i do not want to do this because of all the stuff on my pc so if u think i sound do this please tell me :).
October 2, 2007 — 3:12 am
Matt says:
Jan Dembowski also thanks for all the help
🙂
October 2, 2007 — 3:15 am
Jan Dembowski says:
Matt,
Well I am re-playing Halo 2 on Vista. The game is now crashing on me too and I have a 2GB RAM, Core 2 Duo E6700 CPU and a pair of Nvidia 7800 in SLI mode.
Here’s my solution. First download Far Cry (ad supported version) and then install on top of that the K9 mod (google for it). The K9 mod removes the ads (sorry McDonalds and UBI…) I’ve gotten far into Far Cry 🙂
I’m running Vista Home Premium 64 bit version. I have other games from recent ones to really old ones. Mostly they all work, the one from Microsoft is giving me problems. That’s just silly.
Good luck getting Halo 2 to work, I don’t know if a re-installation of your system will really help.
October 2, 2007 — 6:18 am
Matt says:
um is that second paragraph related to my situation?
October 3, 2007 — 8:39 am
Jan Dembowski says:
Matt,
Sorry, I was trying for a little humor; must not have worked…
I’m having trouble with Halo 2 now myself. I restarted the game from the beginning and I can’t get past the part where Master Chief heads down to earth. It crashes during the cinematic part.
October 3, 2007 — 3:22 pm
Matt says:
i c
October 4, 2007 — 3:11 am
KC says:
Well i had no problems with it working but i did do full isntall off the bat, if you try to use the cheats it will crash every so often till you get half way through then its fine, i used the cheats cause its so damn laggy, im guessing my video card just sux i cant play well with laggy video, ny body else see it lag a lot, i know ive got the system ram for it and my processor kicks ass, ironically nuff my video card has 256mb of ram its suppose to turbo cache at 512mb of ram but mine whent to 1Gb of ram, im pretty sure the GPU cant handle that, so its laggy as hell at the lowest settings, forget default settings, i can barely shoot, halo 1 runs perfectly on low settings
October 20, 2007 — 5:44 am
aNT says:
Pero que mierda es esto ?
No se entiende ni papa.
December 20, 2007 — 11:16 am
Jan Dembowski says:
Sigh. I am guessing that aNT hit the Spanish version of this post.
I use a translator plugin to provide versions of my postings in other languages. I include at the top of the sidebar a box that says (for Spanish):
Atención: Esta página fue escrita originalmente en inglés.
Which just points out that the post was written in English. The Spanish is not very good as aNT indicated…
December 20, 2007 — 2:33 pm
Nicolas says:
A mi no me deja instalarlo porque sale que no puede abrir el archivo especificado vcredist.msi.
Que problema es ese?
December 25, 2007 — 3:11 pm
Brimest0ne says:
Halo is really messed up. I had enough of all the problems with Halo2 and returned the game to EB Games for a trade. Bought Crysis instead, WOW, Way better, Never crashes!!
However, I forgot to uninstall Halo2 and started the game and it ran without the DVD in the drive, and get this, I was able to play the game to the end!!! I’m sure I can’t play online but what the hell, Live didn’t work either! Besides, If I want to have my ass kicked gaming online, I’m not going to pay for it!!
January 1, 2008 — 3:18 am
Jan Dembowski says:
Welcome back and Happy New Year.
After I installed Crysis (great game!) I installed that patch from Microsoft that they recommended.
Later on I played Halo 2, had a Microsoft update applied and the game has been working really well since then.
The ironic thing is that since I have Crysis I’m not planning on playing Halo 2 again…
January 1, 2008 — 7:40 am
Andy Hooooooo says:
I had the same problem, tried re-inserting the disc 5 times and it didnt work.
But then…. I saw what said…level select. o.o
After i beat the level for the third time omfg..
I went to the “select level” menu and there it was..
the next level. I don’t know if this works for u guys or not but yea : P (btw if ur gonna try this and it says u will lose any progress, i didnt care, just skippp it and possibly go to the next LEVLLL!!
October 29, 2008 — 9:45 pm
ivan says:
Hey, i have halo 2, downloaded from a torrent. It works fine, and i have a valid cd key that my friend gave to me. So i do the login on LIVE( in game) it says its downloading etc.. after that it says” There is an update for this game on LIVE, you will leave LIVE if u say no. Do you wish to to update now?”
i click yes. then it says its updating. then the game closes and nothing happens. i dont know if its a problem..
December 23, 2008 — 10:04 pm
Jan Dembowski says:
Ivan,
Don’t know how to respond, really. You admit that you downloaded a copy of a commercial game. I’m not going to get into deep poo by giving advice for solving problems for a pirated game…
Good luck and happy holidays.
December 23, 2008 — 10:17 pm
XeDK! says:
If you mod campaign, then you must close the program openin the map The Arbiter (04b_gasgiant) If you do NOT mod, then press “Ctrl” + “Alt” + “Del” and go to “Proccesses” in the tabs, and end anything that is similar to hao 2 vista, DO NOT END ANYTHING ELSE IF YOU DO YOU GET BLUESCREEN AND HAVE TO RESTART (no damage, though) Other things that may be wrong, You haven’t finished installing the game, therefore just put the disc in and it’ll load off of that
February 21, 2009 — 10:36 am
XeDK! says:
If you guys are hacking/modding maps and they are breaking I will personally e-mail you a clean retail map, my AIM is “MeleeLite” or [meleelite] “a-with-a-circle-sign” aim.com, don’t be afraid to say your modding, everyone does it
February 21, 2009 — 10:39 am
Jan Dembowski says:
XeDK thanks for the help.
I’ve edited your comment here since I do not want bots trolling my site and getting any e-mail addresses.
Anyone reading the comment should be able to figure out your e-mail for contacting you.
February 21, 2009 — 11:39 am
cloff says:
I do have the same problem as Jan had in the beginning.
But now, I have a downloaded ISO file for XP which i updated with a Vista patch and now it gives this error the whole time:
LIVE gaming on Windows failed to initialize. This may be because another LIVE gaming on Windows application (such as the Halo 2 dedicated server) is running on the same machine. Otherwise, reinstalling this game may fix the problem.
I DO want to reinstall it, but i can’t find those damn savefiles. Y’know, i dont want to start up from a scratch again.. So, where are those Savefiles??
July 2, 2009 — 6:13 am
blackblur says:
i have halo 2 also i face a problem similer to that but once i beat the metropolis level and am supposed to go to the orbitor it some times loads the cutscens but then it freezes or stops and the flashing button to the right of my power stops
July 4, 2009 — 8:41 am
Jan Dembowski says:
Sorry I can’t offer any advice. I stopped playing Halo 2 on the PC in 2008. The game was too dated and had too many problems.
When (if!) Halo 3 comes out for the PC, I may be tempted to buy it. But for now I stick to better running FPSs for the PC.
July 4, 2009 — 8:58 am
micky says:
Hey, i have halo 2, tried to install on new vista premium laptop pc.I try to play but it always go straight to windows live nothing else So i do the login on LIVE it says its downloading etc.. after that it says” There is an update for this game on LIVE, you will leave LIVE if u say no. Do you wish to to update now?”
i click yes. then it says its updating. then the game closes and nothing happens. i dont know if its a problem..
July 20, 2009 — 2:34 am
Bob says:
It is just trying to open windows installer, that is normal for halo 2.
June 20, 2011 — 9:39 am
Jan Dembowski says:
It’s a problem. I know that Halo 2 is a very dated game, but I wish Microsoft would get their act together.
I can and do still play old PC games on my Vista PC like Max Payne 2 so Halo 2 should at least be able to.
July 20, 2009 — 5:48 am
Danniboy says:
HEEEELP…. plz read this and try help me =(
This is the problem: i start halo 2 everything is fine. but when i join a multiplayer (online) game and play for a while it come a error says something was wrong with halo 2……
July 30, 2009 — 5:23 pm
Jan Dembowski says:
Danniboy,
Sorry but I can’t offer much help. I’ve uninstalled Halo 2 over a year ago.
August 1, 2009 — 7:54 am
Danniboy says:
ow 😛 Thanks anyway
i fix it i just reinstalled it =D
August 3, 2009 — 2:05 pm
Chris says:
hello everyone i seem to have this problem, i install the game with no problems… but when i try to launch it to play it it wont even start an error pops up from vista saying… halo 2 for vista has stopped working and game will not start!!! anyone know a fix?
December 26, 2009 — 4:49 pm
Jan Dembowski says:
Your best bet would be to try Microsoft’s forums.
http://forums.haloonwindowsvista.com/forums/16/ShowForum.aspx
I haven’t even tried to play that game in a couple of years.
December 27, 2009 — 7:54 am
sam c says:
Hello i am playing halo 2 for windows vista and every once in a while the game will mess up and it seems like the down arrow on my keyboard is down when it really is not. Anyone having this problem?
November 25, 2010 — 3:42 pm
Jan Dembowski says:
Sam,
Sorry but I gave up on Halo 2 years ago. With so many better FPS out there you’ll just have more fun with something like Borlderlands.
November 26, 2010 — 7:32 am
George says:
Gees, It’s incredible that MS can’t even get to work a game with their own OS. I guess it’s the Vista of FPS games, lots of problems like the OS it should work in. Well, this comment is just a rant.
I got a copy of this game and it plays fine in my laptop (Win 7). It’s curious that it didn’t even ask for activation and I needed a little fix for playing the maps -an executable that renames the 3 first maps and lets me play the whole campaign. Aside of this, no problem.
But, I’m trying to make it work in my kid friend laptop and it’s just, impossible. At first, it didn’t respond at launch; Once I figured it needed a compatibility mode it was fine, but now the problem was live. Ok, seems like cutting the internet works, but now It won’t “download profiles”. That was about an hour of messing around. I don’t know if it’s a problem of his slow network.. but, hell.
Halo 1 plays very nicely everywhere I tried: XP, Win 7. But this one has major problems. I understand why people dislike the port to PC, because of it’s extensive problems and that they didn’t release it for XP. Heck, the price too. I don’t pay to mess around with so much problems, I only try to work it around becoause I’m a fan of halo (1) and it brings me good memories -my 1st FPS.
If they ever want to take Halo 3 to PC I hope they do it well, like Halo 1. No live, compatibility, activation and maps problems. Although seems like they won’t ever port H3 to PC.
December 26, 2010 — 6:17 am
Bob says:
I was crashing when master chief was told to protect the test chamber. All i had to do was turn down the graphics in the game. Halo 2 never froze after that.
June 20, 2011 — 9:37 am