Last friday I purchased the Rockstar Complete Pack from Steam because I couldn’t resist the 50% off offer, and everything was fine until I tried to play Manhunt or Midnight Club 2.
It dindn’t occur to me to check if all the games were compatible for Windows Vista before purchasing, so I had to find a solution to the them run without crashing.
I found a great patch for Manhunt that can be found here, but I still had the problem with MC2.
People suggested to disable DEP (Data Execution Prevention) to make it run, because the problem is that DEP blocks the game from running, but I didn’t like the idea of disabling it just to play a game, so I went out to find a better way.
It turned out that the problem is that the .EXE reports that it’s compatible with DEP, but it isn’t, so that results in an instant crash. After a few tries I found the string on the .EXE that disabled DEP and I was finally able to play MC2 on Vista without disabling DEP.
I have made a patch will automatically update your mc2.exe installed by Steam to make it run on Vista and Windows 7 without disabling DEP.
Download here: mc2_vista_patch
Credit goes to Ryan Govostes for his amazing code and investigation.
Note: it will also work on any other installation if you specify the path.
The simplest way is to create a shortcut for MC2_Vista_Patch.exe, go to it’s Properties and on the Targed box, paste o type the path to mc2.exe following the patcher location.
Here you have the instructions to make the fix yourself if you want to:
1. You will need XVI32 (a HEX Editor) that can be downloaded from here.
2. Once downloaded you have to run it and open your mc2.exe
3. Then press “CTRL+G” and select Go to —> Hexadecimal and type “95E”
4. Now go to Edit / Overwrite String and type “00 00″
5. Now Save the file and it will load without disabling DEP.
Tags: DEP, DLLCharacteristics, Midnight Club 2, Windows Vista
Glad to see that the same technique I applied to Manhunt works for other games.
The source code to the Manhunt patch is in the public domain, so you’re free to use it to make your own. It’s fairly trivial:
1. Replace “manhunt.exe” with the “mc2.exe”
2. Replace 0x08DE with 0x095E
3. Replace 0x08DF with 0x095F
Thank you Ryan for you amazing manhunt’s patch, your thinking was pure genious.
Because I don’t know much about this, I tried compiling it with Visual C++ 2005 Express but got some errors that I was unable to solve, until I realized that I needed to use Dev-C++ and it worked great.
Now I’m going to update the post. Again, thank you.
Thanks for the patch, just bought the rockstar collection on steam and I am gathering all the required fixes to play the games on vista ultimate x64.
Hopefully now I can play all the games. It’s a shame they did not make the games vista compatable as it seems all the fixes are relatively small.
Thanks for the great work on your side !!
Just a tip, I would replace “mhpatch” in the source with “MC2_Vista_Patch” in the usage strings on lines 163 and 186.
Let me know if the patch works for other Rockstar games!
[...] Ch3rokee discovered that my Manhunt patch works for Midnight Club 2, also part of the Rockstar Collection on Steam, and published a modification of my mhpatch program [...]
Thank you again for your help Ryan, I have already fixed it and updated the files on the server.
Ah, excellent. I had a toy with this myself in VC2008 and got it built but was unsure of the offsets to patch.
Good work!
so yah, how do i get the patch to change the start path? i don’t have it for steam thats why. thanks
nevermind. my problem isn’t that. i don’t get video, i have sound but i just get a black screen like the game turns off my monitor
plz help me i dont have the steam version of midnight club 2 i tried to do it as u said but dont want to work help………
shamielbmx@yahoo.com
Another Way would be the following:
Copy MC2_Vista_Patch.exe to C:/
Go to START / Accesories / Command Prompt
In that window type cd/
Now type MC2_Vista_Patch.exe and after that the path to your mc2.exe, for example: MC2_Vista_Patch.exe “c:/Program Files/Midnight Club 2/mc2.exe”
And then it should be patched, unless the exe is different, I haven’t been able to test it myself.
Hello, I suppose I am kindof late to this page, I recently purchased Midnight Club 2 from Direct2Drive, only to realize it didn’t work with Vista/7.
So I tried to use the patch on here to run it but it didn’t work. I then modified it manually using the Hex editor as per these instructions, but that also was a no go.
I ended up using the commandline fix “bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx AlwaysOff” which finally allows the game to run – I’m not that tech-savvy though so maybe there is something I missed? Or maybe there is some different value I need to modify. Any help would be great!
Anyways, thanks for the info! I’m glad I can play it at all either way. = ))
Hello dulcismelos, the exe from D2D will be different most definitely due to the DRM, so you could use the HEX editor to replace (CTRL+R) the HEX String “00 6A 21 00″ with “00 00 00 00″.
I can’t guarantee that it will work without seeing the exe myself, but you cant test it in a minute.
It worked!!!!
Thank you sooooo much!!!! I had really given up hope trying to do it myself but thanks to you I can finally stop worrying about the DEP issues!
Wish I could repay you somehow, you are a a true asset to the gaming community. = ))
I’m glad I could help, now just enjoy MC2, game that I still think is the best of all the Midnight Clubs.
[...] and bought it, and when I tried to run it crashed immediately. Then I found the deal patcher: http://www.nicolaspeople.com/ch3rokeesblog/?p=33 Just did some test racing and it appears all is [...]
Thanks for the fix. Got MC2 for $2.50 yesterday, and the patch fixed it easily.
Thanks alot this really solved the problem, it was like a magic.
Keep up the good work.
Please can you help with swat 4 it wont run at all. i have downloaded the patch and i have the key code for the game but it wont run at all on my win 7 but i have copied the file into a folder in programms file
How about the hex location for the non-steam version (retail)?
Or could you describe how to find such a string in any executable.
Would like to add that the retail version works when 00 6A 21 00 is zeroed out, thank you!
How exactly do you apply the patch? It must be simple but I’ve never done anything like this before. Much help will be appreciated!!
Marie you just have to double click on the file mc2_vista_patch.exe that’s inside a folder of the .ZIP file you downloaded.
Hello.
I too am having some trouble installing on windows 7 64 bit. The patch doesn’t work. Help please!
I just made a patch for win7 x64 and then realized that steam updated the exe and now the patch wont work. Right now I can’t test if they included this fix in the new exe or they just reverted to a previous version to remove the craked exe they had been using for the steam version since day one, just like max payne 2 and the rest.
I actually can’t find the string to fix in the new exe, so I’m positive that they included this fix in the new exe, no need to patch it anymore. The problem win Win7 x64 here (never tried it before in this OS) is the error “CoCreateInstance failed”, which doesn’t seem to have anything to do with dep.
Right now I don’t know what the cause of that problem would be.
I didn’t get mine from steam though. I downloaded it from gamestop. The error get is that the game isn’t compatible with my version of windows, I tried changing the hex values like in earlier solutions, it still didn’t work.
Hey TJ, did you try replacing the HEX String “00 6A 21 00″ with “00 00 00 00″? That should do the trick, but it may not work anyway for another reason, just like it happened to me when I tried to run it on my win7 x64.
I did just that. Still, as the installer is about to run, the error dialog box comes up. How did you get it to work on your Win 7 x64?
BTW. Thanks for this blog, it’s really awesome how you help.
So the problem is with the installer of the game? if so I would try setting the compatibility mode to XP. As Steam installs the game itself, I didn’t have that problem.
Thank you so much!! I finally got it running. Your help and patience was amazing! Thanks again!
You’re welcome, I like to help when I can.