Wirehead Studios

Hey All,
   
If you are interested in playing Halo2 on windows XP, I`ve found a loader that acually works (well works for me anyway).

http://halo2xp.tk/

Thanks for the tip, Arnie.

Yeah, my mate took the chance with that and it worked fine. No DX10 support, y'see ;) After about half an hour of playing it I began to think: Microsoft call THIS a hard sell?? I can't believe I waited 3 bloody years on this ...

How exactly is that Illegal? It's like... using something so you can fry eggs with a toaster... not smart but legal...

I think the "Yes, it's highly illegal, if you try this your hard drive will get locked out unless you install vista on it" with the roll-eyes smiley was sarcasm.  I haven't read Halo 2's EULA seeing that I don't have the game, so I have no idea if it's legal or not, but I doubt anyone's going out to buy Vista just to play Halo 2 on it anyway, and now that it works on XP...  In fact, why the hell would anyone go out and buy Vista to begin with?  :doom_?:

I sincerely doubt that in the great scheme of things that it is illegal. After all, it's not actually a crack, just a trainer of sorts.

Has anyone got a DX10 GFX card???.....

Here is the EULA, if anyone can translate to english please let us know.

This would be the only part of the EULA that might conflict with running it on XP, however, the question is whether or not there is a technical limitation - by legal definition - in Halo2 running on XP if you use this installer thingie.  I'm not a legal expert so I can't say whether this installation process could be viewed this way or not.  That being said, there's nothing in the EULA that states you must install it on a specific operating system or that specific software must be installed prior to use.  There's a lot of grey area here and I think it could be argued either way.

I haven't passed the bar either, but I reckon you could dispute that in court. The Vista requirement is not actually a technical limitation, so much as a deliberately coded feature that prevents the software from launching on XP. The fact that the launcher works proves thah Halo 2 is compatible with XP without any modifications to the actual software itself. Unless it's a warez copy, I can't see the issue.

Microsoft would still win, though, 'cos they can afford the lawyers ...

how very true, if mircosoft don't like it you can bet there asses that they'll stop it

Yeah, the same way they've stopped people from pirating Windows.  :slippy_thumb:

The fact that it wii not Install on XP is down to function calls to files that are not on XP.
To make it install on XP the "fix" apparently "hooks" these calls somehow.

There was the same problem with Doom3 only installing on XP.

I know you can get Games that install on both XP and Vista, Bioshock does, I think.

I cannot believe that a games software company would limit the sales of their Game by making it only install on Vista.

Microsoft is the publisher for the Halo series.  They don't care about how well Halo 2 sells.  They just want everyone using Vista.

It'll probably be some time before a majority of games require directX 10, so far the only games that NEED to be vista only seem to be *gasp* made by microsuck.