Windows 11 doesn't play nice with repacks?

dr.stevil

dr.stevil

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Sep 26, 2008
Messages
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Disclaimer: I'm not debating the ethics of using repacks. Much like NO-CD cracks, some people just want to use the games they paid for and not be forced to auto-update game versions that may or may not break mods (I'm looking at you, Cities:Skylines on Steam) or that use some janky DRM that cripples performance. Not everyone is a filthy pirate lol.

With that said, as the title states, is there some sort of issue with Windows 11 that causes it to not play nice with scene repacks? (DODI/FG/ETC)

I recently updated my machine to a fresh windows 11 install and shortly after updating, I was surprised to see that none of the repacks I have saved on my server would install. Every single one of them would eventually throw a DLL error (isdone.dll and/or unarc.dll) during the install claiming the archive is corrupt. I tried re-downloading several of the games, thinking the files had actually somehow become corrupt, and kept getting the same errors.

Those errors lead me to google and found that many people have had the same issues (or similar at least, because none of the claimed "fixes" helped)... I tired everything I could possibly think of to get them installed and nothing worked, including the suggestions I found online. After a lot of frustration, I became suspicious that it was Windows 11 doing something funny behind the scenes and ultimately ditched it and went back to Windows 10. I was pleasantly surprised to see that all of the re-packs that failed to install previously, are all now installing without issue again.

Is there a known issue with Windows 11 and "sailing the seven seas"? I find it hard to believe I'm the only person that's noticed this lol
 
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Dopamin3 said:
From a quick Google, yes this seems to be a common issue. I think this response explains it.
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Oh wow, thanks for that! That actually makes a ton of sense.

I searched pretty extensively but only found suggestions on how to fix it (that never actually work lol). I'm actually surprised that, with how long windows 11 has been out, this isn't common knowledge. I guess thats just another reason to stick with Windows 10 for now.
 
dr.stevil said:
Oh wow, thanks for that! That actually makes a ton of sense.

I searched pretty extensively but only found suggestions on how to fix it (that never actually work lol). I'm actually surprised that, with how long windows 11 has been out, this isn't common knowledge. I guess thats just another reason to stick with Windows 10 for now.
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I sort of disagree with the assessment that it isn't common knowledge. It seems like when you're talking about the errors you mentioned with unarc.dll and isdone.dll, there is easily findable information about this- dating back to 2021 around the Windows 11 launch up to the present. This is just scratching the front page of Google, I'd imagine there is even more information in the circles where people are discussing and obtaining these.

Did you try the steps outlined here? I'll assume you probably did in your quest of trying all available fixes, so I guess you'll need to wait for the "developers" to release updated versions compatible with Windows 11. I'm not good to help further with this because I run Windows 10 and don't use repacks at all.
 
Thanks for the help and the confirmation Dopamin, I appreciate the effort! I def didn't see that link in your last post, but I did try all of those fixes outlined in it via various forum/reddit/youtube videos with no resolution. As far as I'm concerned, I'm done trouble shooting it. I'll just stick with 10 for the foreseeable future.
 
dr.stevil said:
Thanks for the help and the confirmation Dopamin, I appreciate the effort! I def didn't see that link in your last post, but I did try all of those fixes outlined in it via various forum/reddit/youtube videos with no resolution. As far as I'm concerned, I'm done trouble shooting it. I'll just stick with 10 for the foreseeable future.
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And then you can proudly play at maximum volume:


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8ju_10NkGY

(low key a banger)
 
dr.stevil said:
Disclaimer: I'm not debating the ethics of using repacks. Much like NO-CD cracks, some people just want to use the games they paid for and not be forced to auto-update game versions that may or may not break mods (I'm looking at you, Cities:Skylines on Steam) or that use some janky DRM that cripples performance. Not everyone is a filthy pirate lol.

With that said, as the title states, is there some sort of issue with Windows 11 that causes it to not play nice with scene repacks? (DODI/FG/ETC)

I recently updated my machine to a fresh windows 11 install and shortly after updating, I was surprised to see that none of the repacks I have saved on my server would install. Every single one of them would eventually throw a DLL error (isdone.dll and/or unarc.dll) during the install claiming the archive is corrupt. I tried re-downloading several of the games, thinking the files had actually somehow become corrupt, and kept getting the same errors.

Those errors lead me to google and found that many people have had the same issues (or similar at least, because none of the claimed "fixes" helped)... I tired everything I could possibly think of to get them installed and nothing worked, including the suggestions I found online. After a lot of frustration, I became suspicious that it was Windows 11 doing something funny behind the scenes and ultimately ditched it and went back to Windows 10. I was pleasantly surprised to see that all of the re-packs that failed to install previously, are all now installing without issue again.

Is there a known issue with Windows 11 and "sailing the seven seas"? I find it hard to believe I'm the only person that's noticed this lol
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OK. I'm a doofus. What's a repack?
 
lol seriously?

A repack is exactly what it sounds like. A “scene” group or user will take a cracked game and repack it into a new installer… often including things like trainers/cheats/etc while removing other things like foreign languages/low resolution cutscenes, etc and at higher compression ratios.
 
dr.stevil said:
lol seriously?

A repack is exactly what it sounds like. A “scene” group or user will take a cracked game and repack it into a new installer… often including things like trainers/cheats/etc while removing other things like foreign languages/low resolution cutscenes, etc and at higher compression ratios.
Click to expand...

Oh it's a cheating thing. No wonder I'm not familiar with repacks.
 
dr.stevil said:
lol seriously?

A repack is exactly what it sounds like. A “scene” group or user will take a cracked game and repack it into a new installer… often including things like trainers/cheats/etc while removing other things like foreign languages/low resolution cutscenes, etc and at higher compression ratios.
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I'm not a gamer. Seriously. I do Adobe applications that need GPU acceleration.
 
philb2 said:
I'm not a gamer. Seriously. I do Adobe applications that need GPU acceleration.
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Apparently not a searcher either

1698270306466.png
 
Most of the time, disable all ( ALL of it ) the Defender crap will allow some of these to install without issue...most anyway.

FG's repacks are very rough on CPU during install... ( but highly compressed compared to some of DODI's repacks).
 
jlbenedict said:
Most of the time, disable all ( ALL of it ) the Defender crap will allow some of these to install without issue...most anyway.

FG's repacks are very rough on CPU during install... ( but highly compressed compared to some of DODI's repacks).
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i have defender set to ignore my dl folder, where i usually run things from. maybe that makes a difference?
yeah they are, unless you tick the "low cpu usage" box on the installer...
 
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pendragon1 said:
i use FG/CODEX releases all the time, to try before i buy, no issues and ive been on 11 insider the whole time too.
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I do the same. In the old days, they had shareware. I'm not shelling out big bucks for a game only to find out I don't like it. I'm currently checking out The Last of Us which was is a CODEX release. The last game I bought was Far Cry 5. I tried Far Cry 6 and it sucked. I'm probably going to buy The Last of Us, but playing it on my old desktop with a 5 year old graphics card I find its not smooth as on my Dell G5 5505 Gaming Laptop which has a Ryzen 7 4800H with 8 cores, and an AMD Radeon RX 5600M running Windows 11 Home. I play games several times trying different things until I get bored then switch to another game.
 
Executioner said:
I do the same. In the old days, they had shareware. I'm not shelling out big bucks for a game only to find out I don't like it.
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That's what steam refunds are for. You get an unlimited 2 hour trial and either refund or keep it. You aren't entitled to an infinite "trial" where you play the entire game and then decide if you feel like paying for it or not. That's ridiculous. /flamesuit on
 
GoldenTiger said:
That's what steam refunds are for. You get an unlimited 2 hour trial and either refund or keep it. You aren't entitled to an infinite "trial" where you play the entire game and then decide if you feel like paying for it or not. That's ridiculous. /flamesuit on
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I'll play devil's advocate here. First off, there are plenty of legitimate sellers to get Steam keys from at a cheaper price. I'm talking Fanatical, Humble Bundle, Indie Gala, GreenManGaming, the list goes on and on... When you buy a game, as soon as you reveal the key (not even activate it) you are not eligible for a refund. Same goes for if you activate it, you have no 2 hour window with third parties. It's permanently tied to your account.

Secondly, when buying from Steam- the Steam 2 hour window is not bulletproof. Sometimes if games have an introductory launcher type deal (e.g. World War 3) that will count time against you by just opening the game, sitting at the launcher screen and waiting to download the files necessary to actually play. There can also be other scenarios where this 2 hour refund doesn't save you like: Steam miscounting hours played (maybe you closed the game and Steam erroneously recorded it), a game breaking bug is encountered right after the 2 hour mark, the game initially works but an updated build is pushed out and the developer is slow to fix it, etc... etc...
 
Yes, I'm not happy in doing this, but I'm 68 years old and retired on a fixed income. I'm a long time gamer going back to the 80's where shareware was king. The best way to buy games. Once this went away, I pretty much quit shelling out $ only to find out a game was not what I was expecting. Also, I spend a lot of time going back and replaying the older games I have that are still on CD/DVD. Yeah I have electronic copies of them, and no-cd-keys to go with them. One game that I lost the 3½ floppies was DOOM, but I still have the original manual and receipt when I bought it.
 
pexaj said:
Does anyone know if FitGirl's repacks work on Windows 11?? I want to get Windows 11 but am worried if some games if not all games aren't able to run on W11... thanks.
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Not that I had any luck with. YMMV
 
pendragon1 said:
any ive tried have worked fine. personally think its a pebcak error for those that dont....
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lol that legit blows my mind. Especially with so many documented cases, how is that possible?

I will admit, while testing I DID get a single one of them to install without issue, but the rest all threw up errors on windows 11.
 
dr.stevil said:
lol that legit blows my mind. Especially with so many documented cases, how is that possible?

I will admit, while testing I DID get a single one of them to install without issue, but the rest all threw up errors on windows 11.
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like i said in my earlier post, the only thing ive done is marked my download folder as excluded in defender. FG is my go to too.
 
Microsoft's eventual goal is "You will do as we say do, nothing more and nothing less". It will be interesting to see just how for "users" will allow themselves to be pushed.
 
ZodaEX said:
Oh it's a cheating thing. No wonder I'm not familiar with repacks.
Click to expand...

Essentially they take a game that is a 100GB download, and compress it down to 65GB or so. Ratio varies of course. Install time will be longer. Good for archiving games or people with data caps. It would be nice if Steam offered something similar for those on data caps. Yeah the install time might take 30-45 minutes, but it can be of use to some people with poor internet but a decent CPU.
 
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