game crashes at the same place/time

[EEVIAC]

As some of you know I bought Final Fantasy 7 recently for the pc.  I play the game on two separate computers.  On one machine everything works fine, but on the other machine, which is an eMachines W2247 it crashes in the same spot every time I play it.  For those of you who are familiar with the game, it crashes right when I enter into a chocobo race up at the Gold Saucer.  While looking at my Chocobo's statistics, just before the race begins, everything is working, and when I press the START button on the controller to begin the race, the game crashes and I get the message: ff7.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close.  Sorry for the inconvenience..

I've isolated the problem as much as I can and can't figure this out... The only thing I have to go on is what Event Viewer is telling me:

Description: faulting application ff7.exe, version 0.0.0.0, faulting module ff7.exe, version 0.0.0.0, fault address 0x00364de2

Event ID: 1000        File name: faultrep.dll


Bytes code:
0000: 41 70 70 6c 69 63 61 74   Applicat
0008: 69 6f 6e 20 46 61 69 6c   ion Fail
0010: 75 72 65 20 20 66 66 37   ure  ff7
0018: 2e 65 78 65 20 30 2e 30   .exe 0.0
0020: 2e 30 2e 30 20 69 6e 20   .0.0 in
0028: 66 66 37 2e 65 78 65 20   ff7.exe
0030: 30 2e 30 2e 30 2e 30 20   0.0.0.0
0038: 61 74 20 6f 66 66 73 65   at offse
0040: 74 20 30 30 33 36 34 64   t 00364d
0048: 65 32 0d 0a               e2..   


I've googled the info. from event viewer but not having much luck interpreting this stuff...

[EEVIAC]

well I'll be dog-gonned


I tore my computer apart trying to figure this whole thing out and the solution to the problem was merely applying an unofficial patch, which was available on the manufacturers website, deep in their archives.     The game works fine now. 

Apparently the problem was in the fact that the game was designed for Windows 95 and I've been trying to run it on XP.  However, I've been running the game the whole time on Vista without problems, provided that I run it in compatibility mode for Win 95.  Then again, that's what I was doing when trying to play the game on XP, so naturally I was pretty confused... 

After recalling some basic things I learned a while back, it dawned on me that one of the keys to troubleshooting is the ability to know where to find information, especially when it comes to applications.                    

So I thought, "Duhhhhhhhhh!  Go to the mfr website!"