Viva Piñata - can it be run on Windows 10?

[IainB]

Viva Piñata: This game is/was a favourite of my daughter's, and I have been trying to get it to run under Windows 10, but so far no joy.
Has anyone here managed to get VP to run under Win10? I'd be interested in comparing notes.
I have scoured many web forums for ideas, but to no avail.
TIA.

[4wd]

Did you mean Viva Piñata ?

According to Microsoft at least 2 people say it runs on Win10.

Here's an active thread with a few posts saying it runs on 10.

If you didn't mean Viva Piñata just ignore me. 

[IainB]

@4wd: Yes, I did mean Viva Piñata - thanks for pointing that out. Fixed now. (More haste, less speed...)   

I had seen both those discussion threads by the way - thanks for the links anyway. They don't actually lead to a solution of the problem of how to get Viva Piñata to run under Win10.

[4wd]

One of the posts in the second link mentioned installing it from scratch off the CD/DVD, something to do with getting DirectX installed properly, IIRC.

[IainB]

^^ Yes, the VP (Viva Piñata) installation eventually works OK - takes A-G-E-S though (about 2 days of very slow unpacking and I/O, and I have no idea why) - and the DirectX needs to be installed after that because VP checks at startup and complains if it can't find the relevant DirectX DLL files (they are not automatically installed). The DirectX installer is on one of the source DVDs.
You then need to download and install the GFWL (Game For Windows Live) Client installer.
I'm currently stuck at the point where the GFWL Client starts up but for some reason will not accept perfectly valid logins. You need to get it to do that because VP won't start up unless:

• (a) it has the original DISK1 in the DVD drive, and
• (b) it can make a connection to your already logged-in game account via GFWL.

The GFWL game account is tied to your Microsoft Hotmail/Outlook account ID. There is a workaround for the fact that the GFWL Client cannot cope with two-step authorisation to the Hotmail/Outlook account ID - you just make a special one-off app password for the GFWL gamertag to be used as the ID input to the GFWL Client. That doesn't seem to work though - not sure why. I haven't tried going back to one-step authorisation yet.

I suspect that part of my problem just might be a scratched DISK1, so I am going to get that polished up. It reads OK using IsoBuster (which is a great tool for DVD data recovery/backup), but I suspect that the VP startup process (not the installation process) might be having difficulty deciphering some licence data through some of the scratches - I say this because the drive head sounds like it is "hunting" at VP startup.

[Deozaan]

I recently got Fable 3 to work on Windows 10 by uninstalling everything having to do with GFWL and then reinstalling GFWL client with the download from Microsoft's site.

And when I say everything having to do with GFWL, I don't mean other games. I just mean anything that shows up in your Add/Remove Programs about Games for Windows (Marketplace/Live Redistributable).

That might fix your problem with GFWL not accepting your valid login. But then again, that may just be an issue with 2-Factor Authentication.

[IainB]

@Deozaan: ^^ That's a new one on me, though in my case the GFWL Client was not already installed and was downloaded fresh as a virgin installation from the MS website anyway.
There's all sorts of things suggested in the forums, though most of it seems to be hearsay or blind experimentation and if it works then it's probably by pure chance. So far, I have found nothing that confirms that a VP installation on Win10 is repeatedly successful if you do such-and-such.
What I find quite surprising is that there seems to be little or no comment on or support for the thing from Microsoft.