Just over a week ago I wrote a post discussing my lack of gaming in recent months. Amongst other games I mentioned KotOR II:

The only reason I replayed KotOR was to have it all in the back of my mind [not that I actually needed to!] to replay KotOR II. Which has issues with Vista. Which doesn’t work on my laptop. I’ve tried patches, searched the internet for hours, downloaded a copy seeing my retail disc didn’t work, reinstalled my disc based version.. Nothing worked.

On Saturday I decided to give it one last attempt and hours later finally got it working. Seeing that I’ve since noticed several search terms for my blog on how to get the game working, I’ve decided to post on how I got it working as the official help and forums are useless and I got all of the following info from different places.

Tips on how to play Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords on Windows Vista:

1. I bought the retail copy over a year ago. Despite many attempts to get it working I have still not managed that. The version that I’m running now is a downloaded version from a site on the internet. I will not link to pirated content on this blog nor give you any help in finding it as that’s your own thing. I have the full game and decided to download it as I could not get it to work.
2. Every step of the way install or run as Administrator. Whether or not the logged in account is an Administrator account doesn’t matter, you always need to reselect the ‘run as Administrator’ option. It won’t work otherwise.
3. The downloaded copy I’m running had the latest game patch included. If you don’t have that, locate it off the official site</a.
4. Download this Vista patch and follow the instructions on there.
5. Download a new SWKotOR2.exe from Securom here.
6. Set game to Windows XP [Service Pack 2] compatibility mode by rightclicking the SWKotOR2.exe -> Properties -> Compatibility.
7. Add the following in the SWKotOR2.ini file: FullScreen=0
8. Forget about the launcher. The launcher is useful in initially getting the official game patch installed and the initial settings, but it won’t run afterwards. Just directly launch the game from the SWKotOR2.exe.
9. Be prepared to do the above a couple of times..

Good Luck!