Plants vs. Zombies

Plants vs Zombies is a very mature and well developed game with few problems. Most problems are the result in unexpected conflicts with the Steam version.

Steam or Popcap version?

Both versions of the game are identical in terms of content. However, the Steam version regularly goes on sale, and also support Steam Cloud natively for the automatic syncing of save game data.

Steam problems

Save Game Corruption

Although the game supports Steam Cloud to sync save files the PC and Mac save files are not compatible with each other. Playing the game on one OS and then downloading it and running it on the other will cause the files to be permanently corrupted and you will lose all data. There are also reports of save data suddenly disappearing without clear reason. It is recommended that you make alternative backups of your save data just in case.

Problems starting up

Error message: 'Unable to load Steam.dll'.

Verify cache

Right-Click on Plants Vs. Zombies in the Steam game library, click 'Properties', select the 'Local Files' tab and click on the 'Verify Integrity of Game Cache'.

Run program as an administrator

Locate the .exe file in this location:

c:\Program Files\Steam\steamapp\common\Plants Vs. Zombies\PlantsVsZombies.exe

• Right-Click on the PlantsVsZombies.exe file, click on the Compatibility tab, check the box next to 'Run this program as an administrator', click Apply and OK.
• Check the box next to 'Run this program in compatibility mode for:' and then select "Windows XP (Service Pack 2)".

Save game

Save game location

Steam

Filenames are called user1.dat or user2.dat, etc.

\Steam\userdata\[some_number]\3590\remote\