Plants vs. Zombies

Plants Vs. Zombies is a casual tower defense-style game featuring anthropomorphic plants defending a lawn from invading zombies. The game features a humorous take on the zombie concept. Along with the main adventure, the game contains several mini-games and additional features.

Windows

Different Versions

Steam vs 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.

Game of The Year Edition

The Game of The Year Edition adds achievements, a new feature called Zombatar, and replaces the "Michael Jackson Zombie" with a disco dancer. This is the only version currently available.

General Problems

BASS_ChannelSetAttributes Crash

When starting Plants Vs Zombies (and other PopCap games as well), the game might crash with an error message, BASS_ChannelSetAttributes function not found. This is caused by the game accidentally trying to read a file that shares the name of one of the game files, bass.dll. This happens when there is a file named bass.dll in one of the following folders (I am using C as an example): C:\Windows\, C:\Windows\System32\, or C:\Windows\SysWow64\. Renaming or removing this file will allow the game to run (but may cause problems with the program that installed bass.dll there, keep a backup in case this happens).

Another reported fix is running the game in XP compatibility mode. This might introduce other problems, especially on the Steam version.

This problem occurs on both retail and Steam versions of the game.

Widescreen Support

Plants Vs. Zombies does not support widescreen. Widescreen monitors will typically display "pillarboxing", black bars on the sides of the screen, preserving the 4:3 ratio of the game. Disabling 3D acceleration in the game options may allow stretched widescreen in most computers.

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 (x86)\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.

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\[some_number]\3590\remote\

Linux

While no official Linux version exists, a version of Plants vs. Zombies for Google's Chrome web browser is available. This version, available for purchase from the Chrome Web Store, uses Google's "Native Client" technology and should work on Linux systems.