save states and memcards (read faq, didnt help)

I don't know how the save state ties into it, but due to the numerous and vast amount of problems they have, I never use them, and never will.

For this, have you tried completely deleting everything in the memcards folder? The emulator should automatically create two new files called epsxe000.mcr and epsxe001.mcr if they aren't already there (that's what they're listed as in mine anyway). Just try starting the game anew and saving at first chance. Quit the emulator, and try to load from that save. If it is there, then you know the savestate is the problem.

woot! problem found and fixed thanks to your suggestion . I moved the memcards out of that folder, like you said, causing new memcards to be created, loaded sstate, and saved the game. Then i looked at my new memcard: the game had for some reason saved in slot 9...(and i looked in my old one too, they were there, just in slots 7 and 8, a cpl pages down in my game, and never noticed since everything up to that was blank... for some reason ff8 didint move them to the top like it should have...oh well). I was able to copy the files over via mem manager, and there they are! the eother ones moved up on the list to sequential slots too, like they should have, after editing the memcard. Anyway, thanks for your help, Lord Zedeck. Now I can save normally again

Glad to have helped.

By the way, you may want to use ePSXe version 1.5.2 instead. The newest version has problems with some Final Fantasy games (as well as Chrono Cross), though I'm not sure if this applies to Final Fantasy VIII or not (I know VII and especially IX can have problems with that version though). Can someone verify this?

problems, you say? interesting, ill have to look into 1.5.2, thanks for the tip

1.6.0 has a few problems, so does 1.5.2, it's best to keep them both on hand (as well as PSXeven and SSSPSX) in the event that something goes wrong.

alright, ill keep those in mind next time something goes wrong, thanks for the help guys