Squaresoft shipped millions of units of this game worldwide, and last time I checked, you can still get a used copy on Ebay for a treat. There are even plenty of internet shops out there who have new copies of the game, so it is by no means notoriously hard to track down.

Funny thing is though, that I once borrowed a copy of FFVII that froze in the exact same place no matter how many times I tried. After a couple of weeks later, I tried starting from the very beginning again. This time around, I got Yuffie to join my party outside Junon, and strangely the game didn't freeze in Cosmo Canyon that time around. It probably doesn't have anything to do with your situation, but who knows. It might help haha.

no i dont think its a problem with the disk as if i rember right i had a similar problem at this point in the game i think you need to talk to everyone or click on a star something like that i cant quite remember but im sure something like that happend. this part in the game was always a problem for me later on when i went back with cloud it took me ages to work out too

i dont know why this is so hard for everyone. i think the game tells you what to do at this point. pay more attention people!