Diablo Backwards Compatibility Guide

[nhyrum]

In your Windows/system32 folder, can you locate a file named D3DX9_43.dll? DirectDraw wrappers generally utilize newer versions of DirectX than the old games they're made for, and I believe all of the Diablo wrappers use this particular file. Without it, the new ddraw.dll file can't work. Furthermore, in some cases old programs such as Diablo can be denied access to the system32 folder entirely, preventing them from using the required file even if its there where it should be. If you don't have D3DX9_43.dll in there, you probably need it, and if you do, you might attempt to copy it into the Diablo folder and try the ddraw wrapper again to see if it works that way.

i DO have the D3DX9_43.dll. i copied it into the diablo directory with no avail. I have all the D3DX9 files from 24 - 43 if that matters. is there a way i can grant diablo explecit permission to the system32 folder?

although, now when i run it it just crashes with no error message. :/

[Belix]

That's really peculiar. Alright, here is virtually every relevant current condition that Diablo 1 is running on my seldom used Windows 8.1 laptop. I realize you probably checked/tried many of these already, but if you match all of this exactly I'm curious if it still doesn't work. At one point I had a similar issue where my installed & patched Diablo worked on Win 8 but stopped working spontaneously one day, and I hadn't done anything with the computer lately. Not sure if a Windows update triggered it or what but it crashed on launch after that just like yours, until I found the wrapper you're having trouble with, which let Diablo and Hellfire run once again on it. So, assuming it is the same issue your laptop is having now, this is worth a test just to be sure.


*1) Diablo is patched to v1.09 (not sure how to tell when you can't start the game, normally it displays in the menu in the bottom left corner; if you're not positive it is patched to the latest version, download the latest official patch from Blizzard here and make certain you right-click the patch and run it as an administrator - Blizzard has a v1.09b as well, which is fine, either version will do but the game will display v1.09 either way)

*2) Diablo is not located anywhere inside a special Windows folder, such as Program Files, My Documents, or other user folders; it should be in a path such as C:\Games or something else you created, so Windows won't restrict the game's folder from the game itself with weird UAC security policies

*3) Diablo has the following Compatibility options set, and no others (right click on it or its shortcut, then choose Properties and go to the Compatibility tab):
-Run this program in compatibility mode for: Windows XP (Service Pack 3)
-Reduced color mode -- 8-bit (256) color
-Run this program as an administrator

*4) The ddraw.dll file in the directory shows the following information when you hold the mouse over it:
-Company: StrangeBytes.com
-File version: 6.1.7600.16385
-Size: 190 KB


Short of that, I'm not sure what to tell you. None of the DirectDraw wrappers you could try should have done anything that would affect Diablo or your system after deleting the relevant ddraw.dll file from the Diablo directory. By deleting that it should of gone back to behaving just like before. If you're super desperate you can try a system restore to the earliest date you can find before you tried out a different ddraw.dll file, but that seems extreme. Something seems amiss here, because the game should be working with or without the wrapper, yet works with neither.

Addendum: Even if you're sure you're patched to the latest version, if nothing here works for you, try running the patch anyway. I just found a thread where another user claims the game starts successfully if the v1.09 patch launches it, but not when he does. Sounds like an administrative permission or file path issue for him, but since I can't be certain it might be worth a try for you.

[nhyrum]

the only difference i have is that my ddraw file is 4KB larger than yours. same publisher and version. Diablo wont even run if i dont use the wrapper. I think it was that directx update thing that screwed everything up because it worked fine before that.

when i try to run it it spits out a .err file that i opened using notepad. it had three "Exception code: C0000005 ACCESS_VIOLATION
Fault address: 00320AAC 00:00000000 *unknown*"
"error reports" I guess ill call them.

I attached a .txt version of the .ERR file

[Belix]

Unfortunately, if there is any executable code at either of the fault addresses this text file lists, I can only find essentially blank lines in memory. A pity, because if I could have seen exactly what Diablo is trying to do at that point in its code, it might have given us a big hint what's going wrong.

You say you ran a DirectX update and then it stopped working? Alright, I will upload a copy of both of my DLL files. Try them in your Diablo folder. It includes my copy of the DirectDraw wrapper that is 4kb different than yours (which it shouldn't be, so maybe you have a corrupt copy), and my D3DX9 dll, just in case yours got messed up somehow.

Try just the D3DX9 first with no ddraw.dll in the folder, then try with both. If there is anything wrong with your copies, it should work one or both ways.

My uploads are maxed here at the Lounge, so I had to upload it to MediaFire:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/qtc14f...loDLLs.zip

If that resolves the problem, I'd be curious which DLL file you were having problems with. If there is a bad version of that ddraw.dll wrapper floating around the web, links to it should be removed.

[nhyrum]

i got the dll fikes and copied them into diablo's root directory. I also replaced the d3dx9_43 or whatever its called in the system32 directory, just in case it got messed up. now, when i run diablo the whole screen goes black(like its trying to open in full screen) instead of windowed and still crashes, but this time the "diablo has stopped working" window appears. Ill try some different compatability settings and a few creating a few different batch files i have seen, to see if anything works in the mean time. Is there any way to get diablo to output an error file that would be useful? maybe ill try booting in safe mode?

EDIT: I just deleted all of m dirextx through regedit, and that seems to have done nothing... this seens like its going to be as big of a pain in the ass aswhen i was doing some vba work on my laptop(without a pause/break key and without a removeable battery...) and ran an infinite loop... none of the hotkeys worked, and the power button was unresponsive had to let the battery die...

in the registry editor, under directdraw, i saw diablo.exe listed, so i guess it knows it needs directdraw, maybe deleting all the directdraw files and starting that from scratch might help?

[Belix]

Did you use one of the various registry file based fixes, or one of the DLL files that change registry information? These may not work for Windows 8.1 and could conflict with the DirectDraw wrapper as well. It would also offer another explanation as to why the issue persists after reinstallation and with the wrapper removed.

Using the Registry Editor, I would suggest navigating to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\DirectDraw\Compatibility

Look for any subfolders there named 'Diablo', 'Diablo v1.09' and so forth. If you find them, I would right-click on the Compatibility folder itself, Export to a file (as a backup to restore just in case), then once you have a backup, delete all the Diablo related folders and try with and without the ddraw wrapper from my link again.

Fingers crossed for you that this was the issue. Good luck!

[nhyrum]

there was a "diablo" folder. i Backed it up and deleted it and nothing changed. there was also a "BUG!" folder, so i thought that it was a bug, so i also backed it up and deleted it as well, with no noticable difference.

EDIT: this may or may not matter, but hellfire behaves the sameway, although ive never sucesfully loaded it. but lets just stick to fixing diablo first...

[Belix]

Starting to run out of ideas for things you could try, short of more extreme sweeping measures like having you perform a system restore, or change video drivers.

Do you have a list/links to all of the different ddraw and any other Diablo unofficial patches, registry files or wrappers you used? I am willing to try each and every one of them one by one on my own Win 8.1 laptop to try to recreate and solve your problem. If I can pinpoint which one of them triggers this issue, it may be a lot easier to figure out.

[nhyrum]

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/11765606904

This is the only other forum I have tried fixes from, and how I found your forum.

I dont have any unofficial diablo patches, just 1.09 from this forum and from blizzard itself(same, i expect)

I did not use any registry files, (only for servers on diablo II, shouldnt mess with things, I hope) those are the only diablo II registry files I used.

Do you think video drivers or dosbox would help? if i can get it to run under dosbox, that would be OK too

EDIT: DOSBOX does not work. it was suggested in the forum link i posted

[Belix]

I saw nothing suggested over there that looks harmful (though I did see some misinformation and useless suggestions). DOSBox is useless for Diablo, since it is a Windows game.

Do you have access to any other computers? If you could copy your entire Diablo directory (with no special dll files added) to another system (preferably without Windows 8), pop in the CD and test it there, it might help determine if the issue resides within the game directory itself or something bunkered down in Windows somewhere.

I'm running out of ideas for why you're having trouble. I may have to ask a couple friends who have Windows 8 to dig up their Diablo CDs and see if they encounter similar issues. Can you tell me what brand of video your laptop has, if you know? Intel, NVIDIA, ATI?

I'm sorry you didn't have one of the simpler problems, sometimes it can take weeks, even months to troubleshoot something like this, but as a general rule things in computers don't randomly stop working. Something changed somewhere, and persistence may reveal it. I'll try and help if I can.

[nhyrum]

i think ill just give up for now and wait till i get my xp desktop set up. I have a nvidia geforce radeon video card i believe...

[MASSSN]

Hi Slayer_X64
First, I wanna thank you for this detailed guide. It is always encouraging knowing that there are great people out there that are willing to putt so much time and effort to bring old-school experiences like Diablo 1 to us.

2 other friends and I have been trying to bring up an online multiplayer Hellfire game over the past 3 weekends. Hellfire is runing sweet and smooth on all computers but, despite all our research and google mastery we havent still been able to create a multiplayer IPX game.

This is our current configuration:
Computer 1. Windows 7
Computer 2. Windows 7
Computer 3. Windows 8.1

All computers have the following configuration:
-Tungle Version 5.2
-Hellfire V 1.01 on C://
-Ipx wrapper 0.5 on the Hellfire folder
-Firewall down
-Tungle network adapter has the first priority.

We are all capable of creating new IPX games [something we were incapable of doing until using the Ipxwrapper], however, we are all still unable to see/join each other games.

It would be great if you could give us some advice.
Thanks in advance!

[Belix]

Hi MASSSN.

This is our current configuration:
Computer 1. Windows 7
Computer 2. Windows 7
Computer 3. Windows 8.1

Fortunately, in this case operating systems shouldn't be an issue. I've gotten games of Diablo/Hellfire running successfully with IPXWrapper using Windows XP, Vista, 7, and 8 in pretty much any combination.

All computers have the following configuration:
-Tungle Version 5.2
-Hellfire V 1.01 on C://
-Ipx wrapper 0.5 on the Hellfire folder
-Firewall down
-Tungle network adapter has the first priority.

I recently tried to get Diablo running on Tunngle with a friend as well, and we could never see each other's games there either. I was disappointed since I had used Tunngle awhile ago and never had any problems with it with the few games I tried back then.

Hate to say it, but you might want to try something other than Tunngle to rule it out as the issue. I've used Hamachi for years without problems, had my friend install that and we were playing Hellfire with IPXWrapper in no time. Hamachi gets a bad rap for being 'difficult' to set up compared to Tunngle, but that's nonsense. Here's the steps if you want to try:

1) Goto https://secure.logmein.com/products/hama...nload.aspx, check the Conditions of Use box and then Download Now just above it.
2) Install it.
3) Hamachi recently requires you to create an account/login, all they want is your e-mail address and a login password for the Hamachi service. I liked them better when they didn't do this, but this is standard practice for most services these days. Not any different than making a Tunngle name/pass really.
4) One person needs to create a Network name (not already taken) and password, the others need to Join that network using the same name and pass.
5) Play. Sometimes Hamachi may not broadcast correctly until you reboot the computer after installing it, so if you still can't see games, have everyone restart after the install and try again.

Besides having to create logins now, my only complaints with Hamachi are that recent versions have made it automatically start with Windows and doesn't provide any way for the user to easily turn this off. It will also randomly (once every few months maybe?) stop working with some failed to initialize error, which it never used to do, but this is very easy to fix when it happens:

Open the Start menu, type "services.msc" into the box and press Enter. When the Services list opens, find LogMeIn Hamachi, right-click on it and choose Restart. It should fix the problem after a moment and Hamachi will open successfully and work as usual.

I would have preferred to tell you how to get it working on Tunngle, but I never figured out how. Assuming Tunngle is the issue, maybe someone else can enlighten us.

Either way I hope you get it working.

p.s. As an aside, disabling firewalls is a bit extreme - ideally you just create an exception for Diablo/Hellfire on any software firewall (such as Windows Firewall) on each system; using software like Tunngle means you don't have to open internet ports in hardware firewalls (such as routers). But if all else fails it doesn't hurt to do this to test if your firewalls are configured safely or not.

[nikelodian]

Hey, i know this discussion dates a while back but maybe this is usefull for some: I had the same problem as nhyrum and for me the solution was to turn off data execution prevention (DEP) under system-> advanced -> performance. But Im running windows server 2012 R2, maybe that changed things
Anyway, now diablo is running smoothy, so thanks!

[Nystul]

Well after 7 years I decided it was time for new PC and went with Win 8.1 (ugh!), with the intention of updating to Win 10. I decided to give Diablo a whirl without any compatibility tweaks and see what would happen. Well, with the 1.09 patch it worked great, except alt-tabbing crashed the game. Setting the game to run in 8 bit color prevented the crash but still couldn't get back into the game display after alt-tabbing. Downloading the dx wrapper (method 4) solves the problem. Guess that's the future of Diablo unless Blizzard decides to update it and give it away on battle.net someday.

[Nystul]

So I took the plunge with Windows 10 and I have been trying out some Diablo. This time the wrapper method didn't work. But I noticed something which helped me and me be relevant for other recent versions of Windows as well. Legacy support for DirectPlay is still included in Windows, but it is disabled by default. Enabling this feature in the control panel, combined with running Diablo in reduced color mode (8 bit color), seems to have solved the alt tab crashing problems. I haven't tested extensively, but with those two tweaks the game seems stable so far and the color palettes seem to behave pretty well.

[wkd1]

So I found my .iso of Diablo and Hellfire and loaded them up with Daemon Tools Light. I am running Windows 10. Aside from running as administrator I didn't need to do any of the compatibility stuff listed in this thread and the game seems to work fine...

The only weird stuff is on the menu screen when I'm selecting menu items the menu super imposes itself on the next screen making it so I have to wave my mouse pointer around to erase the previous menu from the current one... haven't experienced this kind of issue since Windows 95/98 lol... I'm sure there are compatibility issues that just haven't ambushed me yet and all I did was walk around town, talk to some NPC's and go down to the first dungeon level. No crashing once I was in game, it did crash out of the menu a few times though.

There's A LOT of information in this thread... I do want to install the custom Hellfire patches eventually... any tips for a Windows 10 user would be much appreciated...

[Slayer_X64]

So I found my .iso of Diablo and Hellfire and loaded them up with Daemon Tools Light. I am running Windows 10. Aside from running as administrator I didn't need to do any of the compatibility stuff listed in this thread and the game seems to work fine...

The only weird stuff is on the menu screen when I'm selecting menu items the menu super imposes itself on the next screen making it so I have to wave my mouse pointer around to erase the previous menu from the current one... haven't experienced this kind of issue since Windows 95/98 lol... I'm sure there are compatibility issues that just haven't ambushed me yet and all I did was walk around town, talk to some NPC's and go down to the first dungeon level. No crashing once I was in game, it did crash out of the menu a few times though.

There's A LOT of information in this thread... I do want to install the custom Hellfire patches eventually... any tips for a Windows 10 user would be much appreciated...

I did some testing today on my windows 10 machine, and I updated the main post for windows 10 compatibility. Let me know how it works for you.

I also updated the Linux compatibility sections slightly.

TODO:
1) new mirror links for all the files here.
2) Add the "Virtual Machine" method of running Diablo to this guide.

[LavCat]

Thanks very much, Slayer, for the guide!

While searching for something else this afternoon -- namely my DII music CD, to which I am listening at the moment -- I came upon a long lost and dusty "Windows 95/NT & Power Macintosh CD-ROM", either from my original Diablo box or from the Battle Chest.

How best to install it? Not counting the Commodore, I have three computers here: Windows NT 4.0, Windows 7, and Windows 10. Unfortunately neither the Windows NT computer nor the Windows 7 computer currently have working sound. The sound issue could probably be addressed.

Nonetheless, the Windows 10 instructions from the guide seem reasonably straightforward. Should this be the first method I should try? A VM is also a possibility if that would help.

If I did install under NT, are there any issues running Diablo on a dual CPU system?


Edit: does the CD still have to be in the drive to run?

[LennyLen]

Nonetheless, the Windows 10 instructions from the guide seem reasonably straightforward. Should this be the first method I should try?

The older the version of Windows, the more chance of success you'll probably have (that being said, I personally have never had a problem getting Diablo running on any version of Windows). But if getting the sound to work on the older sysytems might be a hassle, then by all means try the Win 1 system first. The worst that can happen is that it doesn't work, and you've wasted 10 minutes of time.

If I did install under NT, are there any issues running Diablo on a dual CPU system?

I can't think of any reason for there to be.

Edit: does the CD still have to be in the drive to run?

Unless you use some form of no-cd patch, then yes.