Diablo Backwards Compatibility Guide

[Slayer_X64]

I cannot for the life of me get Diablo 1 working on my Windows 7 machine.

My PC setup:
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
16GB RAM
GTX 670 with very latest WHQL drivers
i7 2600k @4.6ghz
Diablo installed on SSD in Program Files(x86) folder

I tried methods 1-4, but no matter what I try, the game immediately crashes on startup. In Windows Event Viewer I get this: http://pastebin.com/mP4jLvTT

Any help/insight would be greatly appreciated. Willing to try/re-try any method at this point.

Honestly, that sounds like a graphics card issue. Now let me elaborate in that its nothing wrong with your graphics card specifically, its just Diablo is very finicky with alot of newer graphics cards for some reason because of the way it initializes video on startup. Method 4 is the go to fix for this one - though mind you I was only able to test it on AMD cards, as all I have are AMD cards, and it almost always works...I can only imagine a few reasons why it wouldnt be working for you

Well here's what I want you to try:

First of all, make sure that Data Execution Prevention (DEP) is turned off for diablo under your security settings.

Next, make sure you have DirectX9 installed alongside whatever other version of DirectX you're running (probably DirectX11). You can get that pretty easily from microsoft's site.

Next, always make sure to ONLY apply one method at a time.

Re-install diablo. Then download the latest patch from here manually, and patch it before running it. make sure you run the patch as administrator.

Next, apply method4. Completely shut down and re-boot your computer.

Try starting diablo. If that doesnt work, adjust the setting in method4 - try different resolutions, try turning vsync on and off, etc. make sure you go through every possible solution.

If that doesnt work, navigate to your diablo directory, open up notepad, and enter the following into it:

taskkill /f /im explorer.exe
start /affinity 1 Diablo.exe
pause
start explorer.exe

Save the file as "DIABLO.BAT" in your diablo directory.

Try running diablo.

If that doesnt work, restart your computer and try again.

If that doesnt work, disable Aero effects on your desktop and try again.

If that doesnt work, try the windows8 method of just bruteforcing the executable until it works (ie. mashing on it until it finally launches). For some reason, sometimes something as simple as that can work perfectly.

If any of the above works, then you're just going to have to accept the fact that in order to get diablo running, you will have to restart your computer before launching if you have started to get errors.

If that doesnt work, try lowering your CPU clock rate. 4.6GHz is pretty high, and I wonder if you are maybe having stability issues? anything of the like would exxagerate the problems Diablo already has I would think.

Also make sure your antivirus isnt blocking Diablo.

Also make sure you dont have a lot of stuff running in the background either.

If that doesnt work, then reset your clock rate back to 4.6GHz. In this case you're out of luck, and you're gonna have to wait for me to pick up a new graphics card and figure out what's wrong. Or you could just run the game in a virtual machine, like Lenny said, assuming you have a valid copy of windows to make a VM with (though make sure to adjust your resolution to 640x480 before you run the game in a VM - otherwise you'll end up with either a big stretchy distorted window in scaled mode, or a little tiny window in whatever the default mode is. at 640x480 you can at least run your virtual machine fullscreen and get expected behavior)

You could always try running an older version of Windows under a VM such as VirtualBox.

Could be done, but it requires a legal copy of an older version of Windows.

If only they made WINE for windows...diablo works great in wine once you apply the ddraw patch. and it at LEAST runs without a patch/fix, as do all the mods (except The Dark Mod - I havent figured out why that doesnt yet. But every other mod works fine.)

With all these new issues coming to light, eventually the only way to play Diablo on newer computers may be to just re-write the game entirely...unless they port WINE to windows, in which case the games lifespan would be greatly extended.

On the bright side aqrit's ddraw wrapper is opensource. Maybe It can be modified somehow to fix the new problem, at least for now...

EDIT: Its a longshot, but maybe DxWnd helps? I havent tested it at all yet, its just been a project i've glimpsed at a few times in the past few years:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/dxwnd/

EDIT#2: well I also found a new ddraw wrapper: https://github.com/jarikomppa/dxwrapper
could be worth trying, seeing as Diablo uses directx7. I'll get to work on the weekend and see if I can get some results.