After double-clicking the AoW2 icon on the desktop all that happens is that the screen goes totally black. I can end the AoW2 task with the Task Manager. AoW2.exe and AoW2Compat.exe produced the same effect, as did several compatibility and AoW2Setup options I tried.

The AoW2Log.txt shows an error message: "Sound System Error - waveOutOpen() failed".

The same happened on a second PC, and I know that AoW2 did work on one of the PCs one or two years ago (I had deleted it meanwhile), which means it's unlikely to be a driver problem. I also noticed that the black screen problem has been described on the Steam forums - without a solution, but I haven't seen the error message mentioned anywhere.

Has anyone been able to solve this problem?

Edit: The error message may be unrelated with the problem: I just tried again - black screen, and there was no error message.

I've seen the black screen issue when trying to run AoW2 with a 64 bit wine. Using a 32 bit wine bottle and making sure the c++ modules were up to date solved the issue. If you are running a 64 bit windows, it might be how direct x is being handled by your OS. If you make sure your vcrun libraries and direct x (d3d or directplay, etc) are up to date, it might fix the problem.

Had the same issue with Shadow Magic, never got it working.

Don't ask me for an explanation. Today both AoW2 and AoWSM worked, out of the box, without any settings changes. The only thing that happened in between - related or unrelated to my problem - was a normal Win10 update. I'm running both games with D3D and resolution changes enabled.

An advice for people who don't know how to change the resolution of AoW2 (in AoWSM you can do it by running AoWSMSetup): You may have to enable D3D and resolution changes in AoW2Setup. Launch the game using the launcher (or run AoW2Compat directly), and start your game in the small 640x480 window (or enlarge it to 1024x768 by using Alt-Enter). As soon as you're on the first game screen (the one where you can move the guy you're playing), open the options menu and select the resolution you want. Unfortunately, you'll have to do this whenever you launch AoW2.

Or does anyone know how to save the resolution setting for future game sessions?

I also noticed on the aow1 discord, someone said their AoWEd (for the 1st game in the series) started working again mysteriously.
So it must be some kind of update causing this.

Interesting. Meanwhile I convinced myself that the same happened on my second PC (which has had the same problem and gone through the same Win10 update since I had started this thread) - both games work again on both PCs.

On the other hand, the black screen problem has been reported by several people before (in 2020 and earlier), you find the most detailed discussion on Steam. If one of these people happens to read this thread, perhaps they can try again?

It could've also been a GoG update to the game, I think it told me it'd updated AoW, pretty unusual for a 20 year old game

Not in my case - I didn't update (I'm not using Galaxy). If you're using Win10, you could try to force an update. May or may not help, but it's worth a try.

The standard attempt to fix this problem is (for AoW2):
- Run AoW2Compat and AoW2Setup in XP compatibility mode.
- At first launch AoW2Setup. Don't allow resolution changes and D3D.
- Then run AoW2Compat.
This may help sometimes, but apparently not always.
In my case, I didn't have to do any of these - the problem appeared suddenly, disappeared suddenly. That it's related with a Win10 update is a guess, possibly pure coincidence.