I purchased Riven and every time I try to play it will not start and advises the screen resolution needs to be set to 1366 x 786. my computer is set to that by default. Suggestions?

I have multiple times. I still get the same warning.

It maybe a Bios setting and that's a bit hard to explain this way.Unless you know what you are doing in Bios,then I would keep fingers out of it.

Can you post specs on PC?
Make,is it a Dell?
Make of Monitor?
Was it purchased all together as in P.C and Monitor complete package?

Your screen resolution is non-standard, and the game is more than likely complaining that it can't run at such an odd resolution. Change your desktop to a standard one, at least temporarily to test if that is the issue. Try 1280 x 720.

His resolution is fine, and it's been a standard for a long time. :v

But anyway http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Risen#Widescreen_resolution

Try to set yours and see if it helps.

If fullscreen doesn't work, you could try windowed mode. That way it shouldn't get locked up because of your screen's native resolution.

Only on crappy notebooks.

Which is the very definition of "standard".

Riiiiiiight!

Anyway dgodwin, if you can't get the game running from its .exe, you can always try playing it using ScummVM. The development builds support Riven almost flawlessly based on my own experience.

I actually like the 1366x768 (native) resolution because it can run older 1024x768 games pixel-perfectly, without any scaling, as the vertical resolution is the same. Of course for 800x600 and 640x480 (and VGA) games it doesn't have that benefit...

Exactly. That's why I've said it became a standard. Especially for cheaper monitors.
Here on Brazil for example, anything under 18'' comes with that resolution.
Taking steam hardware survey for account, and that's roughly 25% of users with that res aswell.

So it's fine. Now I just want to know if the guy was able to play it or not.

I think you're mistaken. 1366x768 (Widescreen XGA) was the single most common widescreen resolution for laptops until the late 2000's. 1280x720 (HD-Ready) is the weird one, which didn't even exist as a standard until 2005 (and even then just as a transitory standard for selling cruddy TVs to early adopters of HDTV).

It's only the newest games that are likely to work on 1280x720.

I wonder how many games accepted that, though.
Laptops before 2000.. the horror.