So here's the deal.
I had a Windows 7 laptop. I installed I-War Deluxe on it. I would always be able to watch the introductory cutscene, then as it tried to start the game proper, it would crash.
My laptop shat its pants and is now gone away to be cleaned.
Now I'm using a Windows XP desktop. Once again, I installed I-War Deluxe on it, and once again the game would crash right after playing the introductory cutscene.
This is the error message I always get:
"A problem has been detected during BRender initialization. Please refer to the Readme for information on how to fix this problem."
Of course, the GoG version of I-War Deluxe doesn't have that readme. Or any readme. I really want to play this game that I bought; what am I not doing/doing wrong?

Yup! I've tried that, and tried it using the GoG executable, and the direct I-War executable, and I keep on getting either a BRender initialization error or an I-War Patch error, whether I use nglide or not. This is three computers, now, on which I-War has refused to work.

It's been almost a year since I first bought the game, so I'm sure you can understand my frustration.

Seems strange that it doesn't work on 3 separate PCs - you'd have thought at least one would run it.

What's the command line you're using in the shortcut to the iwar.exe program?

I have a similar set of symptoms

1) Infogrames video plays

2) Particle Systems video plays

3) The I-War video with the corvette receding into the distance plays

then the game freezes.

On another forum I noticed mention of graphics hardware acceleration being implicated in
I-War incompatibility with XP, and this did solve my problem.

Control Panel --> Display --> Settings --> Advanced (button) --> Troubleshoot (tab) --> Hardware Acceleration

There is a section called "hardware acceleration, with a slider that
chooses the degree of acceleration, ranging from "None" to "Full"/

On my system. there are 6 levels between None and Full acceleration

move the slider left to "None" and try to start the game. This works for me, and I
can play normally.

Graphics acceleration may be desirable from a performance point of view, so you
can go back and incrementally increase the acceleration to the highest level at which
the game still runs.

For my system, the game runs on levels 1,2,3 but crashes at 4 and above.

I hope this is helpful for you.

It definitley works on XP. Have you got all the service packs? GOG always has your games biught try downloading again. It's well worth it, recommend buying a good joystick 8 buttons + and headphones. good luuck

Thanks for this! I never thought to check out the hardware acceleration; I'll give it a shot! I never actually used a command line; when I still had the game installed, I would normally just double click the executable directly from the folder view. Yep, I always had all service packs installed before I would install I-War. It was super odd! Thanks for the luck, though. Maybe the fifth time will be the charm!

The game may also crash after playing the intro videos if:

- the DEP in windows goes haywire and prevents it from running properly. Try disabling the DEP
- an antivirus blocks parts of the game, making it crash. Try disabling your antivirus.

You may find even more suggestions in our technical FAQ:

http://www.i-war2.com/documents/help/faq/faq-technical/faq-technical-iwar1