Thank you all in this thread for your bits of information and thank you SirEmentaler for your responses and help.

I'm not sure if my issue is related to the others in this thread, but the info here from SirEmentaler did help me progress so maybe they are related, and for that I am grateful as I was less successful with the official GOG support channel.


My issue: when I boot either JJ2TSC or JJ2CC, the game goes fullscreen black, then to a smaller 640x480 black on my right screen of my dual monitor setup, to then freeze that screen completely forcing me to terminate the application through task manager which if it shows up on the same screen, means having to use the keyboard to do so as the mouse won't work on this screen either.

Using the -safe command I was able to boot in a windowed screen and see the EPIC logo, after which my game also crashed once more(the original black screen does not even provide a windows crash popup)
Then using either the bbswing.j2l command to directly boot into a level, or by spamming ESC on startup I managed to get into the game/main menu and play the game on a windowed 640*480 screen.

The next issue I'm running into now however, is that no sound is working, and the "sound" menu in the taskbar of the windowed version of either JJ2TSC or JJ2CC shows unselectable greyed out options for sound.(And I do really love the sound design of these games, the Xmas soundtrack is something I still have on my mp3 stick in my car after all these years)

At first I was worried if this was my Dolby Digital headset causing these issues, but even when running it through my Aldi jacked in speakers while checking with music, the game had no sounds or sound options for me.
Not sure if this information is needed too, but I'm currently using a Logitech G933 headset with the Logitech Gaming software.

Any ideas on what I might have done wrong that caused the sound to not work, or ideas on how to get it working again?

I'd be happy to provide any additional information needed.
My goal is to eventually be able to play this game on a decently sized none stretched 4:3 resolution, or a properly working full-screen 16:9 ratio, with all the lovely sounds and soundtracks included with this/these games.

Things GOG support already asked me to do:
1. Run as administrator
2. Reinstall
3. Download and install DirectX Web installer
4. Update my graphics drivers to latest stable
5. Check DEP
6. Reset my Radeon Settings to factory default

7. do a clean boot as per the official microsoft support page I was linked in the GOG support e-mail

contents of jazz2.log:
LOG: GRADE (Build 98-194W), Executable: D:\games\Jazz Jackrabbit 2\Jazz2.exe
LOG: Jazz Jackrabbit 2 version 1.24

WIN: Running Microsoft Windows NT version 6.2, Build 9200
VID: Checking for available video modes
VID: DirectDraw check skipped on user request
---- Starting execution: invoke MainProg()

4 macro files found in current directory
Reading animation library
Loading level 'Swingin Jazz' (BBSWING.j2l)
WARNING: No Start positions found!
***gameloop started***
***gameloop ended after 276 gameticks
NetDeInitialize
total memory 11118696, largest block 11380824
Normally exiting program

---- Exiting program
WIN: Writing registry
VID: Closing display (DIBSection)
WIN: Closing window

You are having the same issue I am with the original JJ2. Had the same small black box show up and could only terminate through task manager.

I have one of two solutions that work.
1st solution: Run the game with the -nosound switch set. This works for me but there will be no sound, so not an optimal solution.

2nd solution: Download Jazz Jackrabbit 2 installer or install it through galaxy (If using galaxy got to More>Settings and uncheck "Automatic updating")
Download the installer for christmas chronicles (don't install this through galaxy ever) and install it in the same directory as JJ2
Download the installer for JJ2+ from the goodies (again not in galaxy) and install that again in the same directory as the original installation.
Finally remove the file Xmas98.j2e or Xmas99.j2e [Just one of these!]

This way I got the game to work with sound and no crashes AND all the levels available in the episode select menu.

Hope this helps you as you seem to have the same issue.

EDIT: typos

Check all other programs opened (try to disable or remove antivirus/antimalware/firewall just for testing)

You my good sir/madam....are amazing!
That was exactly what I was looking for, with the clear written out steps on exactly what I had to do, and it worked!
I just booted the game, full-screen, with sound :D
Thank you so much!

Odd, the game seems to work fine on my office computer. Same processor and (more or less) same graphics card, just Windows 8.1 instead of Windows 7. Oh well, guess I'll play during breaks or something at work.

If your problem indeed persists in JJ2+, we would actually be interested in finding out what causes it and, if possible to do on our side, fixing it. If you're willing to experiment a little, the -safe flag is supposed to be, more or less, a combination of the following flags:

-nosound -nodsound -nospy -nonetwork -nojoy -noddraw -nocpucheck

I suggest checking how many of those you actually need in order to run the game, i.e. start with all of them (as well as bbswing.j2l) and try removing them one by one for as long as the game still runs. Maybe we'll narrow down the issue.

I've been having the same problem, and the solution posted by mmodri didn't work for me. I went through all of the flags suggested by SirEmentaler, and the one that appears to make it work is -noddraw. It's not fullscreen, but I have gameplay with sound, so thank you!

I think at some point the GoG install of Jazz Jackrabbit 2 was patched. At any case, I can now play the game without any sort of command line argument whatsoever. I'm not sure what it changed, and am a bit puzzled. Oh well, glad I can play.

Thanks for all the help and assistance though!

I thought the only thing that got updated recently was the christmas levels being fixed to the correct ones. That it now works for you seems strange, maybe there's more to it that the changelog suggested. Glad it works for you now n99127

i would love some help , i got jazz jackrabbit 2 to work after i changed the parent pretection settings to ''none'' , but i cant get the chrismas cronicles to work i try'd all compatible modes but that doesnt help .my problem is that when i start to run the game it flashes 1 time and i can see in the flash the purple epic logo but thats it the game stops . i have try'd to start the game as ''run as administrator'' ( i hope i say it wright) but that doesnt help. i got a windows 7 home premium 64 bit ,i have turned off nvidia. i have put the game in to exaptions in my anti virus program. i reinstalld it a few times . but nothing. sorry for my english im dutch. i hope some one can give me some advise .it would be nice to play the christmas chronicles now with the holidays

dump het eens in het Nederlands :P

I was having the same problem and found a solution in a non-english forum.

1.) Download Jazz Jackrabbit 2, the christmas collection, and the JJ2+ offline downloaders.
2.) Install them in the order above in the same folder
3.) Delete xmas99.j2e
4.) Run jazz2.exe as administrator. When i first did this the colors were al jacked up but after changing the resolution it looked fine.

Game works fine for me now, hope this helps

The Access Violation crash is the fact that JJ2 uses Direct Draw, which doesn't work on Windows versions later than XP.

I have a solution that worked for me with the original retail version of JJ2 (still had the files since the 90s) It should work with the GOG version too.

Download DGVoodoo2 Wrapper. I have successfully used this wrapper to get some Direct Draw, 3DFX Glide games and older D3D games to work on 64bit windows 7
http://dege.freeweb.hu/dgVoodoo2/dgVoodoo2.html

extract the contents to a folder of your choosing.
open the folder.
open the subfolder titled 'MS".
select "DDraw.dll" and press "CTRL + C"
navigate to your JJ2 Folder and press "CTRL +V" (this will paste the .dll file into JJ2)
Go back to the DGVoodoo2 folder.
open DGVoodoo2.
Under the top section (titled "Config folder / Running instance") press the "Add" button.
Navigate to your JJ2 folder and hit "select folder" This will link DGVoodoo 2 wrapper to JJ2.
Hit "OK" at the bottom-left of DGVoodoo2 to close.
Run Jazz Jackrabbit 2.
Profit.

WARNING: Don't set the resolution to 800x600x16 as the game will crash with a resolution initialization error when you run it next. Run at 640x480x16 or lower.

Let me know if this works for the GOG version.

It Works! thx your help