It's hard to say exactly what happens, your post doesn't really explain very much. Try restarting your PC, it normally solves a lot of post-install bugs.

If that doesn't work, either upload a small video of what happens to YouTube (unlisted) and link it here, or take some screenshots and attach them to a reply. :)

Thanks for responding. I have attached a couple of screen shots including my compatibility settings. GOG support did reply to my request for assistance but I have tried their solutions but nothing changed. If you can help I would appreciate it.

Thanks for your reply. Compatibility settings for GOG.com games like Pharaoh are set and can't be changed.

As I suggested above, try restarting your PC, as it solves 95% of the bugs caused by the game. If that didn't work, can you upload a short video showing what you are doing to launch the game, so I can see exactly where things are glitching out? Thanks very much. :)

So I have taken your advice and restarted the PC and nothing is different. Please view the video I just made here:
http://youtu.be/d_eJAdGz0Og
Let me know what you think and again, thanks very much. I also downloaded Zeus and Poseidon as well and it behaves exactly the same. I hope the video is clear enough as this is the first time I have done this. Apologize for the last few seconds as I figured out how to stop the video.

Best regards.

Thanks for the video. This is strange. Are you running any background programs ? I know for a fact that Samsung Magician makes Pharaoh behaviour very strangely when loading up, but works fine when Samsung Magician isn't running whatsoever. Close down things like browsers, anti-virus programs, firewalls, browsers, etc (generally any background program or process) and try to load the game again.

I also see you've a lot of pinned programs, check to see if Pharaoh is actually loaded, in case it has been minimised by the system.

From your video it doesn't appear that you've having the exact same problem I was having, but try disabling Shadowplay in the GeForce Experience app.

For me, the game was starting up and the intro movie would play, but then I'd just get a black screen with a mouse cursor at the main menu. I could hear the music and even click on things, if I managed to click in the right place, but I had no video. Disabling Shadowplay fixed it.

Thanks very much. I will give that a try and let you know what happens. :-)

Thanks Jellybones. I appreciate you taking an interest in my dilemma. I actually didn't have Shadowplay activated in my GeForce Experience. I went ahead and tried to start the game but the response was the same. When I have had similar problems with other games like Diablo III or Simcity 2013, I was able to go into a Configuration file and change a windowed setting from 1 to 0. Any idea where I might find something similar in Pharaoh? Thanks again.

Sadly, Pharaoh has no "real" configuration files. There's a few config files in the install directly, but none that would actually help to solve this issue. Have you tried closing down background programs like anti-virus, firewall, any disk monitoring programs, etc?

I'm wondering if your original download is/has corrupted.

I'd uninstall the game completely and then reinstall it afresh from your GOG library.

"the screen flickers, turns black in some places, jumps around and then doesn't open."

What do you mean "turns black in *some* places"? When you say that the screen flickers, it makes me wonder if maybe your monitor doesn't support the resolution & refresh rate that Pharaoh is attempting to use. By default, this could be something like 640x480 or 800x600.

If you're using a somewhat-modern LCD, you probably have a widescreen monitor. In which case, I'd recommend trying the Widescreen Gaming Forum hacked executables for Pharaoh. Just Google "Pharaoh WSGF" -- I can't post links because I'm a Forum noob. The top two hits are for Pharaoh and Cleopatra, which require different executables. If you have Pharaoh Gold with the Cleopatra expansion installed, then I believe you need to use the Cleopatra fix.

I'm using the widescreen hack to run Pharaoh @ 2560x1440, and it works great, though the interface is a bit small. Executables are included for running the game at a number of different possible resolutions.

Hi!
Turning off shadowplay from NVIDIA Solve the problem for me.
Hope it helps

I am having the exact problem described by pappinr.

Standard fixes aren't helping. Shadowplay is not enabled.

Looking into the WSGF stuff but not finding it to be very user-friendly. Any help would be appreciated.

If you don't have Shadowplay enabled, then make sure to disable any kind of program that adds an overlay. These kind of programs cause problems with the game engine (it happens in Emperor ROTMK as well).

If you have no programs with overlays running, then follow the instructions below to enable the widescreen hack for Pharaoh:
1) Navigate to the following link (GOG.com version only!): http://www.wsgf.org/dr/cleopatra-queen-nile/en
2) Download the zip/rar included on that page to somewhere on your PC
3) Extract the exe for the resolution you want (preferably to the desktop, the resolution MUST be supported by your graphics card)
4) Rename the exe you extracted to something like PharaohHD.exe
5) Move it to the Pharaoh install folder.
6) Run the game from that exe and select 1024*768 to get the proper resolution.