I had this issue to I have to set my screen resolution down to 1280x1024 or lower in order to not get this error don't know if that'll fix anyone else's problem but thought it worth mentioning

I am having the same issue and have not found a fix what so ever.

Same here...

No solution till today?

Dungeon Keeper 2 got a 3D hardware acceleration fix a few years ago, perhaps the same can be done for The Settlers IV?

www.gog.com/forum/dungeon_keeper_series/dungeon_keeper_2_hardware_acceleration_fix_is_now_live

Weird, it's like no one else can see Eliwood29's post, just me.

Eliwood29's solution doesn't work for me. The game runs on Intel Integrated but the framerate is horrendous. I get the 3D initialisation error on the NVIDIA GTX 675MX. All other old games I've tried run fine when forced to use the NVIDIA chip.

Same problem here, no solution working

Using a Radeon HD 7800

Same problem here. Bought the game and can't run it. :/

Radeon HD 6970 is the card I'm using on my PC. I also have a Surface Pro, which runs the game without any problems. Would just like to play it on my PC due to screen size.

Running it on my Surface Pro with Hamachi will also not work in multiplayer LAN. As soon as the game with my friends starts, the message "Waiting for (name of player)..." can be seen and eventually we will be kicked out of the game.
On my machine I see my friends name and my friend sees my name. Settlers 3 works just fine using Hamachi. No active firewall and ports have been forwarded. So essentially, both installs don't work for me.

I'd appreciate any help with either problems. :(

Same problem here... I also have AMD Dual Graphics with Windows 8.1 and it just will not run no matter how I change settings... Tried really about every "solution" I could find. Before this I had a laptop with a single Mobility Radeon card and Windows 7, it worked perfectly back then. I really hope there will be a fix for this soon!!

Just fixed this problem (or a very similar one) for a friend.

The issue basically boils down to the game being shipped with a broken version of some Windows debugging tools. Fixing it is pretty straightforward:

1. Browse to your install directory.
2. Go into the Exe folder.
3. Rename the file DbgHelp.dll to something like _DbgHelp.dll (you can name it anything you like, the point is to keep the game from finding the version that won't work).
4. Launch the game.

At this point, the game should fail to find the broken DLL in its own folder and go looking for one which works in you system folder (where it will likely find it). If it doesn't find an up to date copy of the DLL, you'll have to get yourself a copy from Microsoft:

1. Download and run the Windows SDK installer (you'll have to Google "Windows 7.1 SDK" and pick the download page on microsoft.com - GOG doesn't want me posting a direct link).
2. Click through to the screen where it lets you select which components you want to install.
3. Uncheck everything except Debugging Tools for Windows (under Common Utilities) and Debugging Tools (under Redistributable Packages).
4. Install the debugging tools.
5. If you've got a 64-bit OS installed (and you probably do), go to C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1\Redist\Debugging Tools for Windows and run dbg_x86.msi.
6. Once that's installed, go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Debugging Tools for Windows (x86).
7. From that folder, copy dbghelp.dll into the Exe folder in your Settlers 4 install directory.
8. Launch the game.

If none of this helps, then chances are you've got a different problem. In that case, you can undo the changes you've made by renaming the starting DbgHelp.dll file back to its original name. (The debugging tools you installed shouldn't cause any problems, but feel free to uninstall them and the Windows SDK to get back the 80MB or so they're taking up.)

I've tried what you said but now get "Fatal error: Exception 0xc0000005 at 0x70be8873!". Not sure if the solution was relevant to my issue of 3D Hardware not initialising.

This doesn't work for me either... What kind of problem did your friend had? Does he have AMD (Dual) Graphics too?

My friend was getting the popup with the following after his screen went black a couple of times and then returned to the desktop: I just went looking for system components that might be old or incompatible with Win7/8/8.1 after we tried every combination of settings we could think of on multiple computers (some were AMD, some were NV, don't remember the specifics).

This was all done against a fresh install of a recently downloaded copy of the game.

As far as getting the crash when you swap out that DLL, that's kind of odd. That's kind of a system component, and it should always be backwards compatible. You're sure you didn't drop a 64-bit version of the DLL into your folder by accident?

Anyway, like I said, if it doesn't work for you, you can just rename the original file back and it'll be as it was before. Sorry if that doesn't fix things for everyone.

:(

Going to bump this because I'm having the same problem and haven't been able to fix it.