Right, so I bought this game on the sale this weekend since I remember playing it a lot in the past and simply just lost my discs somewhere in a move, anyways, not important!

I started mucking about trying to find a way to get this to run in windowed mode, with little to no success at all. Reading forum posts here and there without finding any way to solve this issue, however! I did find one post somewhere (I lost it now) that fixed this for me!

So with the unofficial patch, it tells you that adding "-window" should send you into windowed mode when you start the game, for most people this ends up with the game not responding.

I found that if you go to the game folder, there should be a file called "ddraw.dll" if you rename this to "ddraw.dll.old" or something like that, it won't try to load that DLL when starting the game, which should solve this issue.

I can't say that this will work for everyone or well.. anyone since I have only tried it for myself and found that it works, good luck!

Thanks to this I finally got the game running in Windows 8. Thanks!!

EDIT: Also had to be run as Administrator.

Ah, wonderful to hear that it helped someone at least.

I spent all last night trying to get Arcanum run in windowed mode. Tried different compatibility modes and even got myself D3DWindower. Actually with D3DWindower I got game to run in window but it was lagging (having 2-5fps), only workaround to it was to keep pressed any key on keyboard, I played for a few minutes holding down Ctrl key but that was no fun :D

With all that usless intro aside I just wanted to say - Equim's solution works :) I do have some problems when I start game with -window command, but I think it's because of HighResolution patch, so I'm running game trough D3DWindower and it works perfect.

Thank you, Equim! :)

P.S. It turns out that my problem with running game windowed was because of having "-doublebuffer" command, once I got rid of it game runs perfect without D3DWindower :)

Finally! A fix to running Arcanum in a window. Thank you!

I would also chime in and confirm that this workaround works. WinXP if that matters.
Before that the game would crash right at the start.

Thank for the tip, Equim. :)

Ah, interesting. I was trying to find a way to run Arcanum windowed for some time as well. This works with my copy, which I'm running on Windows 7, although I'm experiencing some unusual graphical artifacts in-game, seemingly related to transparencies. Useful, nonetheless.

Hello,

I've also recently bought and downloaded Arcanum, and though it works fine in full screen mode, when I download the first Arcanum_en_1074.exe patch (do I need to download others, if so, which ones?), add -window to the target, rename ddraw.dll, and run as admin, the game begins but I get the error that No Disc is Inserted. Seems a bit hard to bypass. Am I missing a file?

You might want to have a look over here if you haven't. Searching is great!
http://www.gog.com/en/forum/arcanum_of_steamworks_and_magick_obscura/no_disc_inserted/post1
Basically, you don't have to install the official patch from what I know. The GOG version should already be patched up to that.

Thanks, man.

Hm. I did the .dll name change, I allowed admin privileges, I added -window, and it's still not running in windows mode. I'm running windows 7... Is there something else I should be doing?

Upon edit: Figured out what I did wrong. All is fine now, thanks!

Anyone else have all of their saved games erased after following these instructions?

Let me guess, you did the one thing you never should do in Windows Vista/7: You installed game in program files folder (default instalation folder).

If this is the case the saves are not lost, the program just looks them in different place now that it has administrator privileges. This is because by default, Windows Vista/7 prevents programs from modifying anything in program files folder and directs all saves/loads into virtual store (C:\Users\User_name\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Application_name). Program with administrator privileges bypasses this protection and can save in and load from program files and thus, if it has saved files while it did not have those privileges, it obviously can't find them because it looks from wrong place.

This is why you should always install games, especially old ones, outside program files folder (make it c:\games or something).

So to fix missing save games you need to copy/move them from virtual store into game folder.

You're awesome. Just sayin....

Thank you so much!! This was killing me, as I like playing the game while watching YouTube play along. Makes it a lot more fun listening to another person walk through it at the same time. Now I can pause the videos at any time I want without having all that screen flicker!!!

*Tip*
If you ran the HQ mod like I did, my res was set at 1680x1050, well this will clip your interface in windowed mode. So just rerun the "HighRes.bat" in Arcanum's directory and choose the option to Re-Install!!! Set a lower resolution. For example I set mine to 1600x900 which looks great as it gives just a bit of an edge around the window.