Black screen after attempt to start. Running Win7 x64. Tried disabling UAC. Tried W98 compatibility mode. Kind of a bummer.

Yikes. I don't know why but it runs perfectly fine here.

Do you have DirectX 9.0c installed? I didn't have to manually adjust any settings, the game works. I have Windoze 7 64 bit installed.

Run the install file as administrator. (right click it - run as administrator).

Heres another thing:
3) Many problems can be fixed by installing the June 2010 DirectX runtime package. Some older games aren't compatible with the libraries included with current releases of DirectX and this package should help. You can find the installer here.
You will have to extract the files into a selected folder, then open that folder and launch the DXSETUP.exe file in order to proceed with the installation.

I hope this helps :).

I might have a similar problem. I was capable of getting the game installed and get into the game fine here. After shutting it down and trying to restart it, I get an error message saying I don't have enough hard disk space (500 gig hard drive, only using 1/5 of it so far).

It's not unknown that old games get an unchecked integer overflow on modern size hard drives. I usually fix that by having a few small partitions and unformatted space to create a few more.

Good thought ; I hadn't considered that the DirectX 11 might be an issue.

Unfortunately, adding in the June 2010 DirectX runtime didn't seem to help, even after a reboot and a Darkstone re-install. Compatibility modes for W95 and W98 didn't help either. Just sits at a black screen doing nothing.

I'm not sure what happened, but after leaving my machine alone for awhile and trying the game again, I was able to get back in. I even shut it down and restarted the game and got in fine. So maybe it was only a minor issue?

Yes I know this problem. Not directly regarding "Darkstone", but some older games got this issue. Is there a possible workaround?

The common thread I'm finding here is systems with modern nVidia cards. Anyone able to successfully get the game running under Win7 with an nVideo graphics card?

Yes. With no issues at all. I run a 64bit version of Win7 and have a GTX 570 card.

I have found mention of command line switches around online and have tracked down these:

-32bit <-- this one may help some... DS is set to run in 16bit mode otherwise
-hardmouse <-- could also help some
-window <-- maybe running it in a window will help?
-nointro <-- just to skip the intro
-noplaycine <-- similarly skips the starting cinematic

Just add the ones you want to the end of the target field in your properties for the shortcut on your desktop. eg:

c:\games\darkstone\Darkstone.exe -32bit -nointro -noplaycine -hardmouse -window

The readme file lists a few other command line switches but most are related to multiplayer. I've not been able to track down a full list of command line switches anywhere though.

I had the same problem, I fixed it with the adding the game .exe to the exception list of DEP (Data Execution Prevention)

Try it, it's easy.


Hope it helped.

Another good thought ; unfortunately, it didn't help.

I had the same problem (70 GB free - game tells me it needs at last 50 MB) -
and got it "fixed" by filling some hard drive space.
I copied the installation file and afterwards it worked.
Freeing some space might work as well.

Maybe it helps in other cases too