Hi everyone!

I've recently felt the itch to revisit this game (haven't really played since the Xbox!) and I seem to be encountering a similar issue as other people here. It is my hope to keep this problem visible for new players who search for older games on GOG and keep a log of trouble-shooting that myself and other have performed to see if it may help. Here is a log of my findings so far that I've compiled and hope that others may add to.

Test-Systems:

1.) Dell Latitude E5540
-Resolution: 1920x1080
-Refresh rate: 60 Hz
-CPU: i7-4600U
-GPU: Nvidia GT 720M
-Nvidia Driver Version: 390.77

2.) Acer Predator
-Resolution: 1920x1080
-Refresh rate: 75 Hz (sometimes over-clocked to 100 Hz)
-CPU: i7-7700 HQ
-GPU: GTX 1070
-Nvidia Driver Version: 391.01

3.) Findings
-Test system 1 (Dell Latitude) Works out the box without any special steps!
-Test system 2 (Acer) does not work. Given feedback in the forums there does seem to be problems with graphics settings and the like. My instinct says there might be an issue with refresh rate, a problem I have encountered before in running Dark Souls PTDE on steam. I'll be looking into a work-around for that in regards to this section

Forum Solutions Attempted:

1.) Re-install Jade Empire. No dice

2.) Re-boot in several OS compatibility settings. Disable full-screen optimizations (right-click .exe properties, go to compatibility)

3.) Follow GOG general trouble-shooting (installing codecs and the like). From the game launch page go to More > View Support

4.) Followed steps posted by User cgr37712 to manually edit the .ini file for graphics. This step was able to get me at least to the splash screen on Test System 2 (Acer Predator). A step forward! Thanks!

5.) Renaming JadeEmpire.exe to JadeEmpireLauncher.exe and renaming the original JadeEmpireLauncher.exe to something else. This was a bit of a strange on but I noted that this also helped me get to the splash screen on Test System 2 in the absence of .ini edits.

6.) Disabled DSR-factors in Nvidia Control Panel (located in Manage 3D settings)

7.) Manually changed refresh rate on Test System 2 to 60 Hz. No dice ***Note: Tested steps forward from here @ 60 Hz

8.) Copied .ini file from Test System 1 to Test System 2. No dice.

9.) Disabled the StutterFix update (removed d3d9.dll). No dice

10.) Disabled Anti-aliasing Gamma Correction (Nvidia Control Panel). No dice

11.) Disabled G-Sync (Nvidia Control Panel). No dice

12.) Installed older DirectX runtimes (April 2006). No dice

13.) Installed Nvidia PhysX Legacy drivers. No dice

*****To Be Continued*****

You may want to try entering the data folder in the game path, looking for a file named systeminformation.xml, either deleting it if already present or creating a new, empty one if absent.

I am running Wn 7 64bit
I tried all the suggestions, installing dx9, deleting xml file, changing ini file
Running as admin, run in xp compatibility
nothing worked! ... then I changed the compatitbility of the game exe to run in windows 98/ME mode - and the game started !!

With a few more tests I find that all I need is run in 98/ME as administrator