symptoms same as other posts - full black screen, half black screen, small black screen, nothing

don't know how to keep MacAfee from sandboxing (actually, haven't been able to get many games to run since about windows 7 - exception being deus ex II)

I notice my computer is a notebook, not a laptop. does this eliminate my game-playing?

Is this a machine you've upgraded to Win 10? If so, have a look at Settings to see what might need tweaking. I'd also suggest doing a System File clean up. The upgrade uses a fair amount of space on your C drive but, you can manually clean the bumph left behind off your machine. If your notebook has a small amount of memory, this might be a sensible move.

I've noticed from trying to upgrade my Win 8 tablet that, even though I've inserted additional memory, getting the upgrade to use that 2nd section fully appears to be problematical. Consequently, the majority of the upgrade happens using my C drive. If you have added additional memory (and you've not done so already) I'd suggest uninstalling P+C from your C drive and re-installing it on the other.

Assuming you're using a mouse rather than a touch screen pen, are you able to right click the game icon and open 'Properties'? If so, I'd suggest using the Compatibility Wizard to see what it recommends as the best option. Once you can get the game to open, you can adjust the screen resolution to what suits your notebook (from a limited range).

I've upgraded to Win 10 on my Win 7 machine and can advise that I have no problem with running and playing P + C.

Chances are you've already tried or know of these things - in which case I apologise for trying to teach you to suck eggs! But, if not, I hope the above suggestions give you some assistance.

pharaoh is not working with my windows 10 laptop either. It's a fresh install, game basically switch in and out from screen during the cinematics at start, then when into an actual game if freezes after whatever i do. And everything seems running at super speed. Basically this game doesn't work for me. Very silly, i hope gog will fix this, as for now this game IS NOT COMPATIBLE with windows 10.

I have updated my PC to windows 10 when it was first released and since i have installed many old games off disk such as: Roller coaster tycoon 2, Age of empires and expansions for these games. I recently attempted to install the game PHARAOH (which i installed on my windows 7 XP PC) but when i went to the install program i clicked install game and it took me back to the homepage. I tried to change the compatibility and change the font size but it still did not work!

If you had the game and you experienced these issues please tell me how you solved this.

I know this is post is a bit old but in case you still can't play I managed to fix this problem on my computer. I had this game working fine but then got this problem after uninstalling and reinstalling but managed to fix it by changing the Pharaoh.exe file to windows 7 compatibility.

If you don't know how to change compatibility on windows 10 fine the Pharaoh.exe file. The easiest way is if you have gog galaxy right click the game and go to manage installation then show folder. Right click the Pharaoh.exe file (for me its at the bottom) click properties, go to compatibility, tick Run this program in compatibilty mode and choose windows 7 from the drop down menu then apply. It should work then. If you still have problems like the game not responding after a while just change to an earlier compatibility like windows 98.

The game might also have a very low resolution when you launch it. (It will look really zoomed in and low quality picture) you just have to start a game and change to a higher resolution from the options menu at the top left.

Anyone get this working with Win'10 yet? Changing compatibility to Win'7 or any other OS doesn't work. Like others have said, full black screen, half black window and that's all I see. If I set the exe to start at 640x800 resolution then I can see the game screen loading/initializing but then exits within about 2 seconds.

The same laptop, I had this working when I last played it maybe 1-2 years ago (I still had it installed) so obviously one or more Windows updates/features messed it up!! Very unfortunate. Pharaoh is my favourite old game!

This game worked fine for me in fullscreen on win10 out of the box.
Try to tweak it with the Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT), it's official program from micro$oft which is essentially extended compatibility mode.

I found a post in the GoG support page for Pharaoh - Cleopatra that helped me out. I sadly can't post links (some forum rules I imagine) but it is here

h t t p s : / / support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/360013499854-Pharaoh-Launch-crash

(remove the spaces)

Linux, Wine. No additional files from gog support used. Black screen with music playing, not responsive. Game launched when I set "Emulate a virtual desktop" in winecfg with size of the in-game resolution if that matters. No additional tweaks, using DPI-scaling in my desktop environment with Pharaoh's original resolution.

Have had one crash at the same date in middle kingdom scenario with big population. Symptom: audio messed up after very long siege (about 2 years). Loaded nearest save, disabled music and auto-saving, crashing stopped. Re-enabled again, all works.

Alternately, for people looking in the future who won't get up in arms about it, try the Akhenaten source port.

https://github.com/dalerank/Akhenaten

It's probably going to be the better way to get a game that old running on these modern systems.