Hi,

I can't play Populous TB since it crashes everytime I try to launch it.

I've read a lot of tricks / tips, but either they don't work, or don't apply.

I'm using Windows 7 64bit with Intel processor and Nvidia GTX 970 graphic card.

Short version: no matter what I try, a small grey box with "populous is loading" appears for 1 second, then the screen goes black / flickering for 1-2 secondes, then a window with "D3DPOP3W stopped working" appears.

I don't even have to select a screen resolution / graphic card model as I've read in various threads, the game crashes before that.
All I have is a message telling me that pop3d.cd cannot be found and will be created, then boom, it crashes. And once the pop3d.cd has been created, it just crashes.

I've tried :
- installing with galaxy / installing from gog.com but from setup file 2.0.0.5: D3DPOP3W stopped working , except that the shortcuts from start menu do not work at all
- running the game as administrator / disabling UAC: same problem
- running d3dpoptb.exe : D3DPOP3W stopped working
- running poptb.exe: D3DPOP3W stopped working (I was surprised it was the same error for software / d3d version)
- adding both exe as exception to the data protection manager (not sure of the name, my OS is not in English :) )
- installing CCCP codec pack : not working
- various compatibility options: not working, same error
- creating a bat file that kills explorer.exe before launching the game: not working

Has somebody got an idea?

Thanks.

I think this game works well with dgVoodoo 2, a reimplementation of old DirectX graphics libraries via DirectX 11.
It may help, assuming the crash is caused by graphics issues. It's hard to tell without debugging.

Edit: There is already a guide for the above here.

Hi,

I've just tried it now. Did not worked, still get D3DPOP3W stopped working.

I have this problem too, and I installed it under windows 10.

Same problem here, anyone figured it out? I really want to play this game :)

Answer by Theoturtle on page four of of the topic "Q: Populous: The Begining - crashes on launch" on this forum fixed this issue for me although I would recommend setting scaling mode to centered rather than unspecified as suggested, unless you want to risk some things being off-screen.

Sorry, wrong topic, can't delete the message.
Check out dgVoodoo 2 though, might help.