I get the weird colour menus as well. Delete the atiumdiag.dll from the Populous folder and replace it with a newer one that you can find somewhere in these forums.

I tried replacing the file and then deleting it altogether. Either way the game still starts up but frizzes into that odd color jumble. Oh well.

Yup also had the 3D device not found error and removing atiumdiag.dll or replacing it with my current one stops that but results in a crash... :( (ATI Radeon 7950)

Weirdly replacing with the atiumdag elsewhere on my system also caused problems. But the one linked here: http://www.gog.com/forum/populous_series/populous_the_beginning_cannot_detect_video_card/post18 worked for me (Radeon mobile HD something - can't look it up at the moment as i'm on the low power mode and switching over makes Firefox mess up =P)
Again I stress it wasn't my upload so I take no responsibility for the file itself, but it seemed to fix the issue for me personally.

Yup tried all the ones on that thread with no luck, will try again after ATI release a new driver pack in hope of something changing :)

I had this problem too with my Radeon HD 57XX i believe. The file Slanzinger worked for me, although I did have to use the "other" Populus download with the final patch to get my sound to stop crackling.

To reiterate what I did to make the game playable on my NVIDIA Windows 8 machine:

1. Download the game from here and install. This one has everything, but hardware mode doesn't work and software mode stutters extremely.

2. Download the Resurrected version of the game from http://popre.net/. This one works fine in software mode, but doesn't have videos.

3. Copy the FMV folder from the GoG install directory to the Resurrected install directory.

4. Run the software mode executable from the Resurrected directory to play the game.

This way, the game runs smoothly and doesn't have issues aside from running in 800x600 max. I've managed to play through the entire game this way without any issues.

On my Windows 7 laptop, the game runs in hardware mode, but crashes sometimes.

Same problem here... Bought today the game and it doesn't work. Tried everything, atiumdag, DEP exception, directx... but d3ddpop3w is not going to work. I hope GOG will fix this soon because i'm not going to buy any other game if there's a chance that games i buy are not going to work fine.

P.s. my video card: HD 5750

Tried to launch the game using D3DPopTB.exe instead of GOGLauncher ?

Sure, tried everything, only software mode works. I tried every solution in this forum and in forum all around the web but everything failed :(

Maybe your system isn't compatible with the game ? What version of Windows are you running ?

I wonder how hard it would be to make this game windows 8 compatible...

*sigh*, guess I need to build a win98 box then

Isn't working on mine. I've tried the software emulation (at least I think I am toggling it from Resurrected, via the .exe in the downloaded Populous directory?) I don't really feel like trying much more, can't see myself buying old games here either if they all keep not working. Also I've been spoiled from the full-screen but alt-tabable newer games later.

Just Launch with POPTB app, it will run smoothly I am using Windows 8 as well.
Run POPTB App, I am using Windows 8 Runs Smoothly, even on highest settings.

thanks, do you mean the poptb exe? Crashes on startup for me. I tried all of them. Using the "checker" seems to find no missing files, but all the exe's crash on desktop for me.