Hi!

When starting the game engine (i. e. after the intro movies), the screen goes black, and the computer becomes unresponsive. Sound from youtube and so on keeps running, but that's it.

Using Win 7, two screens, ATI graphics card, everything updated and so on. Tried deinstalling, removed all registry keys relating to SWBG, reinstalled, running in compatibility mode - still doesn't work.

Anybody got an idea?

I've been getting this problem too. The game seems to demand control of my display and just blank screen permanently.
I've found a temporary fix. If you go into the game folder and start the game using the swgbg.exe file and it runs completely well. No intro video but no great loss.
More trying around, Clone Campaigns causes the black screen. Base game runs smooth if started from the game folder.

Running it on Windows 7 64 bit with a Nvidia card,no serious problems. The screen goes black for about 30 seconds when going from the cutscenes to the main game window but the starts fine.And the distorted colors problem has been fixed in the GoG release.

Interesting! Works the same way on my computer. It really seems to be the AddOn's exe causing the problem. The base game can be run with this workaround.

Sadly, the HD patch available only works for the AddOn's exe...

But what in the three devils' name is causing that!? I've found something about a similar problem that apparently happened with MAC OS back in the day, but nothing regarding machines running Windows. New problem, apparently?

I have submitted a ticket to Gog.com so i am waiting for a response before i start calling anything bad. I know the exe demands my screen control but the original game doesn't so it might be an unintentional bit of code in the executable from the win95 days.

Installing and running it via the Voobly client helped a little. After starting the Voobly client, I again got a black screen, but after several minutes, apparently the client fixed the problem by itself. It needed permission to change several registry keys, so maybe it's some bad entry there? The Voobly client also modifies the .exe file.

Now, I can start the expansion pack even without the Voobly client. The Widescreen patch (neither old nor new) doesn't seem to work, and I don't know if Voobly changed anything else, so that workaround isn't ideal. But it might give a hint as to where the problem lies: Wherever it lies, the Voobly people should know about it. Maybe the changes can be analyzed?

I didn't really get much from support on gog.
For me, i found the problem to be from my protection software. The game controlled the screen and didn't let me give the game permissions to the registry keys it required. Add it to the safe-list to any and all security software solved it for me.