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Mar 4 2014 01:01pm
Due to changes made by both Microsoft and Blizzard, this guide is now obsolete.

How to Optimally Play Diablo II on Windows 8 & 8.1


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Table of Contents
    1.0 Guide Introduction
    2.0 Optimization Steps
    3.0 Last Notes


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1.0 Guide Introduction

With the new Windows 8 and 8.1 becoming more mainstream, I've seen a growing number of people having issues with Diablo II and getting it to run on their Windows 8 & 8.1 systems.
Some people get CTDs (crash to desktop) with no reason given, laggy mouse performance, odd colours and not to forget the infamous "UNHANDLED EXCEPTION" crash.

But while it is a fact that Diablo II is an old game and has 13 years in between the release of Windows 8, it is still more than possible to get it to work together.
This guide will walk you through how, and also fill you in on other ways to optimize your game performance, if you end up having issues after your installation.

This guide will not walk you through the installation of Diablo II, so if you need help with that you should check this https://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=69423395General Help Unified Sticky[/URL] under Section 6.


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2.0 Optimization Steps

And now to the important part, and probably the reason why you are here; how to get the Diablo II installation to work on your Windows 8 or 8.1 installation.

Assuming you have already installed the game. One trick I found very useful and which I felt improved my experience was patching the game before opening it for the first time.
The latest official Diablo II and LoD patches can be found here: https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/classic-game-patches
    1. Pick Diablo II in the drop down menu
    2. If you have both Diablo II and LoD installed, pick the top Windows option, if only on Diablo II, pick the Windows option below


Since Diablo II most likely won't be able to initiate full screen mode, on your Windows 8 configuration, you will need to run it windowed. To start the game windowed, follow the below steps:
    1. Locate your Diablo II shortcut, per default one should be on your desktop after the installation
    2. Right-click it and enter Properties
    3. Click the Shortcut tap on the top hand of the window
    4. Under Target: you need to add a " -w" (without the quotes) after the entry, here's an example:
Code
"C:\Users\Andreas\Desktop\D2\Diablo II\Diablo II.exe" -w
    5. When done, hit Apply


After you have patched your game and entered the -w as shown above, we should be ready to proceed to the next steps:
    1. Locate your Diablo II shortcut, per default one should be on your desktop after the installation
    2. Right-click it and enter Properties
    3. Click the Compatibility tap on the top hand of the window
    4. This is how your options should look, in the Compatibility tap, I will explain why under the picture example
    5. When done, hit Apply


First of all, please have in mind that you can essentially run Diablo II without any of the options checked and without Compatibility mode for Windows XP, and that also might work fine for you.
But to fully optimally run the game and to prevent several issues, the above settings are needed.

Reduced colour mode; 16-bit (65536) colour
- Some users have had issues with washed out colours and jumping frames when moving around in the game. I've not personally been able to replicate this issue, but leaving it checked will ensure you won't have to!

Compatiblity mode; Run this program in compatibility mode for: Windows XP (Service Pack 3)
- The game was never designed for the Windows 8 platform, hence why running the game in Windows XP SP3 mode might fix stutter and crashing issues in Windows 8 and 8.1.

Disable display scaling on high DPI settings
- You need to Disable display scaling on high DPI settings, as if you don't you might end up with a erratic and jumping mouse experience.
If you have disabled it and you still have mouse issues in the game, you probably need to install this Windows 8 update: https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2908279http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2908279[/URL]

Run this program as an administrator
- Some users have experienced better performance with this enabled. Others simply needed it due to permission issues disallowing people to connect to b.net properly, or issues making it close to impossible to run and/or start the game at all.

If you still receive error messages or crashes when trying to start the game, you might need to run the D2VidTst application.
You can find it in your Diablo 2 installation folder. You need to run it in Compatibility mode with XP SP3, otherwise it won't work. When done you should get 2 options.
DirectDraw and direct3d have similar performance, although if you playing on a slower machine, like a Netbook or similar directdraw might give you the best performance.


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3.0 Last Notes


If you have any questions, corrections or remarks regarding the this guide, you are of course more than welcome to https://forums.d2jsp.org/pm.php?c=1&u=832487&subj=D2onW8questionPM me[/URL].
Also remember to check the https://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=69423395General Help Unified Sticky[/URL] which is stickied in https://forums.d2jsp.org/forum.php?f=34General Help[/URL] if you have any other issues.

Thank you for reading my guide, I hope it helped!

This post was edited by Atiesh on Nov 4 2020 08:52am
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