D1 Black Screens and Crashes

Diablo I General Discussion
1

I have a Desktop and a Laptop. I installed Diablo 1 on both.

After getting past the DirectDraw/DirectX issue on both, each is behaving differently.

My desktop D1 seems to run fine for the most part.

However, on my laptop, D1 constantly:

  1. Crashes to desktop either right at launch, or after the Blizzard North splash.
  2. Goes to a black screen after the Blizzard North splash. However, the game is still running. I can hear the menu music and I can use the keyboard to move the mode selector around. I can use ESC key to exit the client normally. Thereā€™s just no picture.

Hereā€™s the issue: Either of those happens ~9 out of 10 times, meaning, it takes forever just to get the game to open correctly once.

Software wise, everything should be close to identical on both, so it seems to be coming down to difference in hardware/drivers. My laptop is newer than the desktop by good handful of years.

On a side note, both the desktop and laptop experience the whacked out Battlenet UI.

2 Likes
2

same here, any suggestions to fix this?. BTW i find really unprofessional from blizzard to lunch something that doesnt work ā€¦ did they even test it??

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3

I have the same problem, and I found an error when I want to request a refund for the game. So, I donā€™t know what to do, i am very angry.

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4

The refund system does work, but you must contact Blizzard directly.

Submit a support ticket. You can and click on the following link and go through these steps:

  1. Click on the link below and choose ACCOUNT.
  2. Click on the CONTACT SUPPORT button.
  3. Click on PAYMENTS.
  4. Click on REFUNDS.
  5. Click on CONTINUE
  6. You should see ā€œWhich order would you like to refund?ā€
  7. Diablo 1 should be there and click on that and go forward accordingly.

Hereā€™s the link:

https://us.battle.net/support/en/

5

The way Diabloā€™s menu is drawn violates the GDI api, this has been causing various render issues since time immemorial, and Iā€™m guessing this is also the cause of the stability issues on your laptop. Since the actual game doesnā€™t do this you might be able to get in game by just pressing enter a few times (might have to enter a name at some point).

Alternativly you could also try using the DevilutionX client to run the game.

6

Same here, crushing and crushing. The support is not helpful at all. I got response like ā€œtry to solve it by yourselfā€.
Filed refundā€¦

1 Like
7

Yeah, it sucks.

If you still want to play, GoGā€™s Diablo 1 works fine.

The Battlenet gateway in GoGā€™s version is the same that Blizā€™s version uses, so everyone connects to the same place.

8

I just bought the game and I was having the same issues. Tried some things and seems that it workes just fine now.

1 - Right click on the shortcut and select ā€˜Settingsā€™.
2 - Go to ā€˜Compatibilityā€™ tab and check the box which makes the game runs at 640 x 480 and the one that makes the game run as administrator.

2 Likes
9

This worked great, tried running in Windows XP and Windows 98 first, kept crashing after Blizzard screen. Switched back to running in windows 10 and ran 640x480 and run as administrator; worked firs try.

Thanks man!

1 Like
10

Im currently using GoGs version. Its crashing when i use a town portal. It just started that yesterday, and today it crashed when i tried using the stairs to leave

11

Hey hskgrimm

Thatā€™s something youā€™d have to take up with GoG. They have their own support channels for the games they publish.

12

I have the same issues. I tried what you said but for some reason under compatibility I donā€™t have a windows 10 option. Any idea wht?

13

Hey there, I just purchased and installed this game and had the exact same issue you are having. After some tinkering, I think I have the solution for you as its now displaying the main menu with all the bells and whistles.
Right click the shortcut and click ā€œOpen file locationā€
Right click and select ā€œPropertiesā€
Select the tab ā€œCompatibilityā€
Untick Compatibility Mode
Go to the ā€œsettingsā€ tab
Diablo - Disable Fullscreen Optimizations
Hellfire - Same + Run in 640 x 480 Resolution
Tick ā€œreduced colour modeā€
Select 8 bit (256 Colours)
Tick Run As Admin

Voila, thats all I did. I tested on both Diablo and Hellfire and I hope this has resolved it for you and others :stuck_out_tongue: