SrichNET

There comes a time in a games life that it just doesn’t cut it anymore and it refuses to work flawlessly in modern day operating systems. That’s usually a good sign that the game should be thrown out and forgotten. But there are some that you just can’t do that to – Dungeon Keeper 2 being one of them. So here I will show you how to get DK2 working fine under VISTA SP1.

You Will Need

• Dungeon Keeper 2 - Obviously very hard to come by in legit form, so I think it is OK (Read: Still not legal) to leech from somewhere. Get it / buy it, then patch it:
  • Patch to v1.7 – DK2 needs to be patched to v1.7, the latest and last update. That too can be understandably hard to come by, so get your Google on.
• (Recommended) Dungeon Keeper 2 (Silver Edition) – The full DK2 game, but packed full of all 3 bonus packs, pre-patched to v1.7 and installs without a hitch. All thanks some some random die-hard fan. Can be found on many torrent trackers.

Instructions

Step 1. Install DK2 and update it to v1.7 if you need to. Attempting to run DK2 now should result in a crash to desktop.

Step 2. Right-click the DK2 desktop shortcut and click Properties. Click on the Compatibility tab and tick Run this program in compatibility mode for: and choose Windows XP (Service Pack 2). Apply and close the window.

Step 3. Launching DK2 now should get you in game. It appears that for some people that is all that needs to be done. But for me, and I suspect this is graphics card based, I get rather bad graphical artifacts in the form of pure black elements covering most of the screen. If you get these issues or similar, complete the 4th step.

Step 4. Go in game and proceed to the Graphics Options. Within this menu will be a Hardware Acceleration option. Disable it. OK out of the options and play a quick game such as the Pet Dungeon game mode. The reason for this is that the game doesn’t appear to save the options unless you go all the way in game and back out. Once in game, quit immediately and restart DK2.

Done! That is all there is to it.

This all works great, but my game crashes out randomly!

Tips:

• Running a dual monitor configuration? Try disabling your secondary monitor.
• Use Quick Save (ctrl+S) and Quick Load (ctrl+L) religiously.
• A known crash point is when dropping human NPCs in Pet Dungeon mode.

Please feel free to offer any feedback if you are still having issues.