Getting Diablo 1 Working on Windows 7 Guide
Posted 14 April 2012 by Elly
With Diablo 3 just weeks away from release, many of you may be taking a trip down memory lane prior to launch and revisiting the original Diablo. As you know, getting older games working on Windows 7 can be a right pain in the ass, but it can be done with some perseverance.
Site reader Mark dropped a mail over to let us know that his guide to getting the original Diablo working on Windows 7 has recently been updated and it will really help anyone wanting to get the IPX/SPX networking protocol working, getting the free VPN Hamachi to allow fiends to play over the Internet without Battle.Net and walks you through everything step by step. The guide will basically get you up and running so it’s worth a read if you are stuck.
Thanks to Mark for sending that over, hopefully many of you will find it very useful.
Playing D2 at the moment…i just cant play D1 anymore, No running plus the “ranged playboy bunnies” which walk faster than my worrior are extremly annoying
but they make such a cool noise when you kill them!
Install HellFire, you can run plus you get many cool additional dungeons. Moooooooo, I’m just a cow alright ?
Nope Hellfire only lets you run in town, but yeah it fun sadly it massivly expensive to buy I mean the price of a copy is the same as 2 new games.
i said moo
I’d like to know how to run Diablo I in a window!
Monitor resolutions have changed so much in the years since it was released, it would be nice to run it in it’s native (plus none distorted, if you have a wide monitor) resolution.
Does anyone have a solution?
maybe you could try VMware Workstation ? Havent tested it myself though
I use Oracles Virtual Box software to run a copy of Win XP. Works like a champ.
If you want to run it windowed, you’ll have to use some sort of virtual machine application.
If you want to run it full screen, you can do so in Windows Vista/7 without issue. If you have a widescreen monitor, there should be some setting on it to let you add black bars to the side (eg, not stretch the image). If you’re running on a widescreen laptop then you may or may not have the option to change that behaviour on the monitor, but your graphics card driver might be able to do it.
It’s probably doable with AutoHotkey.
for any PSP owners out there , there is a way to run Diablo I on your PSP , but it involves CFW . it’s basically just copying the PS1 version on to your PSP . PM me if you want to know more
yeech how can anyone play that DOS-like pixelated mess anymore? meanwhile I find this far more amusing
http://www.incgamers.com/News/31082/activision-blizzard-being-sued-over-online-patent-infringement
kikikikiki that’ll teach em for taking out offline SP from D3
That’s the problem with gamers nowadays, how can we play a pixeled mess? Couse the gameplay beats most games released post 2000.
Diablo : The Hell, a fanmod is great, makes the game more difficult, and adds hundrets of uniques.
Delicious patent trolling. Can they prove significant commercial losses?
Also a more detailed article including patent numbers and an interview: http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngaudiosi/2012/04/13/worlds-inc-explains-why-its-suing-activision-blizzard-over-world-of-warcraft-and-call-of-duty/
ATVI will probably just settle for an undisclosed amount to make them go away and that’ll be that. NCSoft already did, as pointed out in your linked article.
Ooo this is nice. I was trying to play Diablo I a while ago but quit because of the color issues.
Beat it a couple weeks ago…it was very different (and much less challenging) than I remember it being playing as a boy.
I agree on the less difficult part, but then I was about 8-9 years old when I first played it (oh how it frightened me!) As for different? Dunno what you mean, I still get all the same feelings when racing through, especially when hearing NPC’s talk or your char reads… “Pleeeeeeeease, no hurt, no kill. And next time, good bring to you!”
I’m curious, I downloaded Diablo I off the internet (4shared specifically), full game, and I am able to play it with no problems. Well, there are some minor problems, there is no music and no cinematics/cutscenes, but other then that, everything else works, and it is a full game. I am running Windows 7 Professional and without re-configuring anything I am able to play it perfectly well. Not that I am complaining of course. I am running it on laptop, HP Probook 4520s with Intel i5 processor with 2.69 Ghz, and Radeon HD 6370.
Another question here:
This topic made me download D1 and Hellfire, and I have used the notepad way around the color problem. Thing is though, how do I make it apply Hellfire as well? D1 works flawlessly on my Win7 64bit machine, though Hellfire suffers from the same color problem? What am I missing here?
OFFICIAL DIABLO COLOUR FIX FROM BLIZZARD:
http://us.battle.net/support/en/article/rainbow-or-washed-out-colors-windows-7
Just put that in all caps to catch the attention of people who commented about the same thing below.
Also, that page doesn’t mention it, but if you want to play multiplayer characters in Diablo you need to update it to the latest patch. The older (and original retail 1.00) version stored your character files in the C:\Windows\system directory! Blizzard didn’t know any better back then. That worked fine for XP, but on Windows 7 with the various permissions, it simply won’t let you store characters there.
This is also the reason why Hellfire won’t let you create multiplayer characters, because the latest Hellfire version is 1.04 and so it still tries to save your characters to that protected directory. Similarly the official Blizzard colour fix only works on Diablo 1.09 so probably won’t work for Hellfire. It’s a registry key with a magic incantation in it, so maybe you could work out how to apply the incantation elsewhere, or try contacting Blizzard support and see if they’ll help?
You *might* be able to rig up something with Hellfire to prevent it saving to windows\system with a virtual /symlinked directory, but I’m not sure how your mileage would go there.
Another option, if you’ve got Windows 7 business (?) or Ultimate is to play Hellfire using the virtual PC XP Mode: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx
Honestly I never got the compatibility mode to work, here what I do to fix the weird rainbow colors that show up due to differences in how that game dies coloration code:
- Right-click on desktop, go to Personalize
- Select the theme “High Contrast Black” (It’s REALLY ugly, but it’s just for while you are playing)
- Right click on desktop again, go to Screen Resolution
- Now just leave this screen up while you play (it will be in the background)
And viola! color problem solved. I’m not exactly sure why you need to leave it open, maybe it has to do with some related process being able to correct the colors or something.
Actually just leaving the resolution window up is enough, you don’t need to change the theme. Better yet you can just use the official Blizzard fix and don’t have to do any of that stuff at all.