Troubleshooting Diablo 2

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With the release of Diablo 2 came many issues that affected peoples ability to play or even install this game. What will be presented here are some known problems and some suggested solutions. If you have any particular issues, please post your questions in the alt.games.diablo newsgroup which can be found on your local news server, Deja.com or Remarq.com.

Help us help you. If you intend to post your question, please include the following:

1) Detailed description of the problem

2) Your specs, such as processor, RAM, type of drive etc.

3) What you have tried to correct the problem.

Now, before you post your question or feel that you are having some sort of exceptional problem, please try these proposed solutions first....

1) Update your current video card, sound card or CD rom drivers.

2) If you have an AMD Athlon system, ensure that your miniport drivers for your chip are current.

3) Update your version of Direct X. This is very important. The most current version is 7a. Many people have version 7 which, in my experience and the experience of many other players of graphic intensive games, is bug filled. You can get 7a direct from Microsoft.

4) Reboot your computer.

5) Follow the directions for installing the game.

Known hardware issues with Diablo 2

Within the following list are known problems with Diablo 2 and hardware incompatibility. Following this list is Known Software Issues . All information was posted to the alt.games.diablo newsgroup.

CD ROM Drives

Kenwood CD Rom Drives -- Currently, Kenwood TrueX CD Rom drives are unable to read the Diablo 2 CD. This appears to be an issue on the side of Kenwood. The only known workaround is to install a slower drive from another manufacturer and/or see Kenwood for a firmware update.

CD Rom Drive not recognizing the startup or Play Disc -- Apparently, higher speed CD Rom drives (30x, 40x, etc.) and certain brands (Pioneer, Asus, Toshiba and Yamaha) arent able to be read or "see" the CD. The known workaround is to install a slower drive--20x or less-- from a "no-name" brand. (No one has reported problems with lower speed Mitsumi or Acer drives.) Thanks to Kriyasakti.

CD Rom is being accessed too much, resulting in lag -- This problem can be overcome by copying the entire .mpq file (~1.5gb) of the game disk to your hard drive and using a "No CD" file to run the game.

For issues not covered here in regards to CD ROM problems, see Blizzards Tech Support page for help in troubleshooting CD ROM related problems.

Video Cards

Diamond Monster Fusion Voodoo Banshee PCI Card -- "mipmap error" is displayed while playing game. The workaround seems to be to reinstall particular drivers. Ray Vance re-installed his MaxiGamer Phoenix drivers and is not having any more issues to date. You can follow this link to get the latest drivers for the Monster Fusion-- Diamond Multimedia

Diamond Viper 550 -- Introduction screen will sometimes play and then turn black with colored specks. The workaround is to get new drivers from Nvidia

Diamond V770 Ultra TNT 2 with 32 MB -- No Direct 3D. Cure seems to be to download updated drivers from Reactor Critical. Thanks to Satan (No, not the Dark Lord of Hell.) for this suggestion.

Nvidia Geforce/TNT 3D -- Casper Lund of alt.games.diablo suggests this fix for 3D display:

Right click desktop -> Properties -> Settings -> Advanced -> GeForce 256 -> Additional Properties -> Direct3D Settings -> More Direct3D... then adjust PCI Texture Memory Size to 64 megs (the D2 box states that "Direct 3D requires 64MB of system ram

**However, changing the PCI texture Memory Size to 16 megs has worked for other players**.

Jugulator emailed me with additional information to say that :

" *any* TNT/TNT2/Pro/Ultra/Vanta/etc or GeForce 2 GTS / GeForce 256 user should use the latest Detonator 2 drivers found at www.nvidia.com just as mentioned in the readme file supplied with Diablo 2 and Blizzard's Official Diablo II site."

Asus GeForce 256 -- No 3D mode. Suggested fix is to get the latest reference drivers (5.3x drivers) from Nvidia. Another thing to try is Detonator 2.0 drivers from the Nvidia site. Thanks to Ray Marden and TimeWarp

Asus V6800 Deluxe DDR -- No 3D mode. Suggested fix is to get Detonator 2.0 drivers from Nvidia. Thanks to Dan.

Sound Cards

Soundblaster LIVE! -- No EAX sound option. Resolve this problem by updating your Soundblaster drivers. Ensure that you also have the file: sblw9xup.exe. Thanks to John Crouch and eureka.

Known Software Issues

The majority of reported problems seem to be connected to hardware issues. Following are the only software related problems I could find.

Game installs, but does not run -- Install the Direct X from the CD (Dont worry about version of Direct X at this time--if you make the game work with this fix, dont worry about upgrading Direct X: Dont fix what aint broken.) and then manually download the patch from Blizzard or from the link below. Thanks to Mark Avery

Battle.net update causes your computer to crash -- When Battle.net tries to update your version of Diablo 2, an event occurs and causes your computer to crash. The solution is to download the 1.01 patch and install it manually. Thanks to Tuomenoja Harri for the information on this problem. You can download the patch here and I have found in my experience with Blizzard, that its often best to do patching manually.

Diablo 2 v.1.01 Patch

Diablo 2 v.1.02 Patch

Diablo 2 v.1.03 Patch

If you are experiencing other issues not covered here, check out Blizzards page on improving performance.

If you had a problem and found a solution for it that is not covered here, then email me and I will put it up for everyone.

Stalker

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