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You are here: Home / Games / How to Play Diablo II on Windows 10 (Update)

How to Play Diablo II on Windows 10 (Update)

July 28, 2015 by Richard Vincenti Jr 58 Comments

Running Diablo II on Windows 10 can be a little problematic so here is a quick guide to help smooth things out. This is an update to an earlier post that showed how to run Diablo II on Windows 8. Most of the the information here should carry over to Windows 10 quite well. If you run into any issues, please comment below so that the community or myself can help you out.

DII LOD Cover Art Diablo II Lord Of Destruction
Diablo II Lord of Destruction Cover Art (Blizzard Entertainment®)

This quick “how to” assumes that you have already installed and patched the latest version of Diablo II LOD on your system. If you need patch information you can obtain it through Blizzard’s official patch site.

Here are the steps to take to remove lag and other strange issues with Diablo II LOD on Windows 10.

Before launching the game, right click on the game’s shortcut and select “Properties”, then select the “Compatibility” tab.

Once on the Compatibility tab, select the following options:

  • Check “Run this program in compatibility mode for” and set the value to “Windows XP SP 2/3”
  • Check “Reduced Color Mode” and set to “16-bit (65536) Color”
  • Check “Disable display scaling on high DPI settings”
  • Optional “Run this program as administrator”

Once you dial in these settings click Apply and then OK.

The next step is crucial if you want to reduce or eliminate all of the glitching and lagging that is known to plague Diablo II LOD on Windows 10.

Obtain a 3DFX Glide Wrapper, this is a little application that will allow you to use the Glide interface with Diablo II LOD. I have found that GLIDE3-to-OpenGL Wrapper by Sven Labusch seems to work the best out of any I have tried so far.

Download the files from Sven’s site and read the “ReadMe.txt” file. This will contain the most current instructions for installing and setting up the wrapper. Be sure to re-run the video test after the wrapper is installed and set it to use Glide.

** Note: You Will Also Need to apply compatibility settings to run the Diablo II Video Test (D2VidTst.exe) * *

 

That’s it! Hopefully you will be successful in your attempts to get Diablo running smooth. Just follow the directions closely and have fun!

 

(UPDATE (3-15-21)

 Great news! It appears that in the most recent versions of Windows 10, you may not need to follow this guide. Also, Blizzard is getting ready to release a remastered version of this incredible game. More details from Blizzard.

Filed Under: Games, Guides, How To Tagged With: Diablo II, Diablo II Lord of Destruction, Guide, How To, Windows 10

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Robert Jacoby says

    August 20, 2015 at 4:14 PM

    Thanks. Didn’t even have to run the Glide Wrapper yet. Was having screen resolution problems, the D2 screen kept getting cut off. No amount of changing screen resolution in Windows 10 or D2 worked.

    Reply
    • a6five says

      June 24, 2017 at 12:45 AM

      use the auto adjust button on your monitor, maybe.

      Reply
      • kyle says

        August 18, 2019 at 5:24 PM

        I am having the same problem it is getting cut off on my new Alienware m15 laptop and idk how to fix it

        Reply
  2. Brent Miller says

    August 28, 2015 at 4:01 PM

    Worked great!

    Reply
  3. MILF1992 says

    September 19, 2015 at 8:55 AM

    Thx YOU’RE MY HERO OF THE YEAR D2 FTWWWWWWW

    Reply
  4. David says

    September 27, 2015 at 7:24 PM

    This did not fix my problem. Upon making these selections, I still was prompted with Error 1: Diablo II is unable to proceed. Please run D2vidtst and try again. Running the D2vidtst application doesn’t do anything either. No response from that app.

    Reply
    • Anonymous says

      November 8, 2015 at 3:03 PM

      same here

      Reply
      • Anonymous says

        December 16, 2015 at 12:17 PM

        Make sure you run the video test with the compatibility settings and as an admin, too.

        Reply
    • Anonymous says

      December 13, 2019 at 2:06 PM

      Add a -w to you’re target at the end of the script. Got mine to work. Kinda.

      Reply
    • Anonymous says

      December 30, 2019 at 9:57 AM

      i had this same issue, i have the game installed, but everytime i pull it up, i would start and then an error would occur, i dont know why this is happening but it has, i even tried to set up the settings like this, but it didnt work.
      Please help me if you can

      Reply
  5. Anonymous says

    October 2, 2015 at 9:41 AM

    Can you give me a link safe and no virus to download D2 LOD. Thanks

    Reply
    • Anonymous says

      November 2, 2015 at 4:55 PM

      Sure thing! Here you go! https://us.battle.net/shop/en/product/diablo-ii-lord-of-destruction

      Reply
  6. akawants says

    December 6, 2015 at 3:09 PM

    hellou! i have a problem with diablo 2,i already check everything and still won’t work, this is the message http://postimg.org/image/knm5lmk3z/ and i don t know how to resolve it

    Reply
  7. Frank says

    December 17, 2015 at 9:14 PM

    thank lord this is fresh i recently was digging through some things and found my d2lod installation disc[s] and installed but i keep getting error 22 and im about to cry pls help me :/

    Reply
  8. John Morris says

    December 25, 2015 at 1:40 PM

    I can’t get Diablo 2 to install on my new laptop. The install program shows up on my dvd rw drive but when I try to install nothing happens! Any Ideas why I can’t install the program?

    Reply
    • Anonymous says

      October 28, 2016 at 2:36 PM

      Try running it as an admin ?

      Reply
    • anon lgbtq says

      October 17, 2018 at 12:11 AM

      could be a key issue try the downloaded version instead of disks, it can be found at blizzard.com

      Reply
  9. danny says

    January 1, 2016 at 9:25 PM

    hey I’m having trouble with windows 10 and direct x error 22 not sure how to fix it could you help??

    Reply
  10. бедаааа says

    January 11, 2016 at 11:44 PM

    подскажите как убрать черные полосы по бокам на вин 10? карта intel

    Reply
  11. tony says

    January 17, 2016 at 2:06 PM

    windows 8.1 played full screen with info here but upgraded to 10 and square non filled in screen. not sure what to do.

    Reply
    • Anonymous says

      June 2, 2016 at 5:11 PM

      Having the same issue, plays great, just in this little window, can’t figure out how to make it full screen.

      Reply
      • saythein says

        October 17, 2018 at 12:14 AM

        right click icon go to properties then shortcut then where it says target remove the -w from the end of the command. should work.

        Reply
  12. Richard says

    January 21, 2016 at 9:31 PM

    Thank-you for this It helped alot.

    Reply
  13. Tautvydas says

    January 23, 2016 at 6:11 AM

    Hi:)
    So I followed your guide everything works perfect for the first game, but if I create a next one, it will pop up with error msg, ITERNAL ERROR LINE 193.. any ideas?

    Reply
  14. LordOmar2 says

    February 8, 2016 at 10:06 PM

    WOW YEAH!!!!

    Fucking great… I love you man.
    From now on you’re in my “Book of cool people”

    Reply
  15. Rob says

    March 22, 2016 at 11:30 AM

    I have downloaded Diablo 2 and LoD from Blizzard and installed them both. Installed Sven’s program and copied the .dll file into the Diablo 2 folder. Changed the compatibility on D2 as above. Vid test on Sven’s program works fine, OpenQuery shows everything to be OK, only (2) unsupported extensions but says they aren’t necessary. Have no D2VidTst to run/check. Opening the game results in a about a 2 inch band of smeared video at the top of the monitor and that’s it.

    Reply
  16. Anonymous says

    March 25, 2016 at 3:06 AM

    Thanks for your help!
    It really solves my problems.

    Reply
  17. TGG says

    March 31, 2016 at 11:48 AM

    Windows Defender keeps deleting Vidtst. It says that it is malware/virus according to Microsofts latest Definition updates for Windows Defender. Every time I try to create a new character I get “Unable to Enter Game, Generic Bad File.” I tried to add Vidtst to the allowed program list with Windows Defender, but it deletes it anyway. I could use all of the HELP that I can get on this one. Anybody have any ideas???
    I had the same problem with “Unable to Enter Game, Generic Bad File.” before and running the Vidtst fixed it. I cannot run Vidtst on my computer because Defender keeps deleting it before I can. I do not want to delete Defender though. If nobody has any suggestion though, I guess that I will have to delete and reinstall them both… Diablo 2 being installed first of course.

    Reply
  18. Anonymous says

    April 7, 2016 at 11:26 AM

    my problem is that when I put in the install disc in nothing even pops up. can anyone tell me why this is? must play d2!

    Reply
  19. Anonymous says

    April 28, 2016 at 3:23 PM

    when i put in my LOD disc to try to intall it, obviously i have diabo2 2 installed, but the in the installation window for LOD it says i need to install D2 first…… i tryed uninstalling and reinstalling D2 to see if that would fix the issue but doesnt, i would really appreciate a helping hand. thanks

    Reply
  20. victor says

    May 10, 2016 at 10:55 AM

    cant change skills with hotkeys or mouse scroll ,help!

    Reply
    • Shabbus says

      May 17, 2016 at 7:22 AM

      Having g the same issue. But I did not make the changes noted in the original message.

      Reply
  21. abavanan says

    June 3, 2016 at 8:14 AM

    Hi,

    I need the link for download diablo II for windows 7 32 bit without install running setup Diablo II Video Test (D2VidTst.exe

    Thanks & regards,

    A.B.ABavanan

    Reply
  22. Silencer says

    July 29, 2016 at 5:40 PM

    “Be sure to re-run the video test after the wrapper is installed and set it to use Glide.”

    You know, I’m a computer expert. 35 years.

    I can’t.

    How do I?

    No D2VidTst.exe file, no Video Test shortcut.

    Help.

    Reply
  23. Silencer says

    July 29, 2016 at 5:48 PM

    Looking at the comments, it appears I’ll need to un-install Windows Defender and re-install Diablo II. Then the wrapper, then run the video test.

    If it’ll work.

    My question is, will this fix the non-working gamma and contrast sliders in the game? Can anyone verify this fixes that? Ty.

    :o)

    Reply
  24. Önder says

    September 3, 2016 at 12:18 PM

    Thank you very much man. This helped a lot.

    Reply
  25. Some Okie says

    September 8, 2016 at 8:55 PM

    Fixed my issues, made the world a better place for me and four other people. We’re in Lut gholein and no problems.

    You are a good person.

    Reply
  26. Evan says

    November 27, 2016 at 4:59 PM

    Please help with this.
    When I click on the diablo program I get back a “UNHANDLED EXCEPTION: ACCESS_VIOLATION (c0000005)”.

    I have installed Diablo 2 on Windows 10. I have not patched the game yet. I have copied the downloaded file glide3x.dll from http://www.svenswrapper.de/english/downloads.html into the C:\Program Files (x86)\Diablo II. I have set all the compatibility settings. If you have any ideas I would appreciate the help.

    Reply
    • Evan says

      November 27, 2016 at 5:19 PM

      Cancel this. I found the answer by searching on the error.

      Reply
  27. Inlustris Nox says

    February 11, 2017 at 12:55 PM

    I need to check it out
    for me game is working but it starts slowing down and lagging when there are more monsters on a screen (4 or more) and that says something on on quadcore processor 2,6-3,6GHz and 8GB DDR3 with gaming GeForce card

    Reply
  28. pelangidomino says

    February 14, 2017 at 8:13 PM

    This page certainly has all the information I wanted about this subject and didn’t
    know who to ask.

    Reply
  29. THK says

    April 14, 2017 at 9:19 AM

    Too bad they STILL didn’t fix the Cloak of Shadows skill bug that causes crashes throughout the game (especially in Act 2 and while fighting Ancients).

    Reply
  30. Rosalie says

    June 26, 2017 at 6:21 PM

    Hi. I’ve been playing the Diablo II expansion on my Windows 10 PC for months and as of today I am getting an error message that says: “Error 25: A critical error has occurred while initializing Direct3D.”
    To fix it I headed to Youtube where I watched a video on how to get it to work , but now it will only work in windowed mode! The window is small and there isn’t a set of minimize/maximize buttons for the window. I even added the -nofixaspect command and it hasn’t worked at all. I usually play every day. Please help if you have any additional advice.

    Reply
  31. terry says

    October 26, 2017 at 11:39 PM

    thanks youll a champ works perfectly

    Reply
  32. Nick says

    October 27, 2017 at 5:21 PM

    The game won’t run. It will start up and then kick me out before I even get to the Blizzard logo.

    Reply
  33. Noah Phipps says

    November 12, 2017 at 7:33 AM

    Okay, so a friend gave ne his copy of diablo2 and Lord of Destruction but when trying to run tye installer cor the expansion it keeps saying the disk isn’t inserted and i am about 85% done with the install. Any solutions?

    Reply
  34. GIRLGAMER says

    November 18, 2017 at 11:50 AM

    Neeeding to get my D2 fix! Tried downloading it back onto my computer via Blizzard online and it gives me this crap!::::

    Error 25: A critical error has occurred while initializing Direct3D.
    Tried changing the Compatibility properties (to RUN THIS PROGRAM IN COMPATIBILITY MODE FOR: Windows XP [Service Pack 2], REDUCED COLOR MODE [16-bit], DISABLE DISPLAY SCALING ON HIGH DPI SETTINGS, and RUN THIS PROGRAM AS AN ADMINISTRATOR) and then it tells me- Error 1: Diablo II is unable to proceed. Unsupported graphics mode.

    HELP!

    Reply
  35. Teddy says

    July 14, 2018 at 11:25 AM

    On my setup (Win 10), I didn’t have to install the wrapper. I did however have to make some small changes to the Properties boxes.
    – Check ‘Run this program in compatibility mode for’ and select Windows XP Service Pack 3 (there is no option on mine for 2/3 and 2 didn’t work)
    – Check ‘Reduced color mode’ and select 16-bit
    – Check ‘Disable full-screen optimizations’
    – Check ‘Run this program as administrator’
    Make sure when you run the .exe you do a right click and select ‘Run as Administrator’

    Reply
  36. DeaconTaylor says

    March 27, 2019 at 11:00 PM

    do all these steps and most importantly disable any extra monitors. it finally decided to load after i did that. before that it would keep shuffling resolutions and not really load at all but i could still hear the sound.

    Reply
  37. Anonymous says

    December 1, 2019 at 6:44 AM

    Its not working on my end.

    Reply
  38. John says

    January 27, 2020 at 5:46 PM

    I did all legitimately and I am still coming to “Error 1: Diablo 11 is unable to proceed. Unsupported graphics mode.” URGGG, please, how can I make this work. Im itching hard

    Reply
  39. Michael says

    March 20, 2020 at 9:54 AM

    I have my diablo 2 LOD working on my Windows 10 but now it comes up with “Error 1: Diablo II is unable to proceed. Unsupported Graphics mode.” I have tried changing the graphics in the properties as above but it hasn’t fixed it. Help if able please.

    Reply
  40. J says

    May 26, 2020 at 8:08 AM

    Thanks for the tips. Good to know other people are still playing this, too!

    I didn’t need the wrapper, but the patches seemed to do the trick. Updated to LOD 1.14, which claims to have full support for all versions of Windows up to 10, and so far this has held true.

    Before the patches, the graphics and cursor movements were very glitchy. I had to set compatibility mode to run the video test. Getting the program to run was hit and miss: re-running the video test and (sometimes repeatedly) selecting the DirectDraw(2D) option seemed to help (the test defaulted to Direct3D on my system, but this never seemed to work).

    Also, I found letting Windows detect the compatability settings was not much use. I selected XP Service pack 3 and reduced colour mode, but didn’t use any other compatability settings. Tried all this before applying the patches (d’oh!), but kept these settings after patching and the game ran OK.

    Reply
  41. rekhaa says

    November 23, 2020 at 2:04 PM

    Thanks, after trying a lot of things, it work!

    Reply
  42. Betfair Exchange says

    May 26, 2022 at 4:49 AM

    I enjoyed reading this blog. Learned so much from this! Keep on posting

    Reply
  43. NulaCZ says

    January 15, 2023 at 3:49 AM

    Thanks fixed everything on win 10 , aspect to wide screen in full screen , no black around, fixed FPS ,
    THANK YOU A LOT ! Finaly can Play old 2006 D2 eastern sun on 2K monitor on Fullscreen

    Reply
  44. NulaCZ says

    January 15, 2023 at 3:49 AM

    ps: Instal that Glide , u will love it ♥

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. How To Create A Diablo Ii Dvd | Ho My God says:
    July 22, 2016 at 9:35 PM

    […] How to Play Diablo II on Windows 10 (Update) – GeekwithEnvy – Running Diablo II on Windows 10 can be a little problematic so here is a quick guide to help smooth things out. This is an update to an earlier post that showed how … […]

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