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.
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.
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.
use the auto adjust button on your monitor, maybe.
I am having the same problem it is getting cut off on my new Alienware m15 laptop and idk how to fix it
Worked great!
Thx YOU’RE MY HERO OF THE YEAR D2 FTWWWWWWW
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.
same here
Make sure you run the video test with the compatibility settings and as an admin, too.
Add a -w to you’re target at the end of the script. Got mine to work. Kinda.
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
Can you give me a link safe and no virus to download D2 LOD. Thanks
Sure thing! Here you go! https://us.battle.net/shop/en/product/diablo-ii-lord-of-destruction
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
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 :/
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?
Try running it as an admin ?
could be a key issue try the downloaded version instead of disks, it can be found at blizzard.com
hey I’m having trouble with windows 10 and direct x error 22 not sure how to fix it could you help??
подскажите как убрать черные полосы по бокам на вин 10? карта intel
windows 8.1 played full screen with info here but upgraded to 10 and square non filled in screen. not sure what to do.
Having the same issue, plays great, just in this little window, can’t figure out how to make it full screen.
right click icon go to properties then shortcut then where it says target remove the -w from the end of the command. should work.
Thank-you for this It helped alot.
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?
WOW YEAH!!!!
Fucking great… I love you man.
From now on you’re in my “Book of cool people”
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.
Thanks for your help!
It really solves my problems.
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.
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!
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
cant change skills with hotkeys or mouse scroll ,help!
Having g the same issue. But I did not make the changes noted in the original message.
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
“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.
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)
Thank you very much man. This helped a lot.
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.
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.
Cancel this. I found the answer by searching on the error.
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
This page certainly has all the information I wanted about this subject and didn’t
know who to ask.
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).
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.
thanks youll a champ works perfectly
The game won’t run. It will start up and then kick me out before I even get to the Blizzard logo.
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?
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!
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’
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.
Its not working on my end.
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
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.
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.
Thanks, after trying a lot of things, it work!
I enjoyed reading this blog. Learned so much from this! Keep on posting
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
ps: Instal that Glide , u will love it ♥