Windows Vista and 7 have known compatibility issues with Diablo II/LoD ... to fix them, take the following steps:

Right-click your Game.exe file and in the compatibility view, make certain you are running the game under Windows XP SP2/3 mode, and DISABLE DESKTOP COMPOSITION. This should allow your game to start normally, but you will probably have serious lag spike issues that need to be resolved.

On your Desktop, hit Control+Alt+Delete and open your Task Manager program. Select the "Services" tab, and click the "services" button at the bottom of that screen to access your services manager. (you can close your Task Manager now) Scroll down the list until you find "Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service". Stop this service, then right-click it and select "properties" and then DISABLE this service.

This will fix your lag issues and compatibility issues with D2 in Windows Vista (6.0+) and Windows 7 (currently release candidate version 7.1.00)

A fix for colors glitching in 2D:
http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=18697256128&sid=3000

I'm totally trying this out. If this works, I'm spreading the word and giving you props.

I followed your instructions as whenever I went to play DII:LOD it would tell me to put the Expansion disk in the drive.

Now when I go to run it I get a "Diablo II was unable to find game.exe" error.

Help!

I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit.

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Q u o t e:
I followed your instructions as whenever I went to play DII:LOD it would tell me to put the Expansion disk in the drive.

Now when I go to run it I get a "Diablo II was unable to find game.exe" error.

Help!

I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit.

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Undo what you did and see if you end up with the prompt for the disk message again. You might try to manually download and re-install the 1.12 game patch from Blizzard support site. First try running as Administrator and compatibility for Win XP SP3. I am running Win7 Home x64, and a buddy has Win7 Ultimate x64, both installed from CDs running without these issues.

Great fix!

Made my game run considerably smoother on my laptop.

Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit.

May I also suggest installing Sven's glide wrapper for Diablo 2?

It is not a hack and does not alter the game in any way. What it does is alter the way the computer processes the graphics, so that when you run the D2 Video test, it detects a 3dfx glide mode. All the other tricks already mentioned did make the game run smoother, but as soon as I installed that glide wrapper, the game worked beautifully. I have 0 lag now on vista, and the graphics look much better. It allows you to see the game as it was designed to look.

Sadly, because newer cards don't have the native 3dfx glide mode (most newer cards don't, I can't say for sure that none do) the game looks lower quality than it should on most computers.

There was a blizzard post in blue somewhere a while back about the fact the glide wrapper was not a hack, and not detectable as one, so it is fine on battlenet. It is simply a dll file, not a running application or anything, and gives you compatibility with glide mode. 10 years of playing, 10 years of newer computers, and this is the first thing that made the game look really good.

The main semi-supportive response came from blizzard poster Datth in the following forum:

http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=19110415416&postId=191082791734&sid=3000#3

He stated specifically that the file does not edit any game files, but it is not supported by blizzard (as it is not made by them). He refused to say whether or not you could get banned for it, stating instead that Blizzard has no policy on the use of that type of software (he probably can't say yes, as if the file changed or added something, then trouble could come of it).

Basically though it boils down to the fact that blizzard cannot detect it running, because it is not interfacing with the game itself, but interfacing with the information going to your graphics card.

You can also see Datth other posts on the subject under:

http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=16904202898&postId=169020622702&sid=3000#4
http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=19377458934&postId=193512571613&sid=3000#5
http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=18360839829&postId=183193197324&sid=3000#4
http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=17367776566&postId=175555990718&sid=3000#4

Obviously I am not a blizzard rep, so take the advice at your own risk, but the use of the wrapper does not in anyway provide you an advantage in playing. It reduces lag on your system to what the game should be and makes the graphics look pretty like they were meant to.

i still can't play!

i went through every step correctly as op stated.

but when i double click on diablo 2, it STILL pops the compatability issue window, so if i click run program, it won't do anything at all.

FYI i just bought this computer, its running windows 7 64x. and because i lost my play and cinematics disc, i had to download iso's to replace them with.

so all i had in physical form was the install disc and LOD + my legit cd cases with keys.

so i used poweriso to mount the cinematic and play discs whilst i ran the install disc and when it was finished it appeared to have installed correctly but windows 7 said "it may not have installed correctly" so IDNO what the hell if that was part of the problem?????

please help. i wanna play d2 on this computer and not my mac...

You may want to try installing with the Blizzard provided version you can get from battle.net.

But does anyone have it run properly without any modification?

Last week I ordered the 3D Vision kit to find out that it only works with Vista/Win7 so I ordered Win7 Home premium 64bits and I just received it today. I plan to tinstall this week. Will I run into any issue?

Instead of using my disks, I will install it from the web it that make any difference. I tried that on a computer at work on XP and it's much faster than my disk version at home where a check it always required even if it was supposed to be disabled 2 updates ago.

Anywa, I hope I will be able to play in no time, I'm currently running a few chars and I don't want to mess a few days trying to get this working properly like in XP.

Thanks

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Q u o t e:
Windows Vista and 7 have known compatibility issues with Diablo II/LoD ... to fix them, take the following steps:

Right-click your Game.exe file and in the compatibility view, make certain you are running the game under Windows XP SP2/3 mode, and DISABLE DESKTOP COMPOSITION. This should allow your game to start normally, but you will probably have serious lag spike issues that need to be resolved.

On your Desktop, hit Control+Alt+Delete and open your Task Manager program. Select the "Services" tab, and click the "services" button at the bottom of that screen to access your services manager. (you can close your Task Manager now) Scroll down the list until you find "Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service". Stop this service, then right-click it and select "properties" and then DISABLE this service.

This will fix your lag issues and compatibility issues with D2 in Windows Vista (6.0+) and Windows 7 (currently release candidate version 7.1.00)

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Finally someone with some answers, thanks alot. Tried it and what a difference. Blizz must sticky this fix somewhere. Come on blizz, why does it take someone else to fix your game.

Hi,

Finally I installed Win7 yesterday evening. I installed DII and the ptroblem I have it that colors are wrong. I ran it in Win98 and XP/SP3 compatibility and disabled Desktop Composition. I took a look for the service but was not able to find it (OS is in French). I play it in D3D mode because I tried the 2D mode and got a blank screen.

I wonder if the 3D Vision have anything to do with this? When I start the game there is a message overlaying about this game is not yet rated. I'm not familiar with the 3D Vision since I just installed it so I don't know if it is always running and may cause the problem. I haven't installed it to play DII by the way but maybe it is interfering.

seems like this is helping a lot of people. I used this method a long time ago and it made me so happy :)

I think this is worth a sticky.

 *  D i a b l o 3 ! *

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Q u o t e:
You may want to try installing with the Blizzard provided version you can get from battle.net.

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we are on battle.net right now... where is the section i can download from???