Not sure what to do at this point - I have the executable set to Win XP SP2. The game will load, I can watch the intro video, but after entering the tutorial menu, the campaign menu, or the options menu the game just hangs. Task Manager shows the 'Not responding' for the process for the game.

Some other possible important morsels:

- Game is installed on my non-OS drive
- AMD card (R9 290)
- i5 3570k processor

Anyone else run into this issue running this on 8.1?

Try deactivating the high DPI scaling option in the game's compatibility settings and tick the option to run the game as an Administrator.

Thanks! I did try that and the same thing happened again. I am at a loss here for what to try next.

Have you already checked GOG's general advice on crashing?
http://www.gog.com/support/children_of_the_nile_complete/crashing_in_general

Especially reinstalling all components of DirectX like described there is something that never hurts.

Thanks again for the suggestions, I tried those and nothing there had any positive impact, the game actually started locking up at the main menu for me. I opened a support ticket with GOG to see if they have any clever ideas. Kind of bummed that that isn't running. Usually throwing the game into compatibility mode has done the trick for me all the time.

The solution was to have it installed to the typical C:\ location. I had it installed on my secondary drive in my GOG games folder. So to anyone else having this issue, re-install the game on the C: drive in the typical location and you should be fine.

Also, just a side note, GOG support said that it was possibly my second monitor causing the issue, that was not the case with this game. However, they did also mention that I should reinstall the game on the C drive, that proved to be the solution here.

Cheers!

Thanks for the feedback, c_pound.