Hello good folks of gog.com,

I've just written a new guide for properly installing Icewind Dale 2 under Windows 7/Vista, and avoiding all the technical issues people have been having lately with this game.

http://zeckul.wordpress.com/2012/01/10/icewind-dale-2-ultimate-installation-guide/

If you're only interested in the solution to lag / black squares under items / fog of war issues, I've also put up a video guide some time ago on Youtube, as part of my Let's Play of this game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQamKGzjsZg

I hope that is helpful, let me know if you have any suggestions or comments.

Thanks for this. I am playing now, however. Can I make changes without affecting my savegames?

The only thing that might be problematic is the Tweak Pack (and I don't think it will); you can install a compatibility fix and/or the widescreen mod withtout any worries.

Great. Many thanks.

There's not a lot of discussion on the IWD forum, but nonetheless your initial post should be stickied. Great work.

I found this guide via youtube, and it was a great help for 'blocky' fog of war and crummy spell performance, so thanks!

Some other mods that work with IWD & IWD2 are 1pps avatar tweaks (at spellhold studios under BG2 mods). These improve the character graphics and animations a little and add female dwarf models, as well as tiered visuals for thief equipment.

I did all this, still not working. The game starts, but goes "Not responding" after some seconds, the mouse isn't viewable on that monitor then. Until i close the application that is.

The profile for the game states it works on XP, Vista, 7 and 8. I run Win 8. Newest beta drivers for my nvidia GTX 680M. However, I want to play and followed the guide. But it's still not working.

The GOG version has something quite similar, if I understand it correctly. After installing, it has a "ddraw fix" .exe file, that seems to do... well, nothing in my case, but it seems to at least try and address the same issue as your fix. Have you noticed this? What is your idea about that fix-file?

I have ATI CCC which for some reason had the aspect ratio option grayed out. So I checked my monitor settings, sure enough there was a 4:3 option. Easy fix for old 4:3 games without needing to do any driver tweaking. Thought I'd give anyone who might have a problem like this a heads up that it might not be difficult to fix.

PS. They were not monitor settings under the OS but actually the settings ON the monitor, using those buttons on the side. I realized that might not be perfectly clear when I re-read my post.

There is a pretty good interface mod for widescreen displays that supports all common resolutions:

forums.gibberlings3.net/index.php?showtopic=24452

Personally, I play all Infinity Engine games in 1280x800 (16:10). This way, it doesn't look too big or too small on my 24" display.
I don't know about the widescreen bug described in the guide but I think the interface mod makes widescreen pretty awesome in IWD2, especially compared to BG2 and IWD1, where the textbox gets stretched when you increase the resolution, which makes the text hard to read.

Try creating a 3d profile for the executable that has all antialiasing options forced to off.

Was trying to fix my IWD2 install on win 8.1 not responding issue. Found your guide. At some point it began to work. I think likely the nvidia control panel changes. Anyway , just wanted to say thanks very much!!

Quick question - is the MACT fix any different technically than the ddrawfix provided in the GOG installation?

I ask because I've had two issues preventing me from really enjoying IWD2 - a flickering / flashing / blinking mouse cursor, and jerky screen scrolling. No amount of trial and error with the included ddrawfix and IWD2 configs has provided a good gameplay experience (this is with Windows 7 x64 on an AMD Trinity APU).

I'm just curious if setting up the MACT might possibly offer a different outcome. I guess there's no substitute for just trying it out, but I was curious to see if anyone else might have had a similar experience to mine.

None of this helps

Tool called ddwrapper helped, you only need to set NoVideoMemory to 1 in configuration file. You can find it in Google.

Current GOG version actually works fine with wine directdraw, but it has alt-tab problems and takes a long time to load. With this wrapper there seem to be no problems.