So I finally got this game downloaded and installed but whenever I try to start it, nothing happens. My computer processes for a few seconds then goes back to business as usual. I can't multi-task to the game, nothing comes up on the taskbar, the screen doesn't even flicker. The only way I know that something's been started is that if I open the task manager there's an entry for the Return to Krondor engine.
Any help I can get would be very much appreciated.
Thank you very much!
P.S. I am running Windows 7 64 bit but have had not problems with any other GOG game.
P.P.S. After a number of uninstalls and reinstalls I got it working...once. Not sure what the magic trick is, but it's progress.

Just some general suggestions...
If you are running Vista, have you tried running the game as an administrator? (right click on application, select run as administrator)
Are you having trouble running the installer, or the game itself once you've installed? If its the game itself, have you tried re-installing?
Have you tried re-downloading the installer? Did you run the installer as an administrator?

So, any new solutions for this one? I'm also having the exact same problem. The installation seems to go just fine, but the game itself simply will not start. I have the 64bit Windows 7 and I'm running the both the installer and the game itself as the administrator.

I have windows 7 64 bit, same exact problem. I followed the support's troubleshooting guide to the T. No luck. Tried sending in a help ticket to gog, no rely yet. Im really starting to hate this 64bit problem.

I'm having this problem too, only on Vista Home Premium. I've tried everything reasonable I can think of. Several other GOG games work fine.

OK, so I did solve it, for a value of "solved" that does not include cinematics. Clearly the problem is with the .avi playback on 64 bit, as setting Playback=0 in the [Cinemat] section of RTKRONDOR.INI and the game works perfectly, albeit with no cinematics. You can always look at them in the Cinemat directory, I suppose. There may be some issue with the player sub-process not identifying itself correctly as 32 bit to the kernel. Something to look at anyway.

The game is only very slightly less enjoyable in the absence of cinematics, so go for it!

So why can't GoG just fix this issue for us?

I was able to start the game the last time I tried it, however I can't skip the opening cutscenes and stuff and the display is in the bottom left corner no matter what I select in the compatibility options. This stinks.

Any way to fix that?

I too am experiencing the same stop. I'm on Vista 32.

Run the RTK.EXE and it stops. No error window...nothing to tell that something is wrong.

The RtK.log shows:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Game Engine for Return to Krondor (tm) v1.00.6
Copyright © 1998 PyroTechnix, Inc.

Logging started at 15:54:45 on Sunday, April 17, 2011
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

With nothing after the last line.
I've commented/removed every line in the RTKRONDOR.INI...no dice.
I've tried every compatibility setting. No dice
Set 640 by 480 and 256 colors. No dice.
Has anyone been able to make this work in Vista 32?

I tried it in Windows 7 64 bit and nothing worked.

Okay, so I got it working on Vista 32. The trick seemed to be to close programs running in the background, particularly Chrome (which I left on my second monitor with troubleshooting instructions...ironic, huh?). It's not 100% though, sometimes it works fine with stuff in the background, sometimes it works when I close all programs, sometimes I need to restart the computer. But at least now I can semi-reliably play the game when I want to.

P.S. I haven't touched the compatibility settings.

Yeah many other games work fine and my graphics card has the latest updates so that's not the issue. I'm going to try something else today and see if it works.

Finally got it to work in a way, I went ahead and edited the .ini file in the program folder and changed

Stretch=1

to

Stretch=0

Along with changing view logo from 0 to 1, because I was tinkering around with the settings in the file to see if anything worked. I'm running it as an admin with XP service pack 3 compatibility mode, and the game seems to work. The cinematics aren't stretched to fit the whole screen like they should, but they're at least centered now and the game works.

The scaling option is actually a setting you have to pick, and it's not affected by updating drivers. You have to manually go make sure it's set right. But it sounds like it wasn't the issue anyway. Glad you got the game working!

How do you find the scaling option in your graphics card/display setup? I'm not finding anything for that in all the menus I can find. And I'm using windows 7.