Game is broken and wont start

https://www.gog.com/forum/the_settlers_series/guideto_install_settlers_ivand_getting_the_most_out_of_it/post66

Thanks for the help but it still doesn't work with windows 7 :(

It is most unfortunate this game is this broken. I was struggling to get the game work for eons, trying to tweak the config.-file and whatnot, and always receiving either 3D Hardware or some obscure, unknown error message. In the end, user bigtrip's advice to install DXGL and follow the instructions on the YouTube link he sent fixed the issue for me. Win 10 x64, Nvidia GTX. So cheers for that, hopefully game get's fixed for good, though I doubt that. In the meantime, try DXGL.

I've tried to get this game to work previously under DXGL and failed miserably, after watching the vid and setting only two options, it works almost flawlessly (the intro vid doesn't play and sometimes the play screen goes black) but this is rectified by switching the rendering to hardware then back to software. Additional I am playing this in full screen not windowed. The settings I changed were Video mode to 'Aspect corrected stretch' and aspect ratio to '16:9'.

So happy I can wind back the clock and waste yet more hours in early 2000's land.

Cheers

Andy

Found working solution here: github.com/elishacloud/dxwrapper/wiki/The-Settlers-IV

I am running Win10 with RTX2070 and i7-9700K.

This took me a while but I got it working. Here is what I did step by step:

If you get the crash report saying either "fatal error exception 0x7227e102" or "Error initializing Graphic Interface" what worked for me was this:

1. Browse to your install directory.
2. Go into the Exe folder.
3. Rename the file DbgHelp.dll to something like _DbgHelp.dll (you can name it anything you like, the point is to keep the game from finding the version that won't work).

After that game started working but the framerate was 2 FPS, what helped me with that issue was this solution "How to play The Settlers 4 on Windows 10 in Full HD". You will find it easily on YouTube.

Just so you know, I used the exact version of DxWnd the guy is using in the video, links are provided, and started the game through GOG Galaxy app. In order for game to work properly DxWnd needs to be running.

I do not take any credit for those solutions as these are not mine, I simply found the combination that worked, at least for me. Hope it helps!

Hello,

I downloaded Settlers 4 today and for me, I get the "Software 3D: Error Initializing Graphic interface" and "Hardware 3d: Error initializing Graphic interface".

I tried following several steps described here, but none of them helped.

I have an Acer laptop, Windows 11. I have a Nvidia and intel.

Does anyone have any other solution? Thank you!!

After hours of putting new files in the folder and not working it turned out all I had to do was Completely delete the DbgHelp.dll and then it worked.
for me it was

C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Settlers 4 Gold\Exe\DbgHelp.dll

Hope this is as easy for you

absolute legend , worked straight off the bat.

EXACTLY! Perfect solution.

I managed to get it working. I installed dgvoodoo2 and chose the ati radeon 8500 video card. That's it. I mean installing over the gog install with the offline installer didn't work. Installing with compatibility settings didn't work either. Neither did dxgl as that freezes when trying to install.

I also had the same error and whatever I tried nothing worked.
Then I opened the game directly from C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Settlers 4 Gold\S4.exe
IT WORKED