I have come across just about all the issues with Dracula 3 described in this forum: flickering screen, blank screen, no menu showing just version number etc.

I opened a support ticket with GOG and asked for a fix or a refund. As part of opening a support ticket they make you run dxdiag and attach its log file to the ticket.

After submitting the support ticket I gave playing Dracula 3 a final, desperate, try and.....it worked perfectly -- no issues whatsoever!

After completing the game I decided to see if I could reproduce the fix. I uninstalled the game and installed it again -- out of the box it was just as unplayable as before.

1. I tried adding the WineD3D v2.6 dll files -- no joy (no more flickering but a white rectangle showed across the screen intermittently and I could not see the main menu, just a blank screen with the version number in the left corner, while the sound continues playing in the background)

2. I tried changing compatibility mode to Windows XP SP2 -- no joy (seemed to make it worse)

3. I tried "run as admin", "disable full screen optimisations" etc -- no joy

4. I tried changing my laptop's resolution to 1024x768 and running the game with "bFullScreen" set to 0 and then also as 1 -- no joy

Finally, I ran DXDIAG and as before....Dracula 3 runs beautifully.

Note: it is running fine completely "as is": the folder doesn't contain the WineD3D files, "run as admin" etc is unticked, I am not running the game in any compatibility mode. The only thing that is different from the "out of the box" GOG installation is the "bFullScreen=1" setting.

DXDIAG appears to be just a diagnostic tool so I don't understand why it would make any difference but it appears to have done **something**.

Maybe someone deeper into the weeds on tech than me has an explanation....

:-D Mysterious are the ways of Microsoft.

Opened a reddit for it, maybe the boffins on there have some insight into it:

r/techsupport
u/goguser
Subject: Is DXDIAG more than just diagnostics?

I have found that the simple action of running DXDIAG appears to solve issues I have on Windows 10 with a 2008 game I downloaded from GOG.

So is DXDIAG more than just a diagnostics tool? Does it e.g. re-register certain DLLs or make other changes?

I managed to reproduce this twice: 1. install game. Result: game unplayable (flickering screen, blank screens etc). 2. Run DXDIAG. Result: game works fine.