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Thank you for your help. I contacted the support and also voted in the source code poll :)
GeForce Drivers Version: 347.25 WHQL cause several crashes, and also a blackscreen when the game is launched (any compatibility mode, exept for the force 640*480)

If the future nvidia releases solve the bug i'll let you know. But for now and for the people who experienced the same problem, just go to the Nvidia website and download an old release of the driver:

337.88 WHQL geforce drivers. Works perfectly.
GeForce Drivers Version: 337.88 WHQL Works perfectly.
GeForce Drivers Version: 347.25 WHQL Bug
GeForce Drivers Version: 347.52 WHQL Bug

Awaiting for a new nvidia driver.
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nohiro: GeForce Drivers Version: 337.88 WHQL Works perfectly.
GeForce Drivers Version: 347.25 WHQL Bug
GeForce Drivers Version: 347.52 WHQL Bug

Awaiting for a new nvidia driver.
That's good to hear that's the big problem. I kinda randomly decided to install DK2 earlier today and got surprised by the issue. I don't think it's worth downgrading my drivers - I don't want to play it that badly - but at least I know what it is now. Hopefully Nvidia's next driver will either fix the issue or it's something that can be fixed in the game itself.
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nohiro: GeForce Drivers Version: 337.88 WHQL Works perfectly.
GeForce Drivers Version: 347.25 WHQL Bug
GeForce Drivers Version: 347.52 WHQL Bug

Awaiting for a new nvidia driver.
avatar
mhenley91: That's good to hear that's the big problem. I kinda randomly decided to install DK2 earlier today and got surprised by the issue. I don't think it's worth downgrading my drivers - I don't want to play it that badly - but at least I know what it is now. Hopefully Nvidia's next driver will either fix the issue or it's something that can be fixed in the game itself.
I was starting to think this was an issue on my end. Hopefully it'll be fixed. but due to the age of the game maybe they won't?
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mhenley91: That's good to hear that's the big problem. I kinda randomly decided to install DK2 earlier today and got surprised by the issue. I don't think it's worth downgrading my drivers - I don't want to play it that badly - but at least I know what it is now. Hopefully Nvidia's next driver will either fix the issue or it's something that can be fixed in the game itself.
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Serjian: I was starting to think this was an issue on my end. Hopefully it'll be fixed. but due to the age of the game maybe they won't?
Well, yea, due to the age of the game, if Nvidia does "fix" it, it'll be by accident. Or GOG will tweak something assuming they can find a simple resolution. After all, their big thing was, at least originally, about making old games accessible on modern platforms.
FYI: GOG staff have added a compatibility note to the DK2 page but there will be no further action from them. I've made an Nvidia bug report on the off-chance it'll do some good.
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mhenley91: FYI: GOG staff have added a compatibility note to the DK2 page but there will be no further action from them. I've made an Nvidia bug report on the off-chance it'll do some good.
What's supposed to be wrong with the latest Nvidia drivers?

All I read is frequent crashes, which Dungeon Keeper 2 does anyway?
Hi All,

I still have my original DK2 game and have run into problems over the years with new O/S, graphics card and multi core processors. Here are some things to try, which has worked for me.

1. Vista/win7: Turn on Windows 2000 compatibility, Turn off Visual Design support (in settings dk2.exe).
Make sure no other background program is running as no process (probably d/l program - this will cause flickering
Screen). Add "...\Dungeon Keeper II\dkII.exe" -softwarefilter -32bitdisplay to DK2.exe starting options.

2. If Black Squares instead of Textures are upcoming: Start Game, Go to settings ingame, go to graphics, disable
Hardware support. start a mission. Now it may work. Leave Game per official exit.

3. If you are using a dual/multi core cpu, Start Game, press ctrl+alt+del, go to Taskmanager and disable cores until
only one core is left for following processes: DKII.exe DKII.icd (this is for providing uncontrolled mouse moves
ingame) Switch back to DK2 per TAB.

4. 3D Video settings

"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Bullfrog Productions Ltd\Dungeon Keeper II\Configuration\Video" settings:

Screen Depth = 32
HighWalls = 0
if Game wont start without 3D Hardware enabled:
Screen Hardware3D = 4 (probably 5 if hanging up)

Hope this helps some of you.

Be Evil
Thanks this is really helpful
Thanks for all this everyone - I'm looking forward to playing one of my favourite childhood games once again, thanks to all of you.
Really helpful thread, thanks guys solved my issues.
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mhenley91: That's good to hear that's the big problem. I kinda randomly decided to install DK2 earlier today and got surprised by the issue. I don't think it's worth downgrading my drivers - I don't want to play it that badly - but at least I know what it is now. Hopefully Nvidia's next driver will either fix the issue or it's something that can be fixed in the game itself.
avatar
Serjian: I was starting to think this was an issue on my end. Hopefully it'll be fixed. but due to the age of the game maybe they won't?
Actually sometime it will work becasue ... drivers meh :/

So up to date by the way

GeForce Drivers Version: 337.88 WHQL Works perfectly.
GeForce Drivers Version: 347.25 WHQL Bug
GeForce Drivers Version: 347.52 WHQL Bug
GeForce Drivers Version: 353.06WHQL Works perfectly.
Crashes repeatedly after a while when attempting to restart a level. There are no reports generated by Wine, which makes it a bit difficult to deal with.

It play fine though under Linux Mint and with Wine. Even longer sessions pose no threats. Only restarts are deadly.
PART 1

I love this game, I play it for a long time, but the random crashing is a nasty thing...

The game has a critical random crashing bug in itself, as well as several other bugs like broken (weak) cpu AI bug or the Map Editor similiar random crashing bug or the Skirmish bug. These bugs have existed since the game appeared in 1999 and can be corrected probably only through access to the source code. The game even updated to 1.7 official / 1.8 unofficial patch is still in BETA status. The game should be officially upgraded to 1.9 / 2.0 version, with all mentioned critical bugs fixed, but the game has been abandoned by the developers team in 1.7 patch BETA status. You may spend a year in a cave trying to fix the random crashing bug and other bugs but you still may fail even with GOG Hardware Fix.

Nasty.

The only thing can be done is to apply such conditions to cause the crashes occur less often. In my case the game seems to crash less often on Linux Ubuntu 14.04 than on Windows XP SP3, that is why I play it on Linux only (but I am not happy with the necessity to install a second operating system). I am positively surprised by the fact that the game natively written for Windows, runs more stable on Linux.

Nasty.

As for the random crashing bug, some details on my Sandy Bridge platform Intel Celeron G550 + Intel HD Graphics GPU + 4GB RAM + latest Intel GPU Drivers on Windows XP SP3 and the default built-in Intel GPU drivers on ubuntu 14.04:

1) Windows XP SP3 32bit + Retail DK2 1.7 (DKII.exe) + 1024x768:

- randomly crashes while playing (early, after 10, 20 or 30 minutes)

The game stops, I return to my desktop and I get a message that DKII.exe has stopped working.

("DKII.exe has stopped working and needs to be closed". We are sorry for the inconvenience")

- half of the screen (top) is black - black textures

(the black textures can be "fixed" by switching to a different camera view but it's a worse looking view and unplayable because the screen is moving too fast)

- high fps + smooth gameplay & good graphic quality (good sharpness / focus)

2) Windows XP SP3 32bit + GOG DK2 Hardware Fix Release (DKII-DX.exe) + 1280x1024:

- randomly crashes while playing (early, after 10, 20 or 30 minutes)

(the game (screen) freeze and the DKII.exe has to be killed via task manager)

- low fps + sluggish gameplay + the best graphic quality (super sharpness / focus because it run in my native LCD monitor resolution)

3) Ubuntu 14.04 32bit & Wine 1.8 + Retail DK2 1.7 (DKII.exe) + 1024x768:

- randomly crashes while playing (late, after 2 or 3 hours) + randomly while loading a saved game

The game stops, I return to my desktop and I get a message that DKII.exe has stopped working.

("The program DKII.exe has encountered a serious problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience. This can be caused by a problem in the program or a deficiency in Wine. You may want to check http://appdb.winehq.org for tips about running this application. If this problem is not present under Windows and has not been reported yet, you can report it at http://bugs.winehq.org.")
Nasty.

When I'm back at the desktop and see the error message, I can not click on the close button of the message, because the screen resolution is 640x480 and the close buttonis outside the screen and is invisible. So first I must go to the display settings and restore a normal resolution of the desktop using the keyboard keys (tabbingthrough buttons + space / enter), then I close the message error.

Nasty.

But I'am unable to play again, because when I run DK2 again, it runs at a forced resolution 640x480 on the left-upper corner of the screen, so that I see the DK2 intro logo content on the rest of the screen.

Nasty.

It seems that a DK2 crash cause a some graphic driver corruption on Ubuntu.

Nasty.

I tried to logout/login to Ubuntu again to reload the shell, but it did not help.

Nasty.

In the end I tried found on the internet a method consisting in restarting the graphics driver via terminal by the following command: "sudo service lightdm restart" found on but it froze (hang) the whole system with a black screen and a flashing letter indicator on the left-upper corner of the screen on it,

Nasty.

so I had to press the reset button on the computer.

Nasty.

And then after my PC rebooted I could play DK2 again. Next time DK2 crashed I just restarted Ubuntu to play again. Everytime DK2 crash on Ubuntu, Ubuntu needs to be restared to play again.

Nasty.

Not to mention the fact that I have also to reboot from Windows XP to Ubuntu everytime time I want to play DK2.

Nasty.

- high fps + smooth gameplay & good graphic quality (good sharpness / focus)

4) Ubuntu 14.04 32bit & Wine 1.8 + GOG DK2 Hardware Fix Release (DKII-DX.exe) + 1280x1024:

- randomly crashes while playing (late, after 2 or 3 hours)

(the game (screen) freeze and the DKII.exe has to be killed via task manager)

- low fps + sluggish gameplay + the worst graphic quality (blurred / lack of focus because despite the fact that it run in my native LCD monitor like in case 2), it is somehow rescaled / faked resolution because there are black bars at the top and bottom of the screen.

I remember that some time ago I had Geforce 9800GT and Gigabyte Geforce GTX 560 Ti in the same PC and "1) Windows XP SP3 32bit + Retail DK2 1.7 (DKII.exe) + 1024x768" was crashing too on both gpus. I even tried every possible earlier version 1.0 - 1.7 (also 1.8 unofficial), all crashing the same way!

Nasty.

Also, GOG Hardware Fix DK2 Release causes low fps + sluggish gameplay on my PC, and also when there are a lot of things on the map like rooms, creatures, dead bodies, traps, spells and also big battles are going on, at a some point, some things stop working properly, for example, when trying to use Call To Arms speel it doesn't work and the flag just doesn't show up on the ground (is not graphically drawed) when clicking left mouse button and the creatures don't converge to the flag despite the fact that you can hear the Call To Arms spell sound when summoning the spell. The same thing happens with Create Imp spell (can't create the imps). Then, some of the sound effects disappear, you hear the music, voice, voice-overs but not the sounds of fighting moves and strikes.

Nasty.

The similiar random crashing bug appear in the Map Editor - while making the map and creating some objects on the map, the Map Editor just simply crash. Fortunately, as opposed to the game random crashing bug, I know what the Map Editor random crashing error is caused by and how to avoid the crash. If I remember correctly, just refresh the objects tree by pressing some key after every 10 (about) created objects (I don't remember exactly which key is that) or by clicking RMB on the objects tree and selecting 'refresh'. As you see, again, the same kind of bug like in the game - objetcs handling problem.

Nasty.

As for the broken AI bug it seems it has been broken since above the 1.3 version. The 1.51 AI seems to be just half-broken and the 1.7 AI is the most broken.

Nasty.

As for the Skirmish bug - after playing a skirmish map, when you are back to the skirmish menu and you select another skirmish map (or the same) and load it, some of the skirmish map options on the skirmish map settings screen will get broken - the rooms, creatures, spells and traps settings values will just dissapear and you will be unable to change them until you restart the whole game.

Nasty.

A sample crash log #2 attached from "3) Ubuntu 14.04 32bit & Wine 1.8 + Retail DK2 1.7 (DKII.exe) + 1024x768":

(I will attach it in next posts because of the post length limit.)

Nasty (both the crash log and...the post length limit).

I also tried to record DK2 FPS in wine by:

"WINEDEBUG=fps wine DKII.exe 2>&1 | tee /dev/stderr | sed -u -n -e '/trace/ s/.*approx //p' | osd_cat --lines=1 --font="lucidasanstypewriter-bold-18" --color=yellow"
found on but nothing show up on the screen in the game except some shit in terminal log (omitting the error associated with the lack of the font):

the "3) Ubuntu 14.04 32bit & Wine 1.8 + Retail DK2 1.7 (DKII.exe) + 1024x768:" output:

(I will attach it in next posts because of the post length limit.)

Nasty (the wine FPS recording problem).

As for the "4) Ubuntu 14.04 32bit & Wine 1.8 + GOG DK2 Hardware Fix Release (DKII-DX.exe) + 1280x1024:" but in 1024x768:

The terminal output was too long, the output goes beyond what I can see/ scroll in the terminal, so first I had to incerase the terminal buffer capacity by changing from 512 to 2048 in edit>profiles>edit>scrolling tab, found on .
Nasty (both the wine recording FPS problem and the terminal length limit).

so finally, the output:

(I will attach it in next posts because of the post length limit.)

Nasty. (the log)

As for the latest Intel GPU Drivers, I had no problems with installing the latest drivers on Windows XP SP3 but couldn't on Ubuntu 14.04, because after I installed Intel Graphics Installer for Linux I got "Distribution not supported" error as mentioned on because Intel quickly drop support for his drivers.
Post edited February 07, 2016 by RaiGen245