I played this from my original CD on Vista or 7 many years ago. It was simple, but funny game, I want play again.
Zax is forgotten, but cool game, probably thanks to fact that game doesnt run in superugly 3D, which was a trendy in 2001 ;-), but just in uncool isometric graphic like a Diablo.

I tried to run game few years back on Windows 10. Sadly, I wasnt able to run it. Win10 just wrote that game cant be run cause win10 see no Zax CD disk. I tried lot of tricks, no success.

So, Im trying that again on modern system with Windows 11 and its even worse now. Windows 11 just does nothing when i run Zax.exe, I tried run as admin and all compatibility modes of course, no reaction. Also DgVoodoo 2.85, still no reaction.

Is there any trick or I have to use some emulator of old hardware with virtual instalation of WinXP?
I would prefer to use some easier way, but in worst case I try to configure PCemu virtual machine.

Try running it with the wrapper called DDrawCompat.
You can also create a file called 'DDrawCompat.ini' with some of your preffered config options for the game and put it in the game's main folder along with the wrapper's 'ddraw.dll' file.

Here's an example of the options I used with Eschalon: Book I running on DirectX 7:

BltFilter = point
CpuAffinity = all
DisplayResolution = desktop
FullscreenMode = borderless
;FullscreenMode = exclusive
VSync = app
DisplayFilter = bilinear(60)


https://github.com/narzoul/DDrawCompat/releases

https://github.com/narzoul/DDrawCompat/wiki

Nothing. :(
Zax.exe doesnt react.

Have you tried using the Windows Subsystem For Linux and throwing it into the lion's den of Wine?

Virtual machines is what im trying to avoid.
BUT it looks like there is no universal solution for Zax on modern systems right now so I will try at least PCem or similar tool, im finding more and more of my old original CDs with 95/98/XP games completely unrunnable (Venom Codename Outbreak,Expendable for example) under Win 11 and even those which are also on GOG doesnt run too.
In worst case theres always Wine, but i have really bad experiences with that.

Are you sure you configured dgVoodoo correctly? Isn't Zax.exe just a launcher and not the main executable? All important things

The best but not feasible advice would be to ditch Windows 11 and stay on 10. Anybody intent on still playing older games without hassles is just shooting themselves in the foot by going to Win 11.

There is a fix but not allowed to mention it here, just got this running perfectly on Win10 without dgVoodoo or any other software, not too sure how it would run on win11 as I don't have that OS

It runs on win 11 with the no cd patch.