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Black and White


Black and White cover
Genre: Strategy
Release Year: 2001
Developer: Lionhead Studios
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Age Rating: 12+
Playability Status: Perfect
Tested On: Windows 10 x64, Windows 8 x64
Availability: Copyright retained - Still sold

Peter Molyneux’s hugely ambitious god-simulator was dazzling both graphically and in scope when it was originally released back in 2001. Initially critically acclaimed by almost all of the gaming media, the title has had a curious legacy since then. Many critics have since argued that, after the initial ‘wow’ factor had worn off, the game failed to deliver on the ambitious concepts it introduced. A visual tour-de-force at the time of release, Black and White’s huge worlds and detailed villages have aged well compared to many games from the last decade. If you missed this title first time around because your PC wasn’t up to the task, or you are simply looking for something different from your usual strategy game, Black and White can be just as engrossing now as it was when it was first released.

Installation

When installing Black and White, we strongly recommend that you install the game to a directory with no spaces or special characters in its name. When you come to install the game patch later, you may find that, due to a bug in the patch installer, you cannot install the patch if you have placed the game in its default installation directory. Something like “C:\Games\BlackWhite” should work perfectly however. Other than this, the game should install normally.

Black and White uses a copy protection scheme that is incompatible with Windows 10 (and Windows 7 and 8 with Windows update 3086255 installed). See the troubleshooting notes for more information.

Patching

There were three patches launched for the game, however you only need to install the final patch since it includes all the fixes that were included in the previous patches. You can download the Black and White v1.3 patch from FilePlanet here.

Once you have installed the patch, you will probably find that the game won’t start unless you download a missing dll file, namely p5dll.dll. This file can be obtained here. Don’t bother with the dll fixer tool this site tries to peddle you, simply click the “download zip file” button. Once the zip file has downloaded, open it and copy the p5dll.dll file to the Black and White game folder on your PC.

Tweaking Visual Quality

Note:- If you are intending to run Black and White while running a standard (non-admin) user account, please see the troubleshooting section below before proceeding to tweak any visual settings.

As we said in the introduction, Black and White was at the absolute bleeding edge of PC visuals when it was released. As a result, there are several graphical options you should tweak before playing. Launch the Setup program in the Black and White game folder. The following window will then appear:-

 

Black and White settings program

 

At the top of the window, you should see your graphics card make and model. Choose an option with “Hardware Transform and Lighting”.

Below that, you can choose the Resolution and Colour Depth for the game. You will be limited to a maximum of 1280×960 here, but we’ll see how to get around that limitation later. Don’t worry if you can’t set a colour depth either, that will also be fixed in a moment.

At the bottom of the window there are some options for internet weather and e-mail settings, but the servers that supported these features have long since been shut off, unfortunately.

Clicking on the “Custom…” button will take you to the advanced graphical settings:-

 

black-and-white-advanced-graphics-settings

 

Even on a fairly modest modern PC you should simply max out all the settings as shown in the picture above. When you’re done, click on “OK” and then “Save & Exit”.

Widescreen support and other visual tweaks

In order to add custom screen resolutions and other tweaks to Black & White, we’re going to need the registry editor. If you’ve never used this tool before, proceed with caution, but if you only edit the information as indicated in this guide you will be fine. Open the regedit tool and navigate to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Lionhead Studios Ltd\Black & White\BWSetup. You should now see several REG_DWORD values, the one’s we are interested in are:-

ScreenD – The colour depth value we saw in the setup program, this should be set to 32.
ScreenH – The height of the screen, by using the registry editor we can set this to any value as we’ll discuss in a moment.
ScreenW – The width of the screen.
HardwareTnL – Hardware transform and lighting, set to 1 to enable.

To edit a value, right click on it and choose “Modify…”. The picture below shows an example of editing the ScreenH value:-

 

black-and-white-edit-registry-value

 

Notice the value above is 438, what kind of screen height is that? Before you edit these values, make doubly sure you click on the “Decimal” option under “Base”. If you enter 1080 as a Hexadecimal number, you’re actually entering the number 4224!

Set the ScreenH and ScreenW to whatever your monitor or TV supports, for 1080p for instance, set ScreenH to 1080 and ScreenW to 1920. Black and White copes well with widescreen resolutions and will run in widescreen mode with no major issues, though cut-scenes may appear stretched.

Set the registry keys according to your preferences and double check before closing the registry editor that you entered the values as decimal and not hexadecimal.

dgVoodoo2

Black and White is a DirectX 7 game, which means you can use the excellent dgVoodoo2 wrapper software to run the game using the more modern DirectX 11 API instead. If you have a graphics card that supports DirectX 11, then follow the tutorial here to install dgVoodoo2. When using dgVoodoo2 with Black and White, use the DirectX configuration tab within the dgVoodoo2 setup tool to set the VRAM to 64MB. You can also turn on antialiasing (MSAA) if you like.

Using dgVoodoo2 with Black and White not only means you can use various in-game tools such as Evolve, Steam Overlay or Nvidia Shadowplay, but you may find it enhances the graphics too. Below are two screenshots, one taken without dgVooodoo2 and the other without. Look at the wood texture on the gate in particular, it seems to show considerable improvement. Click on the pictures to enlarge them.

 

The game running with the standard Microsoft Direct X.

The game running with the standard Microsoft Direct X

 

The game running using the dgVoodoo2 Direct X wrapper.

The game running using the dgVoodoo2 Direct X wrapper

 

Recommended downloads

Before you dive into the game there are a number of additional downloads you might want to install first. Lionhead launched a number of extra creatures as downloads, you can download the leopard, the mandrill, the gorilla and the horse to use in game. The Village Banter add-on is also highly recommended. There’s also the Football and the Music add-on, that makes your creature dance to music you play in the venerable Winamp media player.

You should now be ready to start playing god from the comfort of your mouse and keyboard. If you have problems running the game, see the troubleshooting section below.

Multiplayer

Black and White supports multiplayer skirmishes across the internet and on a local network. The game uses a peer to peer system rather than dedicated servers and setting up a game is rather complicated by modern standards. If you are interested in playing the game online, see this page for some tips on how to do so.

Troubleshooting and known issues

Black and White on a standard (non-admin) user account:- Black & White will run on a standard user account, but the configuration tool has difficulty running properly on a modern operating system. The problem is that the configuration tool asks for administrator access when it runs, which is fine, but after you grant it administrator rights with UAC, it will save its values to the administrators account rather than the standard users account you were trying to configure. If you’re setting up Black & White on a child’s account or any account that isn’t an administrator (i.e, any account where you have to enter a password each time you see the UAC prompt) then you should temporarily change the users account to an administrator, configure the game fully, test it, then switch the account back to a standard user account.

Game does not start and/or prompts user to log in as an administrator:- Black and White uses an antiquated form of copy protection that is no longer compatible with Windows 10. Furthermore, since the software that facilitated this copy protection caused security vulnerabilities, Microsoft have since patched it out in Windows 7 and 8 too. In Windows 7 or 8, you can try temporarily re-enabling the secdrv service by following this Microsoft article.

Alternatively, you can simply uninstall Windows update number 3086255, though doing so may arguably make your computer more vulnerable to security threats.

The final option (and the only option for Windows 10 users) is to find a cracked/hacked version of the game with the copy protection removed. Remember if you have installed the games latest patch, you will need a crack/hacked version that supports this latest patch. Unfortunately due to copyright law we cannot link to files like this. We can tell you that the crack we tested successfully on Windows 10 was by a group called “Deviance” and the MD5 file hash on the hacked “Runblack.exe” was 181209375511986589D0F0E3FBEC26AF. If you need a tool to check file hashes, see this tutorial.

Graphics are distorted or only take up part of the screen:- If this happens then you probably entered the values for ScreenH and/or ScreenW as a hexadecimal number rather than a decimal number. Go back and triple check that they are entered correctly.

Problems saving games:- Like many old titles, Black and White saves its game data into the same folder as the game itself. In some instances on more modern versions of Windows, this will mean that save games cannot be written. To solve this problem you should set the permissions on your Black & White game folder so that your user account has full control. See this tutorial if you are unsure of how to do this.

When trying to patch the game, you get a “Neither command line parameter specified is an existing directory” error message:- This error occurs because of a bug in the patch program. To work around it, try temporarily moving and renaming your Black & White game folder to another location, for instance rename the folder to BNW and place it on the root of your C: drive. Now, apply the patch and manually set the patch directory, then rename the folder back to the original name and copy it back to its original location. If you still have issues, you can uninstall the game and reinstall it to a directory path with no spaces or special characters in it (e.g c:\games\blackwhite).

Acknowledgements

Thanks to cowgod.net for his original guide to running Black and White on Windows 7, which is still available here.

Screenshots

Click on any screenshot for a larger view:-

black-and-white-game

Above: Looking down from your sanctuary on high to view the earth at the start of the game.

94 comments

  1. Mark Langdahl says:

    I wouldn’t recommend installing patch 1.3 unless you have the p5 glove… It’s the only addition since 1.2 so just install that one instead. BTW my experience isn’t exactly perfect. It seems the game can’t properly detect VRAM on systems with large graphics cards (my smallest is 256 MB and that does give me problems). As a result I can choose the highest texture resolution. But compared to how it looked on my old computer back when I had a 64 MB Radeon 8500 it looks like crap. The game seems to default to the lowest texture setting. Even for the title screen.

    • BuckoA51 says:

      Thanks for that Mark. Regarding the visual quality, I can’t remember how it looked back in the day, how does my screenshot compare to what it should look like?

  2. Pluvio says:

    Hey BuckoA51 thanks for the article, it helped a lot. Just a heads up, the game used to have far superior graphical quality than it has now, running on our Windows 7 operating systems or higher.

    I’m sure you’ve noticed that when zooming into the ground – The texture quality is fairly decent, as are the fields, houses and creatures. The distance you could view villagers without them going all polygon-y was also greater. Basically to run Black and White properly now you’d need to run it on Windows XP or lower, compatibility mode doesn’t help in this case sadly.

    I’ve set up a virtual machine and am going to test this out today. :)

    • BuckoA51 says:

      Make sure you use a VM that supports 3D acceleration then. I didn’t play this game much back in the day and my PC probably wasn’t that great at the time anyway so I don’t know if it looks as good as it should or not. If you do make some comparison screenshots do let me know.

  3. Vince says:

    Hey; its december 2014 and I’m trying to get B&W running on windows 8.1 on a high end PC.

    I’ve previously been able to get it running without problems on my older PCs running windows 7…

    ..However,
    With loads of tweaks I do get it running on 8,1 needing to force it into windowed mode with D3Dwindower(incase you have problems getting it running) and use another app called “Borderlessgaming” to make it a borderless window. This fixes any FPS issues you might have. While the fps is now good, I have not as of yet been able to get it running with any high resolutions. No matter in what varied fashion i edit the resolution in regedit, or in what compatability(btw, changing the “setup.exe” compatability to winxp sp2 enables you to choose the 32bit depth; but for some reason it resets the settings each time you open the setup again incase you wanna use this) mode i try tweaking the B&W setup file i just can’t get it running 1920×1080. Even a smaller resolution like 1600×900 would be fine, but I cant get that either.

    You get any ideas, please let me know

    • BuckoA51 says:

      No problems running in higher resolutions on Windows 8 here (well, some commenters suggested the graphics don’t look as good as they should) but then I never needed to force the game into windowed mode.

      • Vince says:

        I force it because otherwise it puts a terrible cap on the FPS for some reason, and it takes time (and sometimes won’t even-) load up because the screen has problems adjusting to it for some reason.
        It just won’t load 1920×1080 even tho it’s punched into regedit which I find seriously weird. I’d bet it still loads 800×600; since it’s all “pixely” ..
        ..Didn’t have the problem on the previous machine either, and that one ran windows 7…
        …so it might be a DirectX problem, I’ll see what I can come up with on that end..
        …Also, I just noticed I don’t get music. NP, found a fix for that somewhere on the net I’ll have to dig up..noticed it when the creature lady first made her appearance; I won’t ever forget the theme thats supposed to play to that :p

  4. Vince says:

    ….I’ve fixed it..
    …And the solution was so simple it’s almost embarassing..
    ..after doing all kinds of technical stuff, reading all the guides and ripping my hair out since nothing worked- I snapped and had a go with the exe again..

    .turns out that in some cases.. dont-use-compatability settings with runblack.exe (uncheck the winxp sp2 compatability setting on the exe)

    :I

    now everything works.
    Also able to get 100+ rendered fps while running in windowed mode and borderless like I mentioned above..

    In case you have the same problem I had..
    ..
    Windows 8.1
    nvidia gtx 760
    SSD

    Good luck

  5. rev2distr1ct says:

    Why am I using adblock you ask? Because a**holes love to put s**t in their ads that f**k with my computer. I can’t afford an anti-virus, so way to go for being so f**king popular and giving a damn. (Or not)

    • BuckoA51 says:

      I do care about that and believe me I’ve turned down offers from other ad networks because they weren’t reputable. You don’t need to pay for antivirus, there are lots of free antivirus packages. I only run the basic Microsoft antivirus and NEVER run adblock and never have an issue. Keep your OS and browser up to date. Btw, do you block all graphics and javascript in a page, as that can also be used to spread malware? Didn’t think so.

  6. Michael says:

    Hey ya all i was wondering since this site talks alot about how to… if anyone knowns where i am still going to be able to get the game again … i use to own it when it just came out but lost it when i moved here to the US about 4 years ago …. anybody that could help me out here with telling me where i could buy the game or download it ?

  7. v says:

    hi help please….when i try to start the game win 7 says please re-insert cd and restart everytime

  8. andrew mcmillan says:

    great post man i was trying all day to get this going but kept having the missing file. fixed it all really easily thanks

  9. Rodderick says:

    I have such lovely memories of playing B&W, I practically grew up with it. I sometimes still play it solo, but finding other people to play with is quite difficult. For those interested in playing this awesome ageless game, http://www.kayssplace.com/home/news.php is an unofficial website for all Lionhead games (B&W1 and 2, Fable, etc) with patches, maps, etc.

    Also, as a better alternative to all the hassle through Hamachi, there is this http://bwgame.wildman-productions.org/index.php?action=showpage&pagename=home
    a website that which contains a B&W client online which WORKS with a proper static ip and portforwarding. If someone is looking forward do playing online, try it out!. :)

  10. JK91 says:

    i followed your guide to the letter but still cant seem to get the picture to center out…
    im using windows 10, and had to use a tip on how to even get it to start up from the microsoft forums. any other suggestion of how to fix it?

  11. JK91 says:

    nevermind, i found the solution on another site.

    Right-click on “runblack.exe” -> Properties -> Compatibility -> Check “Disable display scaling on high DPI settings” and apply.

  12. Daan says:

    The game wouldn’t launch for me on windows 10 even when I followed all the steps.

  13. CH15 says:

    Thanks for all of the advice on this issue, but I still can’t get the game to run on Windows 8.1. I’ve gone through the comment sections as well and still nothing! It’s so frustrating! My copy is still in good condition and my laptop is only a few months old.

    Does anyone have any other suggestions that aren’t listed on this page or in the comments?

  14. Luna says:

    I tried EVERYTHING probably all the pages on google recommend but the game just wont start. At all. Theres not even an error pop up. othing happens. I dont know what I should do Q_Q
    Win 7 here

    • BuckoA51 says:

      It’s possibly a copy protection issue. Unfortunately I can’t link to a no-CD patch here.

      • Luna says:

        I actually do own a physical CD and the original activation code :/

      • Luna says:

        I actually do own a physical CD and the original activation code :/
        And it always worked with this, I think even on the same PC earlier

        • BuckoA51 says:

          Most likely a copy protection issue. On Windows 7 you can disable the security “fix” that stops Safedisc protected games from running – See this page for more information – https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3086255

          • Atom says:

            Hello, I have exactly the same problem as Luna. I’m running Win 7, I followed this and other guides to a T, and when I try to launch B&W nothing happens at all. I checked out your link there, went into RegEdit and Safedisc or “secdrv” already had a value of “4”. Meaning it was already disabled. Any other ideas why nothing at all would happen? I own the CD as well with the original CD key, and I had no problem running this on my now dead Win XP computer. I love your 9-Volt avatar btw. Wario-Ware is an awesome game!

            • BuckoA51 says:

              Wario Ware is indeed an awesome game, especially on a HDMI modded Gamecube (available now at VideoGamePerfection.com :) )

              Anyway, Safedisc must either be ENABLED or you must use a no-CD crack.

              • Atom says:

                Thanks for the quick reply man! So anyway I went back into the link you posted there, and went into regedit and the page reads: 4 is Disabled, 3 is manual, and 2 is automatic. So first I try to set it to 2 and attempt to launch B&W, same problem nothing happens. Then I try 3, and there is no difference. Then I tried to set it to 1 even though the guide doesn’t mention 1 as an option. So I’m thinking safedisc is not an issue here, because I followed that guide exactly and safedisc had to of been enabled. Any other ideas? I’ve been looking around the internet, and it seems hopeless, besides buying an old computer. I really want to play B&W >.<

              • Atom says:

                Oh I forgot to mention, I am able to see the first menu where it says “Play Black & White”, “Uninstall Black & White”, “Read Release Notes”, “Technical Support”, “Diagnostics”, “Quit”. Then When I try to click play nothing happens. I’ll check the task manager and there is nothing. I’ve already put the CD key in and got the dll file, and everything in your guide here.

  15. Joshua says:

    Not completely surprising but this doesn’t seem to work for Win 10 (pro). The .exe just wont open, no error messages or anything like that it thinks about it but then does nothing. Funnily enough the version I had to download (which I don’t normally do but couldn’t find anywhere to buy this online/digitally) actually worked straight away, true it didn’t go to the resolution that the monitor is capable of (just maxxed out all the settings in the setup) but it ran straight away with (after only about 20 min of game-play) no issues at all. Just an FYI for Win 10 uses, not sure if if it just me. If other win 10 users have found that this works I’d be curious as to how they managed it (though as I said the version i have DOES work just not at 1920×1080) just out of curiosity :-P

    Thanks to the Author of this “article”/”guide as I’m SURE this has helped a lot of people and is very comprehensive and well “written with all the files and links needed to execute the method (and all the links work which is so rare for things like this regarding old games!!). So even though it didn’t work for me I’m still very impressed at the way this was all done/set out and maintained!! Congratulations and well done!!

  16. Moi says:

    Hello,
    first of all I’d like to thank you all for your contributions. I started trying to install B&W a couple of days ago. I used to run it on my old laptop until it (laptop) died and on my hubby’s laptop where it now crashes within a couple of min of playing. I’m not at all tech savy so I was very pleased to actually understand at least of the page. In the end I screwed it up (forgot no spaces in name, something went wrong with install then couldn’t uninstall to be able to install) and got a friend to fix it.
    Thing is that I’m still supposed to upgrade to windows 10. Has anyone gotten this to work on 10 and if so what do I need to do before upgrading.
    Until then I can play now, but I’ve got that old problem of it crashing at random times after loading. I remember this from before but can’t find the fix. I think it was something about the way it saves games but I haven’t yet found the fix and don’t know if it work work on Windows 8.1 (64 bit) Any advise?

  17. Saiklon says:

    Hello, got a question here, is there any way to change language on this game? :D

    • Vincent says:

      Not that ive found after hours of digging :/ I’ll try again though. I did have the Swedish version when I was a kid and I’ve really been trying to find it. Nowhere online, and nowhere in m closet. But this was a while ago, can be worth checking if any has come up online

  18. Feritano says:

    Hello,

    I cant get the game started. I patched it to 1.3 and downloaded the Village Banter addon.
    My System is Win7. When i doubleclick runblack.exe nothing happens. Tried in WinXP (SP2) compatibility and administrator Mode.

    Can somebody please help?

  19. PideGY says:

    Hi, i’m running it on an windows 10 pro, it works like a charm, except that i cant change the game settings, cant turn of auto save, change the controlls or anyting else. any ide? running it on ver 1.2. or do you know of any work around, change in some file or document in the b&w folder, or register?

    thancks for anwnser

    • Sen says:

      I ran into that too PideGY. I figured out that I had compatibility mode turned on somehow, it was set to Window98/ME, YUCK!. As soon as I turned it off, the Options menu became functional again.

      Also, used the wonderful instructions posted by Bucko(thank you for all of this) to get 1600 x 900(my monitors native resolution), unfortunately, the game is a little too stretched, mind you it was coded in a time when widescreen-lcd monitor was a nerds wet dream, square games for square monitors! Anyways, my point is that the game looks better when you don’t stretch it out. 1152 x 864 is what I’m running and it looks great.

      • PideGY says:

        Hi sen, and thanks for reply. i have tryed to trubelshoot the compability.
        first i turned it off, but then the i got that “the program have stoped workiing”. and afther that i tryed to switch it to windows 7 then the game start agine but i still cant change the settings in the game. so if anyone know of an .txt or anoter file that i can change it in it whulde be great!

        Thanks

        • BuckoA51 says:

          Black and White saves its settings in the registry under your current user key, however if you run the game as administrator they get saved in the wrong place. Try NOT running the game as administrator.

          • PideGY says:

            okey thanks, have tryed not as admin but it still dosnet work. but if it saves in register files i probebly know whats wrong… i followed an guid erlier on how to completly remove black and white because it was some bugs, and in the guide they toled me to remove all teh reg keys to black and white, and when i reinstalled it all keys dident come back of some reasone. the regiseter that saves the settings is probebly removed, and thats why i have to run the game as admin also becuse then it gets the files from an other regestrie

  20. Sen says:

    Pidgey, that is strange. Here is my current setup:

    Obviously I had to get the crack exe to get the game to go.

    I do not have any sort of compatibility setting being used.

    The program is run as an administrator.

    Now I have had the game crash a few times but it was only after hours of being turned on. Are you saying that the game crashed as soon as you launched the game when you had no compatibility mode turned on or was it after some time of playing? If it is after sometime of playing, I would chalk it up to the game code itself and consider it a part of playing this game, 15 years ago this game would crash on me all the time lol.

    • PideGY says:

      Hi sen, yes I’m saying that it crashes on startup whiteout compatibility settings. Really weird. Will try without administration rights and see if that works. I will come back whit my results thanks guys

  21. Gina says:

    This is such a great tutorial! Thank you for putting the time and effort into this :) I’m still having some problems with the setup, however. I only have an administrator account but the graphic settings will NOT save for me! I’ve run as an administrator and uninstalled that patch that you recommended, but the graphics settings will show up as default every time I open the setup. The strange thing is that the “Disable all music and sound” and “Disable Internet weather system” will save. I can’t figure it out. Any ideas?

  22. Gebo says:

    Hey guys,

    I followed all the step (for Win10) and made the game start. But after the first 2 loadingscreens (lionhead and B&W) the game just quits back to desktop.
    Any ideas?

  23. kyle says:

    Here I was hoping to play my old favorite childhood game and I find my technology is too advanced :'( I would hate to be bothered to have to hijack the programming just to play it so I don’t know, this really sucks….

  24. Stephen says:

    Hello, thank you for doing this but I am having a problem.

    I finally did everything right (or so I thought). I booted up the game, hit play and got excited when I heard my laptop making the usual loading churning noises. Black and White logo, then it goes full screen and shows the Lionhead logo. And then it shows the the Black and White logo again. And then right when the BaW logo disappears I get a “lh has stopped working” windows error message.

    Can anyone point out what is wrong? I installed it from my disk (could be the issue, but I have terrible internet connection so I don’t feel like downloading it ATM), patched it, downloaded the dll fix, did exactly what it said under Tweaking Visual Quality, and modified it to fit my screen. I launched it using the disk launcher and the one in the file folder.

    Any chance that anyone could point out what I did wrong? I would greatly appreciate it since I’ve been longing for some nostalgia.

    • Alexander says:

      Same Problem Here

      • Pidegy says:

        I know you get startup problems if you have spaces in the game folder, you need to name it like this “black&white” or “BlackAndWhite” or somthing. I got isseus when i named it “black and White” really weired. Also, if that dosent work try tu run, .exe in compability mode, just rightclick and you sgulde have än alternativ to dö that, both win 7 and win 8 shulde work fine.
        Kunde regards
        Per-johan

  25. sliurius says:

    Unfortunately my disk was broken over the years and was able to find a copy online but only in Spanish is there a English speech pack that is still available out there or am I stuck learning a new language lol

    • Rhors says:

      no need to learn Spanish, though I’d be glad if you do learn my native language lol. You can download B&W in English at bwgame.wildman-productions.org/ in the online client.

    • Vincent says:

      Hey, should be able to find an english version on the internet relatively easy =) I managed to dig up a Swedish version and made a language pack out of it. So, English should be easy. I’ve got a copy if you desparately need one, otherwise just google it, should turn up

  26. Matin says:

    I downloaded and installed some add-ons but none of them work !

  27. phlave says:

    Hi, I’m on Windows 10 64 bit. I followed this guide, and everything seems to run well, except for the fact that the game stutters constantly from the start screen. I can’t seem to be able to force it to run in windowed mode, too.
    I tried with both d3d Windower and Borderlessgaming. The first doesn’t start the game, the second states that there’s an error with B&W, and it applies no change whatsoever. Finally I tried regediting Fullscreen to 0, and this doesn’t work either. It’s kinda driving me mad.
    I run a DX11 mobo with i5 6600, 16GB DDR4 ram, and a GTX 970.

    • BuckoA51 says:

      Did you install dgVoodoo2? No idea on Window mode, I never use it sorry.

      • phlave says:

        yes, I did. I followed every step of your guide. I installed dgVoodoo2_53.
        I also found the fan patch 1.40, which enables window mode, but the issue remains. I could try and upload a video to better show you. It’s not exactly a framerate issue, it’s more like the game registered changes once or twice a second and updated accordingly, so it stutters, but in a fluid way (?????)

  28. Readnarok says:

    Yo bro,
    Your tuto is really nice but i can’t seems to figure what’s my problem.
    I cracked the game with a standard iso i found on tpb, installed your patch. When i try to run ‘runblack.exe’ nothing happens, any idea ?

  29. ComradeRed says:

    Damn, I tried everything in this guide (and other guides) and can’t get the game to work on Windows 7. Disabled the security thing, installed all the patches, installed the fan made patch, tried a different separate drive (and the one with my OS), tried different compatbility settings, nothing. Every time I click the runblack.exe the game just instantly crashes.

    I don’t even get to the main menu. Just instant crash. Also tried every possible solution in the comments above.

    Not sounding smug or anything, but I imagine my computer is just “too good” to run B&W…wouldn’t be the first time my crappy asf laptop could run old games, while my destroyer of worlds desktop couldn’t even start them. *sigh* really wanted to play this. Thanks for the guide though.

  30. Mattia says:

    Hi all !
    I’have a problem will the saving of the game.
    Every time that auto save, the game crash.
    What can I do to solve it?
    I’m play with Windows 7 64 bit.
    Thanks.

  31. Jadz says:

    So I have followed the steps and its still saying that i don’t have a D5DLL.dll

  32. William says:

    Hey, I’m running on windows 10. i installed patch 1.41 then patch 2 (fix for all options) I have a cracked file, but once it starts to try to run a level lh.exe stops running, any advice or help?

  33. Jajourda says:

    Any idea how to install black and white onto a virtual machine instance via virtual box?

  34. Anonnn says:

    Hey! This is a great guide! I have a problem with the game on windows 10, I managed to get it to run, but the graphics are “zoomed in”? As in: when the logo should be in the center it’s more like in bottom right side. It’s like that no matter what resolution I try, If I go to lower resolution, I have two black strips on the side of my screen and the game in the square is still zoomed in, so its not me messing up ScreenH and ScreenW, as it was like that even before I changed anything with them. Any idea how to fix this?

  35. Jeff says:

    Hey Ive tried everything on this tutorial and i was almost able to get it running using a crack from the source you mentioned but now it gives me a notification saying The procedure entry point ?initialize @LHDebugStack@@SAHXZ could not be located in the dynamic link library C:Users\admin\Desktop\Games\runblack.exe.

    Any ideas?

    I’m on windows 10 but im not giving up on getting this game to work because earlier i had the crack in a seperate file and was able to get it started by putting files from the game in there with it, but obviously it crashes if you are missing some, however this is the message it gives me when i have it in the same file as the whole game with the 1.3 patch and the p5 file. So I feel like im so close but i dont know enough about this stuff to figure it out on my own.

    • Juway says:

      I got the same error message and haven’t been able to figure it out either. oddly though, last time I tried getting this game to work, I didn’t have this issue and I’ve got the same machine and OS now. I suspect a more recent Windows update might be getting in the way but I have no proof

  36. Jeff says:

    If anyone scrolls down far enough to read this, there is an easier fix, you can download an unoffical fan patch hosted at “BWFiles” (used to be known as Kayssplace) which has a resolution fix included on setup;

    https://www.bwfiles.com/files/file.php?id=1418

  37. TheMadman says:

    Quick addition here:
    In the past I used patch 1.3 and it took a few years/playthroughs until I realized that the P5 patch adds some strange behaviours to the mouse controls. When you “zoom-in” to your creature the hand jumps around weirdly. So I am not using patch 1.3 anymore…

  38. Joshus says:

    Hi All,

    As I know some of us have had issues setting all this up on Windows 10, I’ve managed to reliably install all this on 3 x W10 devices (2 laptops & 1 tower PC):

    (I had issues installing from a CD so I got a B&W1 CD emulator online. The version I found wasn’t cracked so I still had to use the license code from my cd box, but I think there are a few cracked B&W1 CD emulators out there. )

    1: Using the advice above, find a way to successfully install the game.

    2: Download and run the 1.3 patch (link is on the article we’re currently on).

    3: Find, download and run the 1.4 ‘Fan’ patch from (https://www.bwfiles.com/files/file.php?id=1421). This is required to get the game working on W10. This patch gives you higher resolution options for the game, but I find these do not work, so I stick with the highest res option we had before this patch.

    4: Find and download p5dll.dll from the article we are currently on. As we are instructed, just unzip the dll, and copy the file into the game directory/folder.

    5: Go to the directory/folder of the mounted CD you used to install the game. Go to the \Audio\Music\ folder. Copy the contents of this folder. Now navigate to the directory/folder of the installed game. Go to the \Audio\Music here. Paste your selection into this folder.
    Basically, the 1.3 patch seems to delete most of the music files from the game folder. This can either cause the game to crash on startup every time, or the game will just be without music (which loses a lot of the atmosphere of the game!). The music we need though is still in the CD though, so all we did was copy this into the game directory.

    That should be it! You should be able to run B&W1 on your windows 10 machine now!

    This game should really be remastered as it is an absolute gem, and B&W2 completely loses the essence of what made this game great.

  39. Artey says:

    Ok, so I really screwed this up. A few years ago I got a new PC and installed Black & White. It ran fine for a while, eventually the audio stopped working and later it didn’t work at all, not even with a cracked .exe. Recently I upgraded to Windows 10 (yes, I’m late) and a few games stopped working. So I wanted to uninstall B&W to start from scratch. But I can’t uninstall via Autorun or through Windows. Instead it says that DLL “E” can’t be loaded. Even when it was in the folder it said that, but now I’ve deleted it and it still happens. So now I can’t install B&W through Autorun, I can only try to uninstall it, which fails. While I have had many stupid things happen to me with old games, I haven’t seen something like this before. Does anyone have an idea?

  40. Jerry says:

    Thanks for helping me to run B&W on Win10. Without any patch, english version 1.0. Just screen resolution in registers was set up, and game works fine;-)

  41. Aman says:

    Thanks for sharing this info.

  42. Hippie says:

    Thanks for this!

    but some of these sites no longer exist, do you have an update on what we can do?

    Thank You!

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