Vista Tutorial - Blizzard's Diablo 1

For all those detractors out there who believe Vista is rubbish for older games, and in particular Vista x64, I'd like to present some evidence to the contrary, in the form of a blast from the past. 1995 to be exact.

I've recently re-aquired an original Diablo 1 (what can I say - I'm a Diablo fan), and figured because I was using Vista Ultimate x64, I'd have to run it in Windows XP under Microsoft Virtual PC 2007. However, when I got home from work this afternoon, I inserted the disk and allowed the autoplay to run.

The game installed without problems. Although I must mention that I changes the install path from "C:\Program Files (x86)\Diablo" to "C:\Games\Diablo". And it played! To top it off, it even showed up in the Vista Games Explorer.



This has surely got to be the oldest game I know of that has installed without any issues whatsoever onto Vista x64, and does not even need to have any compatibility mode settings manually changed!

Here are two screenshots that shows the following information:

• That I am using Vista x64
• Diablo 1 displays in the Game Explorer
• Diablo 1 runs without any Compatibility Mode settings!
• A view of the game in action, with a newly created character

This is truly a testament to the compatibility of Windows Vista x64, and the quality of games produced by Blizzard!

i can do one better than that m8, got the ultimate doom working :P

About on a par there - Both where released in '95, and "Ultimate Doom" is a Windows re-write of the original Doom (for DOS). Diablo was originally written for Windows.

Where can I get "Ultimate Doom", btw?

hehe, well, you can get it from steam if you want, i got it with the doom trilogy about 8 years ago, gathering dust in my loft :P
it was quite easy to get it working though, it kept asking me for dxplay.dll, but obviously the file system wasnt the same as windows 95's setup so i copied all the directx files on the disc into c:/windows/system and it worked like a dream.

It's actually pretty cool knowing that some of the classics that started the 3D Revolution are still out there being played by the masses. If it wasn't for titles like Doom, graphics cards as we know them wouldn't have been the same...

Dzomlija,

Thanks for sharing this. I noticed you also have Diablo 2 installed, did it install with the same ease?

Yes. The only change that needs to be made is the install location. This needs to be changed from "Program Files" to something else, because as you know, Vista protects the "Program Files" folder.

My Diablo II is installed to "C:\Games\Diablo II".

In fact, this "trick" will work for many older games that may experience problems on Vista. Just change the default install location to some other unprotected folder, and the games should work.