Previous problem with Old Game: Black & White 2 (2005) on w7 – missing assets and files
Previous problem with Old Game: Black & White 2 (2005) on w7 – missing assets and files
I tried playing "Black & White 2" on my PC (Windows 7, i5 4670K + R9 280) this Friday. After installing it with several other CD/DVD games last year, the game failed to load. I managed to run it using a "noCD" executable. It started but quickly showed problems—my previous saves disappeared, and during loading, large sections of terrain appeared and vanished. When selecting creatures, the background seemed to show through an invisible grass texture. I attempted a clean install on alternate storage (HDD & SSD) after replacing the drive, but the issue persisted. I suspect it might be related to AMD Crimson drivers or my graphics card, though I haven’t had problems with other titles before. I’m not sure if a Windows update or an updated executable caused this, as I performed a clean install of Windows 7 to the alternate drive and reinstalled the game. I don’t need to replace the executable this time, but loading it still caused the same issues. Have anyone else played "Black & White 2" on Windows 7 or 10 recently? Do you know if others have encountered similar problems? I’ve shared a few short clips via fraps for your reference. It seems the game is essentially unplayable now.
The issue could stem from the operating system, as the game was released prior to Vista. Do you know anything about using virtual machines?
I didn’t mention this before setting up W7 on an alternate HDD—I already used a VMware player to install it, but the game still wouldn’t load there. Even after updating the latest AMD drivers and reinstalling the game, the same problems persisted.
You're familiar with virtual machines. Would you like to set up Windows XP inside one and test the game there? That should work since the game is designed for that operating system.
If it were available on Steam, Origin or GOG I’d probably purchase it right away. However, EA doesn’t provide any support for it, let alone bringing it back.
Setting up XP on VMware will take some time. By the way, my previous machine, which is now W7, still works fine with the game. I checked its drivers—old ATI/AMD cards using CatalystCC from 2010. It seems the issue might be with the card itself, only 18 months old, and luck is on my side.
Set up XP inside VMware, then added and updated the game. Luckily it runs smoothly now; it reached the third world version (still tutorial-only). Texture problems didn’t appear. In the settings file, the adapter listed changed from "AMD Radeon R9 200 Series" to "VMware SVGA II." It’s unclear if VMware is actually using the graphics card or just relying on built-in CPU graphics. At least I can play the game through VMware right now, thanks GalacticRuler. I’m still curious to know if others have the same experience or if my graphics card is failing soon. EDIT: Just noticed I might have been too quick—had an XP crash in VMware for the first time. Could be RAM issue?