First of all: sorry for posting in English. Feel free to translate this to German, and I will edit my post with the German counterpart.

Second of all: Spezies Q's original "first aid" topic is a good start, but we want to stress the importance of certain obligatory steps in getting Divinity II to work if it doesn't. Some of Spezies Q's tips are optional and will not necessarily "solve" crashes or freezes. So kudos to Spezies Q, he's a real asset to this community!

Third of all: stop playing with a NoDVD crack. People that are playing with a NoDVD crack or anything will experience strange behaviour because we've put in some fun little "features" when the DVD check fails. These are not bugs.

If you are experiencing behaviour similar to behaviour that is normally had with a NoDVD crack, but you *are* playing with the normal EXE and with the DVD in the drive, check the DVD disc and your disc drive.

So. If you are having trouble running Divinity II (e.g. it crashes, doesn't even start up, freezes, you get error messages, ctd's...), there are three very important things you must take care of. Normally, they are being taken care of by the installer, but making sure everything happened correctly is a good first step towards finding the reason of your problem (i.e. eliminating the "normal" causes).

1. DirectX 9.0c

Even though DirectX 9.0c is always called that, there are different versions of it. Every couple of months, Microsoft releases updates to DX9.0c and they haven't changed the version number in any of these updates. So whether you have the version of 2004, or you have the up to date version of 2009, there is no way of knowing what "version" you actually have without looking at the dates of your DirectX dll files. Now, for our game, you need to at least have the version that was released in February 2007. Of course, other games may require newer versions, so the safest is to download and install the latest version Microsoft offers on their website here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...yID=2da43d38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3

If you don't want to download it, you can also install the version that came with the DVD. Explore the Divinity II DVD and start the following program:

[DVDROMDRIVE]:\Support\directX\DXSETUP.exe

Sadly enough, there is no way of knowing whether you have the correct version of DirectX9.0c because the version number has been 4.09.0000.0904 for five years already...

Vista users: you have DirectX 10 but that does NOT mean you have DirectX9.0c! You need to install this too!

2. Make sure you have (at least) the PhysX drivers installed that we shipped
with the game or the latest PhysX drivers that you find on the nVidia website:

Get the latest here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx_system_software.html

Or install from Divinity II DVD: [DVDROMDRIVE]:\Support\PhysX\PhysX_9.09.0428_SystemSoftware.exe

A second very important step to get PhysX installed right: run the following exe from the Divinity II DVD:

[DVDROMDRIVE]:\Support\Larian\PhysXRegInstaller.exe

3. Make sure the Visual C++ redistributable files are installed. You can install them from our DVD:

[DVDROMDRIVE]:\Support\Visual C++\vcredist_x86.exe

That's it. If that doesn't help, you may want to try uninstalling the game and reinstalling again (maybe even after a reboot after the uninstall) cause apparently that has helped people here as well...

Remarks:

1. If the game does not start up but you see its process running in the task manager, there is an issue with SecuROM. If you notice such behaviour, please contanct Securom. Follow this link for more information: http://www.securom.com/support_enduser.asp?t=1
2. The game does NOT require the .net framework.
3. The game does NOT require any special codecs (unless you messed around too much with Win installation or codec installation). The game uses WMV. WMV is supported natively by Windows XP Service Pack 2 and up. Only if you have stripped your Windows installation or if you have not updated Windows Media Player lately, you may not have support for this.
4. Of course you need the _latest_ drivers for your hardware, especially your graphics card. Also try to get a WHQL signed driver for all your devices. Also make sure all your devices are 100% compatible with DirectX9.0c. If you have an AMD processor: install the AMD CPU optimizer and the AMD processor driver (Prozessortreiber).

PS: I wanted to merge this with Spezies Q's Ersten Hilfe thread, but the forum software did something funny and it all went downhill from there. Apologies again to Spezies Q.