NWN2 in Windows 7

The other night I attempted to play some neverwinter nights multiplayer in linux, but ended up with a pile of segfaults and frustration.  Thinking it would somehow be easier, I went online and bought Neverwinter Nights 2.   Foolish me for thinking that a newer game running in Windows would be easier.

Problems I encountered:

• mysterious error about DX_INSTALL_ERROR not being in the string table
• game not launching at all
• updater failing out with “The patch has been aborted” messages (especially on nwn2_pc_english_from105912_to106972.zip).  Failing, a lot.

Here are the steps that appear to work:

1. purchase the digital download game from Atari’s site
2. wait for downloads to finish (overnight)
3. install latest version of DirectX 9.0c from Microsoft’s site
4. install latest video card drivers
5. run installer file
6. it mostly works, but errors out at the end with something about DX_INSTALL_ERROR
7. go to the folder with the installed files :   c:\Program Files(x86)\Atari\Neverwinter Nights 2\
8. right click on nwn2.exe and go to the ‘compatibility’ tab
9. set it to run as windows XP SP3, and set it to run as administrator
10. do the same for nwnmain.exe
11. run NWLauncher.exe
12. In the weirdo SecuROM window that comes up, click on “I bought this game and need to activate it because DRM is retarded”, then re-enter your NWN2 cdkey (from the email).
13. click ‘update’ in the launcher screen
14. click ‘update’ again
15. if it fails to download a patch, try again. and again.  and again.  It eventually succeeded for me.
16. if one patch works then another fails to download, hit ‘update’. again.
17. feel a vague sense of accomplishment that it got to version 1.06.
18. feel a greater sense of dread that there are still 2 expansions to install/patch.
19. wait for it to fail on another patch download. click ‘update’. again.
20. rinse, lather, repeat.  I had the updater fail on 1.05, 1.05. 1.06, 1.09, 1.11, 1.11, …
21. patches above 1.11 seem to be only if you have the expansions installed, so leave those for another day.
22. quit the updater and try launching NWN2 from the start menu
23. re-re-enter your CDkey in the bollocking secuROM window.
24. holy crap the game works!

After all that, the game runs well so far in the tutorial zone.  I’ll update further if there’s anything else that needs fixing later on in the game, or when I try installing the expansions.  I assume the expansions are a variant of download/install/patchpatchpatchpatch.

It seems that setting compatibility mode means that you don’t need to manually download patches, though I suspect it might have been quicker to go that route rather than hit ‘update’ fifty times.

The NWN2 forums may also be useful, though far less-so since the old BW forums went offline:

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/158/index/3116296

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