Running BTH on windows 7

[TheTotem132]

Another Method to running BTH.

1. Download Virtual Box from the following link according to your OS :http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
2. Install Virtual Box using its simple step by step setup wizard. Once the installation is complete, now you may start up the program.
3. At this point, you should grab your installation CD's belonging to the OS you wish to install. If you do not have these discs, once again, google is your friend, in the form of an .ISO file.

3-a. To setup and install your operating system for your Virtual Machine, go to the New Tab in the top left-hand corner.
Click Next, and name your VM, and choose the OS you wish to install.
Click Next, and select how much RAM you wish to be assigned to your VM.
Click Next, and make sure the "Boot Hard Disk" Box is checked, along with "Create new hard disk."
Click Next, then Next again, Then make sure you have "Dynamically expanding storage" checked, and Click Next.
Choose where you want the Folder and files saved, and how much space you want your Virtual Hard Drive Disk to have. *Note: It will be separate from the rest of your hard drive once you create the VM, and keep the application installed. Make sure you give your Virtual Hard Drive enough space, because youll be reinstalling D2 on it.* Click Next, and then the Finish button twice.

3-b. You are now ready to setup the capabilities of your new VM.
Display Tab: Located to the right-hand side, click the tab once and a menu appears. Here, you may setup however much video memory you want to allocate to your new VM ( I recommend atleast 32mb of video memory for D2) , as well as check boxes to "Enable 2D Video Acceleration" and "Enable 3D acceleration."


3-c. Everything else at this point is already predefined to their defaults, so now you are ready to begin installing your OS.
Select your new VM to the left, and click the Start button on the top left. Click Next, and select the Cd-rom drive that your OS installation discs are located in. If you do not have these discs, you can once again use google. In order to use your .ISO file of your OS, follow these simple steps.
Download Daemons Tools Lite from this link:http://www.daemon-tools.cc/eng/downloads
Install the program using its setup wizard, and launch the application.
Click the "Add Device" Button with the green Plus+ sign, and your first virtual drive has been created.
Click the "Add File" button to the left, and find the .ISO file you obtained. Once selected, click Open.
Right-Click on the new image file, or go to the icon on your taskbar on the bottom right of your screen, and right click. Go to Virtual Devices, your new virtual drive, and click Mount Image. Select the .ISO file, and click open.
Congrats, youve now mounted your OS setup files.
Go back to Virtual Box, and select the virtual drive where the media has been mounted, and click next, then click finish.
You will now be prompted to completely install your new OS on your Virtual Machine. Follow the step by step guide given, just like you would when installing an OS on your desktop / laptop. I promise its simple.

4. Congratulations! You now have a fully functioning virtual machine with its own operating system. Now that all that mess is out of the way, pat yourself on the back, because here comes the easy part.
This virtual machine is almost completely separate from your actual desktop, so you cant do fun things like Dragging and dropping files onto it. When you click inside the window of the VM, it gives you a prompt informing you that your Mouse and Keyboard are "Captured" meaning that your mouse clicks and keystrokes occur in the VM, not on your desktop. The "Right Crtl Key" is your key to press by default to "Uncapture" your mouse / keyboard and return to doing activities to your normal desktop, so keep this in mind.
From this point on, you will be on your own free to install whatever you may please on the virtual machine. The only difference with this VM and your desktop, is your running a different OS, and theres only a couple limitations to the VM itself, otherwise it functions just like your desktop with the memory limits you set.
Note: When you try to connect to the internet, if you are prompted to let the VM synchronize with your network, allow it to. This will let you go online in the VM and on your desktop if you wish. Also, if you find that you cannot get your VM to detect your CD-ROM drive to install diablo 2 or any other software, theres an easy fix.
Look to the bottom right, and there you will see a small taskbar of Icons, the left-hand ones looking like discs. Right-click the 2nd disc Icon that looks like a flat CD, and choose the drive your D2 disc is located in (For example, its my D: Drive, so i would choose Host D: Drive.) Now, you can install diablo 2, redownload BTH and anything else you wish.


This is a rough draft of the process step by step, and if there are any questions or concerns please feel free to ask, and i will try to help.

[D2 MOD player]

I like this guide, I have a few things to point out about using a virtual OS.

When you connect online with an older OS in a virtual machine like this, there are certain issues that you need to be careful about. Namely security. While a simulated desktop like this can't access your real OS, it can itself become infected if the proper security isn't applied. Just like on a regular system. So updates, firewalls, etc. Those are all needed to stay secure. So while it won't infect the host system in most cases, it can create problems in the virtual OS itself. Just like normal a virus could slow down or completely disrupt your applications within this simulated environment. So it's desirable to keep it as clean as possible just like your normal desktop. Also consider that if you ever decided to export from your virtual OS to your real desktop, any infected files would then become a reality.

The only legitimate way to have an ISO of your favorite operating system is to purchase it and then create the ISO with software. ISO's are very nice because when installing a program off of them they are much faster then a CD drive itself. You also don't need to disk swap and some mounting utilities allow you to mount many disks at once just like a CD changer on a classic stereo system. But please don't ask about this further since it's beyond the scope of this forum.

The main way to install an OS is with the original discs. If you own an OEM system (meaning Dell, Acer, etc.) you don't have a true OS disc (on rare occasions you actually get a real Windows disc). Recovery discs won't work, they only work directly on the system you purchased. I'm sure this will be the main issue people will have when using the instructions above. Also from what I understand, if you own the professional complete version of Windows 7, it does come with XP emulation. However I have never used it to confirm this. Otherwise this system is a great alternative to running BTH on a newer system with a newer operating system like Windows 7 or any future operating system.

[TheTotem132]

Thanks for the reply and extra information! You're correct about how you should treat your virtual OS, as its identical to your host OS or any other desktop you have.

Another note is once again, you're right that to obtain a legitimate .ISO OS file you need to own the original Operating System discs to rip the files off of, as an .ISO is much faster to read than off the actual CD. That being said, I didn't believe more information was needed as you said, its beyond the scope of this forum.

The last tidbit is about what version of windows 7 you have purchased. For everyone reading this, if you purchased windows 7 professional or above, you can get Windows Xp Emulation from microsoft's website. In that regard you can ignore needing to do anything else to run BTH except that. If you're like me ,and your desktop automatically came with a lower version of windows 7, or you *and I would do this sadly* buy the cheapest/lowest version, you cannot get Windows Xp Emulation (which I think is alittle silly, but its not my software.)

[D2 MOD player]

Good information. So that means it's just like XP was. I was only able to get 98 emulation for free without finding another program just like TheTotem132 has mentioned, because I'd purchased the professional version of XP. However I haven't loaded that up for years. BTH is one of the few programs I would bother going through this effort to use again. After all, with most software, you can just buy or download something newer and it performs the same function. I'll have to ask Sierra to make an unofficial Diablo 3 expansion to emulate BTH with new graphics.

[ephemeralmemory]

Hey, all, thanks for the idea of running BTH from a virtual windows xp.

I have some questions though about the graphics aspect: I have Diablo installed, but hen I play the game, it says Direct Draw not supported... any ideas?

[randyy]

why thats alot of work to run a mod. why not go with what i posted or onyx? lol

[D2 MOD player]

I run Windows 7 64 myself now and I haven't installed the game yet. Some solutions aren't complete solutions, the game mostly works but sometimes gets errors. In Windows XP maybe I'd get an error every 6 months and it was my PC and not the mod.

Running true Windows XP emulation is the best solution because it should run perfectly. I'll add to this if I get my professional version of Win 7 XP emulation going if there's any problems. I doubt it's that hard and you likely want it for other software anyway. I was able to purchase the OEM version for a mere 140 dollars. It's a complete version, not an upgraded version. newegg.com. The difference is I believe the OEM version is a license for one PC only and tech support by phone is not free.

[D2 MOD player]

I wanted to update this thread because it was the one I liked most and I've since gotten BTH to run on Windows 7 64-bit and wanted to comment on what I'd found. It's not what I'd expected. I never tried Virtual Box which sounds like a valid way to run it.

I started with XP Mode that I'd mentioned comes with Win 7 Pro. At first I was quite pleased because it was a very easy install and did not require my original XP disk or any updates unless it was past SP3. You download the Microsoft Virtual Machine and then get the XP mode after copy authentication validation completes.

This is where the problem started. I was very disappointed. When you install Diablo 2 you can't select a video mode because there is no Direct 3D/Direct X or even Direct Draw support in XP mode! In fact the video card they have listed is a very cheap card with 2D functionality only. Now to say it's an emulated environment you can run XP applications on and then to remove the very features that most everybody used for nearly the last 10 years is not only unforgivable but defeats the purpose of having and XP mode to start with. Quite simply, this is not a true emulation of XP and cannot be taken seriously. Nobody ran XP like this and it was likely better equipped even if they were upgrading it from a system all the way back in the '90's.

Having said all that XP mode does work with D2 and it's expansion Lord of Destruction but it took some time to figure this out because it only works in Windowed mode. Apparently this game can run without Direct Draw in Windowed mode or it wouldn't have even run that way. I installed Eastern Sun as a test, it worked perfectly. I installed BTH, same error I get on launch in XP mode that I had in Windows 7! Now my guess to the reason behind this is that BTH can't handle having no video mode selected due to the poor feature set for XP mode and therefore refuses to run. What a sad affair.

At this point I didn't try Virtual Box because it seemed to be a pain after everything I went through so I tried something I considered at the time much simpler. I did some research online first and found some people were able to get vanilla D2/LOD running in Win 7 64 simply by disabling backgrounds and advanced display features, etc. That to me sounded extreme and a very annoying way to get something to work. Why run Win 7 without basic functionality just to get an old game to work when it may or may not actually work? Some people on this forum stated BTH ran in Win 7 64 but without sound, it wasn't even that kind to me.

I then tried Sandboxie as many people have used it before. After using it some I apparently found it's main purpose is to run an application in a closed environment separate of the OS so it doesn't make changes to the system or allow security breaches. Sandboxie really is a security/ OS lock type program you'd use at say a workplace and running an old game isn't exactly it's top priority but it works! To get D2 or BTH to run requires changing some default settings in the options that are there but difficult to find in the menu, otherwise you get security warnings when running the game and it fails. Past that BTH runs fine. Also I ran the install of D2 and LOD through Sandboxie and it created a separate folder under the Sandboxie program itself to run the game in a kind of protected mode. It may appear it's installing on say, "D:\games\Diablo II" but is in reality running from c:\programs\Sandboxie\... That may sound confusing but it works so try not to get too confused. I believe the Sandboxie folder is where you want to install BTH and create the shortcut from. And remember you need to enter -w with a space before it to get the game to run in Windowed mode, you simply enter it in the shortcut properties (right click the shortcut).

Now I can't verify the whole game works because I did very simple tests to make sure it worked. I haven't actually played through it but everything has so far checked out.

There are several reasons a person would want to run Sandboxie over XP mode (doesn't work with BTH) or Virtual Box. In the end I preferred Sandboxie over other options despite haven't great caution about this program to start.
1. It's an easy setup and if you have it set to integrate with the Win 7 environment it only requires you to right click BTH and choose to run with Sandboxie, very simple.

2. It's no more CPU intensive then it was running under Windows XP to start. What if you have an older machine that's upgraded to Win 7? It's going to have a hard enough time running Win 7 not to mention XP mode or Virtual Box. XP mode is what you'd refer to has an Emulator and requires cutting edge hardware to run flawlessly (thank you very much ) and many people only mention how slow D2 is when running in XP mode. My guess is Virtual Box has similar issues despite likely having more robust Direct X features. Emulators literally do just that, they emulate not only an operating system but the hardware under that operating system, something that takes extra CPU cycles. Alot of extra CPU cycles.

3. You run other CPU intensive programs while playing BTH. In that case this will cause an emulated environment that was once smooth to be choppy and will effect gameplay and the speed of your other aps.

Another nifty thing I found for anybody who has an Nvidia video card is you can set custom resolutions. Plain Direct Draw mode I found is the best way to get nice looking graphics because the Direct 3D version is poorly implemented and despite having extra features makes it look awful and the beautiful hand art style and lush detail is ruined. But it doesn't matter what mode you select because Windowed mode always runs exactly the same. Exactly like full screen Direct Draw mode.

I then created a custom resolution in the Nvidia control panel that it saves and allows easy selection in the future. This resolution can vary greatly depending on the size of your monitor and it's aspect (4:3 vs. 16:9). I created a resolution that allows the game to fit between the top of the screen and the top of the task bar perfectly. A very cool look. That way it is bigger then standard Windowed mode which these days is very small and makes the game nearly full screen. I would hope ATI control panels allow the same thing. If not I recommend a resolution similar to 1024x768 (or similar on 16:9 widescreen) which is a smaller window. I've never seen D2 look so good because on my 20 inch it was big enough to see but small enough that I didn't notice every pixel. Running D2 on a very large monitor without making the Window small enough is a big mistake and kills the otherwise nice looking art.

So if you want to run BTH, use Sandboxie or Virtual Box.