Anno 1404 & Venice Crashing On Startup

[a salmon]

I've had both games for several months and until now they've worked fine. Now when I try to play either one I get a screen with the hourglass for a couple seconds and then it's gone. I've tried reinstalling several times, verified the game files, tried the DirectX fix, tried running in compatibility mode, tried the 4gb patch, nothing works.

I'm running Windows 10. I don't think specs should be an issue since it's worked fine before.

[LemanDV]

Late reply, not sure if helpful, but I had the same problems and found it was being caused by RivaTuner (to show ingame fps and other info).

Try disabling any kind of software that would do the same (if you're running any, that is).

[Shax]

Anno 1404 Gold Edition Fix Win10
Tested on Windows 10 64-bit

Enable DirectPlay in Windows 10:

To enable DirectPlay, first press the Win key + R keyboard shortcut to open Run.
Then enter ‘Control Panel’ in Run, and click the OK button.
Click Programs and Features to open the uninstaller utility
Go to Legacy Components and turn on DirectPlay


Go to you're SteamLibrary \steamapps\common\Anno 1404 folder
find "DXSETUP.exe" in the DirectX folder, install the DirectX file.


Go to Anno 1404 folder again and find the files "Anno4" and "Addon"


In both files, right mousebutton. Properties, Compatible, compatible modus set to windows 7 and turn on Administrator licence.

Copy both files as shortcuts onto youre desktop and rename each shortcut to the original desktop shortcut names.
Delete default installed shortcuts and you are done..

Have fun!

[a salmon]

hey guys, sorry for not replying earlier! I actually managed to fix it very simply. Turns out I hadn't completely cleared out the old files before reinstalling. When I went to look at %AppData% after uninstalling there was still stuff there, so i deleted that manually and reinstalled. Voila, fixed!

[Shax]

Originally posted by EliFoxfly:

hey guys, sorry for not replying earlier! I actually managed to fix it very simply. Turns out I hadn't completely cleared out the old files before reinstalling. When I went to look at %AppData% after uninstalling there was still stuff there, so i deleted that manually and reinstalled. Voila, fixed!

Nice, atleased it is working now ;)

[Danielosama]

I can confirm that deleting everything Anno related in the Appdata folder solves the issue, since the exact same thing was happening to me, and nothing was working until I tried that.