[NEW METHOD] How to fix Dungeon Siege 2

This is a rough translation from my other guide which is in german!

The guide will help you to fix the problems you have while trying to run Dungeon Siege 2. We’ll change the way this game will handle your graphics card so you don’t have to rely on external tools. In other words: Dungeon Siege 2 is going to learn about your graphics card.
The game will even run under WIN 10!

This Guide is compatible with all Versions of Dungeon Siege 2!

Fixing the game

Dungeon Siege 2 is an old game and it cannot handle modern graphics card correctly. Sometimes it works and sometimes not.
The game was designed to run with hardware of that time and believe me or not: They have hard coded settings for each graphics card!
This leads to problems with unknown new hardware. Dungeon Siege 2 uses a fall-back configuration for those unknown devices and this results in glitches, black screen, etc.

This guide shows you how to add information about your graphics card to game. So you have a smooth running, good looking game (for a product from 2001).

The first thing you need is a code editor. If you don’t like another program on your pc you can use “notepad.exe” but I don’t recommend this.
What I do recommend is notepad++[notepad-plus-plus.org]!

Now follow the next steps to fix your game:

1. Open the device manager ( HOWTO[www.computerhope.com]) access the properties from your display adapter (expand it first)
   
   
2. Go to the Details tab and select Hardware Ids from the drop-down
   
   
3. Copy the first entry (use right-click) and insert it in a new text file (notepad++)
   e.g.: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1616&SUBSYS_183D1043&REV_09
   
   
4. Modify the entry: 1. Remove everything except VEN_XXXXX and DEV_XXXXXX
   
   
5. Replace VEN_ and DEV_ with 0x
   e.g.:
   VEN_8086 --> 0x8086
   DEV_1616 --> 0x1616
   
   
6. The first will be HWID1; the second will be HWID2. This is your HardwareID!
   
   
7. Go to the location where you have installed Dungeon Siege 2 and open system_detail.gas
   with the code editor.
   
   
8. Use the search function (CTRL+F) to lookup the vendor of your graphics card!
   Keywords: NVIDIA or ATI
   This is an old game, so owner of cards from AMD have to use the keyword ATI.
   AMD bought ATI much later. ;)
   
   
9. You should find sth. similar to this:
   

    
   		[vendor*]
   		{
   			vendor					= "ATI";
   			vendor_ids				= 0x1002;
   			....
                           ....
   		}
   

   Compare the value of vendor_ids with your HWID1: They should be identical!
   If not: Change the value to your HWID1!!!
   
   
10. Above the first [device*] entry (in the section of your vendor), insert the following:
    

     
    		[device*]
    		{
    			name					= "{DEVICENAME}";
    			device_ids				= {HWID2};
    			b swapeffect_discard			= false;
    		}
    

    Replace {DEVICENAME}, {HWID2}!
    {DEVICENAME} can be anything, but I recommend you to insert the devicename ;)
    Example[s22.postimg.org]
    
    
11. Save and exit
    
    
12. Run DS2VideoConfig.exe as administrator
    
    
13. You should see your Graphics Card under “Video Driver” and “Hardware detected”
    
    
14. Change the Settings as you prefer (don’t select "primary display adapter" from the drop-down! Instead select one with the name of your grapics card in it)
    
    
15. Press OK, disable the steam overlay, run the game ;)

If you still have problem do the following:

• Please install DirectX End-User Runtimes (June 2010) DOWNLOAD[www.microsoft.com]
  
  
• Use the non-TnL Driver (DSVideoConfig.exe)
  
  
• Check DungeonSiege2BrokenWorld.ini or without the addon installed DungeonSiege2.ini (c:\Users\...\Documents\My Games\Dungeon Siege 2 Broken World\ OR c:\Users\...\Documents\My Games\Dungeon Siege 2\): Does the “driver_description“ match with your graphics card?

CUSTOM RESOLUTIONS:
You can change width and height in the file DungeonSiege2BrokenWorld.ini or without the addon installed DungeonSiege2.ini (c:\Users\...\Documents\My Games\Dungeon Siege 2 Broken World\ OR c:\Users\...\Documents\My Games\Dungeon Siege 2\) to achieve higher resolutions in the game.

[Captain Arpad]

card still unrecognized...

[Caspar]

@Stanky Rich works perfect thanks

[TwerkinSqwazzer]

Hello everybody how badly do you want to play DS2?? 😊

Dungeon siege 2 - windows 10 4k multiplayer widescreen mouse working! EVERYTHING WORKING!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IiqRCfe7Vg

[ღKalfaxღ]

i got the game to work with less effort than this.

[PwnerZ0r]

@Nux Vomic Your name, literally sounds like a chant name in Dungeon Siege 2. THEREFORE NO... Remove yourself from Steam.

[Dim]

Too much hassle for such old game. Valve should remove really old games, from the store.

[mistymorn05]

I am having serious issues with even running this game. It loads but the mouse won't show up. I have tried every solution given to me and it says that my computer doesn't have the resources to play the game which I know it does as it is a top of the line computer that has a lot more that 32 GB memory. Being code illeterate half of what I'm reading makes no sense to me

[Deranking To Herald (Again)]

Part 1: Little bit of my background so ya'll don't think I'm full of poop: 12 years professional experience as a programmer & linux sysadmin.

Ultimately I think there are more issues at play with this game and recent editions of Windows 10. It's definitely not my RTX 3090 that's the issue.

Despite following numerous guides (this one included), disabling various virtualization technologies in my BIOS (as well as CPU prefetching), etc, there is still no way for me to get more than 40 fps with Broken World installed. Vanilla DS2 runs fine at 120fps.

The root of the issue, for me, seems to be Broken World's inability to use more than 2 CPU cores. I have an I7-12700k with a base clock speed of 3.6ghz and when running DS2 Broken World I notice that the first core is consistently pegged at 100% utilization. A second core may end up around 60%, but beyond that the game's load is not spread across multiple cores.

[Deranking To Herald (Again)]

Part 2: Setting CPU affinity at run time has no real impact, unless I set affinity to only 1 CPU and then performance becomes even worse.

This leads to what I believe are CPU scheduling issues which results in lowered FPS, stuttering, etc, because the CPU can't process the game's instructions fast enough due to the game just hammering a single core.

At first I thought this was because Broken World wasn't recognizing my 3090, but clearly it does- the GPU's 3D utilization sits at around 30% while playing so my GPU is obviously doing a lot of work.

I think there are some bugs, or 'optimizations', in the Killah DungeonSiege2.exe binary that flat out don't work with current versions of Windows 10.

[nzalanday]

Tried resizing from ini file, no difference
Guess next option is borderless gaming