Arokhslair.net

The Drakan installer does not seem to like Windows 11. After launching the installer from the CD image, SETUP.EXE justs hang in the background forever. However, after several hours of troubleshooting, I found a solution.

Restart Windows 11 in Safe Mode with Networking. The installer runs normally in Safe Mode. I also ran the Community Patch in Safe Mode which installed just fine. After rebooting, Drakan runs perfectly at 1080p.

Thank you to all of those who have kept this game alive for all these years. It definitely holds up.

That's good to know, thanks. Ill mention this forum post if I see anyone trying to get it to run on Windows 11.

Should be the same thing mentioned in the other thread, it's an old quirk with old InstallShield installer, if I remember correctly, it broadcasts some window message to all windows in the system and waits for response from all recipients, but not all programs running on the system may respond. So, as mentioned here, best to analyze wait chain of setup.exe with Task Manager to see what process holds it and close it.

Wasn't aware of this trick first time I encountered years ago, when I found out the utility program in form of a DLL that comes with Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi MB3 software that has to run for volume adjustments on virtual audio device to be effective on the real audio device and is invoked via rundll32.exe is the reason.

Recently, when testing on Windows 11, the culprit was explorer.exe, but it was enough to just exit Open-Shell, it's a replacement start menu application for Windows 7+. But when you start it again, it's not an issue anymore, so there's probably multiple factors involved that cause it.