Hi,

Which version of HoMM2 are you trying to run? (IIRC the versions were 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3)
These patches contains some graphics related fixes, so they might be helpful.
Unfortunately all on-line sites that I have been able to find hosting the patches seems to be a bit suspicious. This Hungarian site seems to contain the patch from 1.0 to 1.3 amongst others:
http://hommm.hu/component/jdownloads/category/5-heroes-22
However, even as a Hungarian, I cannot vouch for how safe and legit this site is so be careful, but this seemed to be the least suspicious for me.

MagefromAntares wrote on 2026-05-11, 09:36:

Hi, […]
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Hi,

Which version of HoMM2 are you trying to run? (IIRC the versions were 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3)
These patches contains some graphics related fixes, so they might be helpful.
Unfortunately all on-line sites that I have been able to find hosting the patches seems to be a bit suspicious. This Hungarian site seems to contain the patch from 1.0 to 1.3 amongst others:
http://hommm.hu/component/jdownloads/category/5-heroes-22
However, even as a Hungarian, I cannot vouch for how safe and legit this site is so be careful, but this seemed to be the least suspicious for me.

Thank you for the tip! However, I'm already running Price of Loyalty version 2.1. I should have mentioned that...

Got the patch from here:
https://www.moddb.com/games/heroes-of-might-a … y-v21-dos-patch

Okay that is the last official version for the expansion as far as I know, can you post what kind of video card do you have installed? Or is it the one which have an inbuilt Cirrus Logic?

MagefromAntares wrote on 2026-05-11, 10:41:

Okay that is the last official version for the expansion as far as I know, can you post what kind of video card do you have installed? Or is it the one which have an inbuilt Cirrus Logic?

Yes, exactly. Built-in Cirrus Logic 5430.

Found some specs here:
http://ps-2.kev009.com/pcpartnerinfo/ctstips/4486.htm

As I remember the Cirrus Logic 5430 didn't had the same VESA compatibility issues as the older Cirrus Logic chips, so I think it should work fine. But still maybe a run with UniVBE worth a try?

MagefromAntares wrote on 2026-05-11, 11:17:

As I remember the Cirrus Logic 5430 didn't had the same VESA compatibility issues as the older Cirrus Logic chips, so I think it should work fine. But still maybe a run with UniVBE worth a try?

I was unfamiliar with that piece of software, but acquired version 6.53 and gave it a try. Unfortunately it didn't have an effect.

And I take it back that I can reliably make it work by deleting the CFG file. Rather it intermittently works regardless of CFG file or whatever. Most of the time it starts with a black screen. Sometimes, rarely it starts the way it should. Very strange.

InterClaw wrote on 2026-05-11, 16:50:

MagefromAntares wrote on 2026-05-11, 11:17:

As I remember the Cirrus Logic 5430 didn't had the same VESA compatibility issues as the older Cirrus Logic chips, so I think it should work fine. But still maybe a run with UniVBE worth a try?

I was unfamiliar with that piece of software, but acquired version 6.53 and gave it a try. Unfortunately it didn't have an effect.

And I take it back that I can reliably make it work by deleting the CFG file. Rather it intermittently works regardless of CFG file or whatever. Most of the time it starts with a black screen. Sometimes, rarely it starts the way it should. Very strange.

If it happens randomly can you install and try it with a different VESA supporting game? This would let us knows if it is a HoMM2 specific issue or a general issue.

MagefromAntares wrote on 2026-05-11, 18:42:

If it happens randomly can you install and try it with a different VESA supporting game? This would let us knows if it is a HoMM2 specific issue or a general issue.

I'm not sure I know exactly what is meant by VESA support, but if it's resolutions of like 640x480 and above, then the system does support this and runs with this in several games I have installed. It doesn't run well, mind you, but it does run. 😀

I tried a few now again just to confirm:
Blood
Descent
SimCity 2000
Transport Tycoon Deluxe

... but I have more installed I can try, if you think there's some particular game that would be good to check with.

Anyway, no issues like that in general. It's just this game that is acting up unfortunately.

I think all of these games by default either use the standard 320x200 VGA mode or the 320x240 Mode-X neither of them are VESA, ideally you would check with a game using the same VESA resolution, I think HoMM2 uses 640x480 with 256 colours, so a game configured to run with that resolution would be the ideal test.

EDIT:

InterClaw wrote on 2026-05-12, 12:07:

Blood

Actually that game supports the exact resolution we are trying, unfortunately I think some of the online retail releases are missing the configuration utility, so you might have to edit the config file manually.

MagefromAntares wrote on 2026-05-12, 17:41:

640x480 with 256 colours

Right, this is what I at least thought I was testing. Not quite sure what SC2000 and TTDLX runs at, but Descent definitely has a VGA mode. Anyway, retested with Blood. I'm able to set the resolution from SETUP.EXE or in-game and it works like it should. It's a slideshow, but works. 😀

SC2000 and TTDeluxe are definitely both 640x480 games that require VESA. Warcraft 2 is another one. However they are all bundled with UNIVBE (either internally or externally) to support cards without a VESA BIOS. Descent only uses 640x480 if you pass the -640x480 command line switch, and relies on the card's native BIOS supporting VESA.

jmarsh wrote on 2026-05-13, 00:48:

SC2000 and TTDeluxe are definitely both 640x480 games that require VESA. Warcraft 2 is another one. However they are all bundled with UNIVBE (either internally or externally) to support cards without a VESA BIOS. Descent only uses 640x480 if you pass the -640x480 command line switch, and relies on the card's native BIOS supporting VESA.

You are definitely right, thanks for correcting my information, TTDeluxe uses VESA and in the right mode, I don't know how I forgot that, sorry. SC2000 is a mixed bag, I don't have it currently installed but if I remember correctly it either uses VESA or if it detects certain cards it uses those cards Super VGA functionality to handle the card directly bypassing the BIOS to get faster speed.

Anyway with having both Blood and Transport Tycoon Deluxe runs correctly with that it basically proves that the 640x480 256 colour VESA mode works correctly, and the issue might be somewhere else, it might be LFB(Linear Frame Buffer) support issue, however there is a program, having a topic right on this forum that might be able to check that: [Release] X-VESA 2.0 Public Beta – Deep VESA diagnostics for real DOS hardware It is currently in beta by the developer but it seems to be a very powerful program for debugging already.

EDIT: Possible helpful information, one of my friends who is a fan of Heroes 2 was online recently and I asked him about this issue, and he said that HoMM2 has a hidden CLI parameter

1/i0

that skips the intro, and that might help if intro playback is the problem.

MagefromAntares wrote on 2026-05-13, 01:58:

it might be LFB(Linear Frame Buffer) support issue, however there is a program, having a topic right on this forum that might be able to check that: [Release] X-VESA 2.0 Public Beta – Deep VESA diagnostics for real DOS hardware It is currently in beta by the developer but it seems to be a very powerful program for debugging already.

I tried out X-VESA, taking a look at the 640x480x8 mode and it does say that Linear frame buffer is not supported.

So do you think that the lack of that support makes this game break more often than not?

MagefromAntares wrote on 2026-05-13, 01:58:

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1/i0

Nice tip and while the parameter does work, it doesn't reliably help with my problem unfortunately. Still usually goes to a black screen with audio. I can hear it go directly to the main menu though, instead of playing the videos, so that's nice.

I noticed that I'm reliably able to get to the "no CD" notification if I start without the CD-ROM insterted. I notifies me that I can only play multiplayer and as a guest. When confirming that it either goes to black, or (more rarely) keeps that screen showing for a bit longer and then you know it will actually work that time.

On the main menu, I've learned how to navigate out of the game blindly by moving the mouse to the Quit button, but back in DOS I'm still at a black screen though. So rather than there being something wrong with the mode itself, it seems the GPU/video output has just crashed and requires a hard reset to start working again. As I mentioned, not even the soft power button works and I have to kill the power.

I'm starting to think that there's some weird bug with the game itself that's affecting me on this hardware for some reason and that there's not a lot I can do about it. Play HoMM1 only instead.

Hmm, it is a bit weird for such an issue to not get fixed by going back to DOS text mode, but not unheard of, I will think about the issue and try to contact my HoMM2 fan friend again if I see him online again (He is such a fan of this game that he still plays it almost every day since release), we might be able to figure something out.

I'm making a new post because an edit would be larger than the original post and already 3 days passed.

My HoMM2 fan friend redirected me to this page, as I only saw it recently I don't know how accurate this page is, but seems to be very useful:
https://tcrf.net/Heroes_of_Might_and_Magic_II … Commands.5B2.5D

There is 2 command line parameters that might worth a try:

1/v 

The site description seem to imply that it only changes the video playback mode, but as the switch is simply "v" it might change other video parameters, worth a try.

Also:

1/p9

This should enable the debug mode, but as the program runs, just doesn't have a video output, it is possible that it simply doesn't detect that there is any problem and might not log the relevant information even on maximum log level, still might produce a log file with usable information.

There are also quite a lot of BIOS settings that could be tried with a Cirrus Logic chip, but I cannot find either the manual or screenshots of that specific machine's BIOS (According to the web pages I have consulted it has a proprietary IBM BIOS), can you provide some screenshots of the BIOS screens, so I know what settings are available?

MagefromAntares wrote on 2026-05-16, 15:50:

https://tcrf.net/Heroes_of_Might_and_Magic_II … Commands.5B2.5D

Interesting find!

I tried /v, but it had no effect on the behavior. More likely to fail than not.

With the logging turned on, it produces a KB.LOG file in the game folder, but its contents are identical regardless of whether it worked or crashed the video output. It looks like this:

1===========New Log==========
2ES1
3ES2
4OM1
5OM2
6Vesa video driver installed.
7
8640 bytes per row.
9
10Alloc Low Success
11OM3
12OM4
13OM5
14MS1
15MS2
16HMDI :  4356204
17MS3
18MS4
19MS6
20OM6
21MP1a
22DWM 1
23Shutdown
24RC1
25MS1
26MS2
27MS3
28MS4
29Total Memory Leaks :        0

There aren't that many options in the BIOS and the manual doesn't really advise on this type of error. More like if there's no image displayed, make sure the cable is connected... Yeah, thanks.

I took some pictures of the BIOS screens. The "Monitor Frequency" is at its maximum setting of 62 kHz. There's also an "Undefined" option available there.

It is unfortunate that the command line options didn't work and didn't provide information that seems to be useful in debugging this problem.

The BIOS also seems to lack the configuration settings that might help resolving this issue.

There is one possible solution I can think of, but that is a long shot, and as I have to work with incomplete information try this only at your own risk!:

This webpage has a jumper description PDF document about one of the motherboards used by IBM in their Aptiva line:
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/ibm-ap … -type-f-1,h-1,i

First after opening the case check if the motherboard looks the same, if it is then you can try the JP11 settings according to the jumper description on that webpage, maybe altering that jumper setting help get that game running.