Gabriel Knight is a serie of graphic adventure games divided into three episodes. In case you don't know, a graphic adventure (also known as adventure game) is a genre of game where storytelling, inventory, puzzles and wits in general pay a major role into the gameplay. It is probably the most famous adventure game serie ever, after Monkey Island. Luckily enough, you don't have to compare them as they cover two completely different audition, with MI tending more to humor and fantasy.

Gabriel is a novel writer, a rather common man which is involved into a serie of investigation upon his curiosity as a storywriter. The games of the serie may be classified as Thriller with Cultural and Historical background.

The serie has been brought to you thanks to the incredible skill of the game's author, Jane Jensen, who is also a book writer (and that surely explains a lot).

This is an amatorial site, and most of its content is made out of my own knowledge. Please take it into account in case of problems.

The brief explaination is usually integrated with an exaustive documentation in each program.

Read the end of this page for guidelines on problem solving.

Even if there's that "XP" in the title, the program is recommended to be used with every Windows version (including 98, ME, 2000) as the original game is no longer fail-safe on modern systems (it was programmed way back in 1993).

Please notice that this installer is ONLY intended to be used with the English CDROM version of the game!

It is also meant to be used as a replacement for the original installer who often crashed on modern systems. Therefore it provides an option to make a "standard installation" which is exactly the same as the original was.

Please notice that this installer is ONLY intended to be used with the English version of the game! But an Italian installer is on the way and, if you're interested, please contact me for supporting other game languages.

IMPORTANT: if you're using the GK2 HD/DVD installer of the previous paragraph, you must NOT install this as it is already present in the installer!

It includes Texts and Graphics Editors, plus a lot of other interesting and useful tools.

Of course, these tools may be used also to surf through the game data and discover nice easter eggs or to extract images and scripts, so even if you're not interested in amatorial translations, you may want to take a peek at them.

This tool must be used in conjunction with TraduSCI.

These patches have been successfully used by thousands of peoples running different Windows versions. If you experienced any problem running them, then it's probably an issue on your side.

As a premise, you need to use the exact version that matches your game language of each patch available.

The most common problems reported are:

1) The game won't install, some files are skipped during installation with an error message.

- Make sure that your Gabriel Knight CD is not scratched or dirty. You can clean it with breath and a soft cotton cloth, or the eyeglasses cloth.

- You can also try to check your CD using some third party tool to scan the disc for errors, such as CDCheck.

- If you have more than one CD drive, or a CD burner, try installing and running the game from there. Sometimes, even a 6 months old CD drive gets unable to read certain CDs.

- Check your Hard Disk drive for Bad Blocks and errors using ScanDisk.

- Try the game on a friend's computer. If the game doesn't works, then the CD is probably damaged.

- If you find out that the CD is in good conditions, check your system using a diagnosis tool like Sandra, and make sure your RAM memory is not damaged/malfunctioning.

- If none of the above worked, go to point Nr. 2

2) The game won't run or crashes in a certain place during the very first sequences, or refuses to load at all.

- Download the patch again, uninstall and then reinstall it.

- Run Windows in Temporary Mode. If the game works that way, there's probably some conflict with antiviruses or other background programs that you have installed.

- If you have more than one CD drive, or a CD burner, try installing and running the game from there. Sometimes, even a 6 months old CD drive gets unable to read certain CDs.

- Check your Hard Disk drive for Bad Blocks and errors using ScanDisk.

- Try the game on a friend's computer. If the game doesn't works, then the CD is probably damaged (then go back to point 1).

- If you're using Windows NT/2000/XP make sure your NTVDM (NT Virtual DOS Machine) is working correctly, by trying to run other old programs.

- If you're using Windows 95/98/ME, try to reinstall/update your audio and video drivers and whatever other driver is needed on your machine to run.

- Reinstall/restore/upgrade your Windows

- As a last option, you may want to run the DOS version of the game in DOSBox.

Most of the peoples who contacted me have solved their problems with the game using one of the above procedures.

If you still are not able to properly run the game, or for any other problem occuring later while playing, you can post a message on the VOGONS forums, or contact me. But please keep in mind that I can't help much on solving operating system-related problems.