This is most often caused by your Graphic Drivers/DirectX being out of date or due to incompatible screen resolutions. Petz appear to be made of squares or triangles instead of balls, like the tabby pictured below. This may cause the rest of your screen to appear oddly colored, but your petz program should run fine and the rest of your computer will be restored after you close Petz.

Check the box that says “Error message saying the program needs to run in 256 colors” then click Next.

Select “The program opens but doesn’t display correctly”.This will affect your entire computer, so you can either leave it set and accept the changes in your other programs, or you can switch it any time you want to run Petz. Select the ‘Resolution’ drop-down menu and choose 1024 x 768, then select Apply or OK.You can experiement with different screen sizes, but 1024 x 768 is the one I found works the best for me. If the game appears squished or distorted, you may need to adjust your computer’s resolution. Click Start the program (allow any permissions it requires).Select Windows XP (Service Pack 3), then next.Select “The program worked in earlier versions of Windows but won’t install or run now “.exe file, click “Compatibility Problems” or “Troubleshoot Compatability” The directions are the same for the installation or for the program.

You may need to use the compatability options to install or to run the program after it is installed. If you’ve already installed and run the program and need to rescue your files, see the instructions on the File Rescue page. When you run the initial installation, select C:/Games/Petz 5 or C:/Petz 5/ as the destination (you will have to enter this, if it doesn’t exist the installation will create it for you). If you want to be able to access the game files, you will need to install into C:/, not the default Program Files. When Petz is installed into Program Files Windows Vista, 7, and 8 makes the Adopted Petz and PetzPix folders invisible. Unless you particularly don’t want PetzA, I strongly recommend installing it. While not required, installing Sherlock Software‘s program PetzA may solve issues by auto-updating for you. Petz 5 runs on all versions of Windows newer than 3.1, though some minor modifications may need to be made during or after installation for compatability.

Best display size for petz 5