Is After Dark compatible for Windows 10?

I have been looking all over to figure out whether or not After Dark is compatible for Windows 10, but I can't find any information. If possible, I would like it to have all the modules like they were in the original or similar to them.

UPDATE: I got a some info here and mounted the iso, but the installer in the ADE folder has this error: "Couldn't read information about setup file number: 7 in setup package overall from setup the file data." How can I fix this?

Apparently here according to this person on Reddit who seems to believe it's working on their Windows 10 environment. According to this post a lot of old screensavers do still work in Windows 8.1/10, so I guess it's worth a shot.

I downloaded it, extracted it with 7-zip, mounted the ISO within, ran the setup file in ADE with Windows 95 Compatability (Threw one error message but skipped it without a problem), it seems to work fine (the dropdown box shows the wrong name, but otherwise it runs). See screenshots below.

Settings page doesn’t seem to work, so I'm not sure if there’s any way to modify whatever settings it has.

Past that, you can change what screensaver it uses by going into C:\After Dark\After Dark 4.0. By default it’s using Flying Toasters!.ad. Rename that to file to something else (Flying Toasters!.ad.old perhaps) and rename any other file in here to Flying Toasters!.ad.

It’s a hack, but it’s also just a screensaver. I don’t really want it anymore so I’ll leave it to you to tinker with that if you so wish.

I was able to make sense of the preferences by installing AD on Windows XP and looking in REGEDIT.

• Mute All Sounds: Under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Berkley Systems\After Dark add a REG_DWORD MuteSound with data 1

• Change Module: Under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Berkley Systems\After Dark\Folders change the data of After Dark 4.0 to the name of the module you want, no .ad extension.

• If you're just into Flying Toasters: Under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Berkley Systems\After Dark\Module Setings\After Dark 4.0\Flying Toasters! add four REG_DWORD entries:

  • Control0 for Objects on Screen, data 0 (little), 1, 2 or 3 (lots).
  • Control1 for Types of Toastes, data 0 (Adutls), 1 (Babies) or 2 (Random).
  • Control2 for Music, data 0 (never), 1(1 min), 2 (2 min), 3 (5 min), 4 (30 min) or 5(always).
  • Control3 for Display Karaoke, 0 (no) or 1 (yes).

I was able to install After Dark in Windows 10 as shown in the other answers, running /ADE/Setup.exe using Windows 95 compatibility.

The problem I am having is that the default screen saver seems to be Starry Night or some other star field screen saver. Starry Night.ad is found in the C:/After Dark/After Dark folder. I tried copying Flying Toasters!.ad to this location and renaming it Starry Night.ad however this didn't work. I also placed the renamed file in C:/After Dark/After Dark 4.0 folder.

Running the Screen saver still shows Starry Night, and a message along the top of screen that says:

“Unable to load selected module:C:/After Dark/After Dark 4.0/Flying Toasters!.ad”

I'll keep tinkering with it when I have time and a few min later - I fixed it!

There is a needed file that fails to install. Locate adxpl510.dll in the installation folder /ADE/FILES/AD40. copy this file to she same folder as After Dark.scr (Mine was in c:/Windows/SysWOW64).

Now the screensaver can locate the module: C:/After Dark/After Dark 4.0/Flying Toasters!.ad

After Dark 4.0 Screensavers work just fine on Windows 10 (Windows 11 too actually). However, the older screensavers "After Dark Classic" or "3.0" do not.

The reason for the difference is that After Dark 4.0 screensavers are 32 bit and the earlier ones are 16 bit. Microsoft has disabled 16 bit support by default pretty much since Windows 7.

Running After Dark 4.0 on Windows 10 (or 11) Without Installing

1. Copy the "Engine" folder from the installer to your computer

2. Place the "AD40" (aka After Dark 4.0) folder inside the "Engine" folder on your computer

3. Add the path to the "Engine" folder to the registry

   [HKLM\MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Berkeley Systems\After Dark\4.00]
   "Path"="C:\\Users\\[your username]\\[engine folder]"
   

4. Add the path to the After Dark 4.0 Screensavers to the registry. (Note: This path is assumed to have the path from Step 3 above added to the front of it.)

   [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Berkeley Systems\After Dark]
   "SelectedFolder"="AD40"
   

5. Tell After Dark which screensaver to use. This can be any ".ad" file in the After Dark 4.0 folder

   [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Berkeley Systems\After Dark\Folders]
   "After Dark 4.0"="Bad Dog!"
   

6. Run the screensaver by double clicking the AFTERDAR.SCR file. (Or install the screensaver by Right clicking on it and selecting install.)

(Related Note: .scr files are actually .exe files. So, if for some odd reason you need an .exe to run After Dark just rename afterdar.scr to afterdar.exe and run it with the option /s. That will behave exactly the same as double clicking the .scr file.)

As @roger-c-rocha's excellent answer points out there are also additional control options for each screensaver.

Running all of After Dark on a VM

While Windows 10 (or 11) cannot natively run older After Dark screensavers (without basically unsupported hacks), they can run them just fine in a VM. After Dark 4.0 came out in 1996. So, Windows 95 is able to run all of After Dark including the classic ones, and it turns out that these days Windows 95 will even run in your browser. (That's right After Dark on your Cell Phone Web Browser is completely possible.)

Until someone gets around to putting the Windows 95 VM with After Dark online (Hopefully somewhere like archive.org) My recommendation is to use this cross platform Windows 95 VM, and follow their instructions to install additional software (aka your copy of After Dark). Or if you need better speed this less user friendly Windows 95 install on DosBox works great.

Lunatic Fringe

At least for me Lunatic Fringe was the only screensaver I could not get to properly function even in the Windows 95 VM. However, it turns out that there is a project to turn Lunatic Fringe into a browser game. Enjoy playing it.