BW crashes in Windows 7 - Page 10

On July 01 2010 05:47 ss6290 wrote:
I have the same problem and I am already running SC:BW on compatability mode for XP. After I get maybe twenty minutes into a game it freezes and I have to manually shut down to fix it. Any help would be appreciated.

On July 01 2010 06:02 Baksteen wrote:


Set it to compatability mode for windows 95, that worked for me. Also did while i used Vista.

Edit:


These are the settings i use.

Edit2: i should maybe check run as administrator because now it asks me everytime it starts up :p

On July 01 2010 06:39 ss6290 wrote:

Unfortunately, that did not solve the freezing issue. Any more suggestions?

On July 01 2010 02:12 Bibdy wrote:


Yeah, that worked fine for me. Can't remember if I needed to set the affinity to 1 CPU (after its loaded, alt-tab out, go to Task Manager -> Right Click the exe in Processes -> Set affinity) like I've had to do for several other old games lately like Thief 1 and TA: Kingdoms.

On July 01 2010 06:44 Baksteen wrote:


Did you try this already?

On December 15 2009 01:51 inReacH wrote:
I think I found a fix, I played all of yesterday with no problems... these are all the things I did, I'm not sure if one or a combination of them was what helped but here goes:

1.Close winamp.
2.Go into NVIDIA control panel and set Starcraft to use only one GPU(I'm using a gtx 295 so if you have a single GPU gfxcard this one won't be necessary)
3.Turn vertical sync off for starcraft in NVIDIA control panel.(doubt this one matters)
4.Go to your Starcraft directory, right click on starcraft.exe, properties, compatibility, check mark all boxes except disable desktop comp and disable display scaling.

5.Open notepad.

copy/paste:

cmd.exe /C start /affinity 1 D:\"SC"\"Launcher"\"Launcher.exe"
ping 127.0.0.1 -n 2
taskkill /f /IM explorer.exe
ping 127.0.0.1 -n 2
cd C:\SC\StarCraft\
rem cmd.exe /C start /affinity 1 D:\"SC"\"StarCraft.exe"
rem Wait for the game to quit, press Enter to continue
pause
start explorer.exe
exit



Replace those paths with what you have for said files, save as .bat file.
Now when you wish to play start SC by clicking the file you created, it kills explorer until you stop playing. You can also create a shortcut of the file and make it look like SC so it looks prettier.
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I'm about to go play SC all day so if I crash I'll edit this post with a something like 'fuck my life', if this is still here then it's working.

If you need help with any of the steps please post the question here and you might want to pm me.

Scouring the web, I have come to the conclusion that this is a Windows 7 issue, and there is no link between hardware, or drivers as it occurs on ATI, Intel and Nvidia chips.

Games such as Starcraft may freeze as soon as you hit the first menu screen, or as late as half way through a mission.

...

So far i've verified that
Affinity does not fix it.
Process Priority does not fix it.
End tasking or pausing Explorer does not fix it.
Selective startup does not fix it.

Running without drivers will not fix it (don't even bother suggesting it).

This is an issue that doesn't have any correlation to system configuration, The game that gets the most coverage with this issue is Starcraft and though that might get a Patch, its no doubt that the Age of empires games won't.

The freeze is not a hardlock, rather its a freeze of the display and input controls. Processes in the background continue running and if you are in a chat on skype or xfire these continue as well according to some users.

Someone mentioned a Race issue between Ddraw and WDDM, but i've no idea how to verify that.

Specific Starcraft issue is here http://www.sevenforums.com/gaming/11659-starcraft-freezes-after-1-5-minutes-playing.html
http://www.sevenforums.com/gaming/10190-starcraft-system-crash.html

but Issues for Age of empires and worms can be found across the internet.
theres even on here
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itproappcompat/thread/bde26b63-e8fc-46ac-8541-7f8154c8328d

Note: All the fixes known to work on Vista, do not work on Windows 7.

i have done further looking into this with multiple applications which make use of double buffering or triplebuffering (and vsync). The results are that these applications when run in DDraw fail to lock the primary buffer and result in Screen tearing and also the drawing of the windows startmenu orb and flashing taskbar buttons to display on top of the application in fullscreen. Had the primary framebuffer locked, this would NOT occur. That said. This is a windows 7 bug spanning both X32 and x64, and video drivers have no bearing what so ever. The same applications work fine on Vista. The only thing i can think of is these applications are displaying the behavior of an application manifested for Windows 7, rather then older versions and so are unable to lock the primary buffer. more info here http://www.codenamewindows.com/?p=58

As I understand it, DirectDraw assumes it can lock the primary draw buffer, and Windows 7 itself draws to the buffer, since so much of the GUI is now done in 3D e.g. Aero. At some point they both try and draw to the buffer at the same time, resulting in a freeze of the display (both programs are waiting for the buffer to be released, neither lets go, and thus you get a classic deadlock due to the inter-process race condition).

XP Compatibility mode achieves nothing sadly - neither does XP Mode, as Squall mentions, the game can't switch display modes under XP Mode.

I've resorted to Windows XP in VirtualBox.

Anyhow, search for a program called ChaosLauncher. I initially used CL to launch StarCraft in windowed mode because my LCD would auto-stretch to widescreen, but it can also be used to play SC in fullscreen. It appears to take control of DirectDraw or something, I don't know the details, I've only ever dabbled in programming. The important thing is it prevents StarCraft from freezing on me.

here is another way however, it would require keeping starcraft in a window (which does work) and then scaling that window to desktop size.

coupled with warlord_7's colour compatibility reg patch it should work.