DirectDraw applications Freeze on Windows 7 anywhere between 1 minute and 3 hours into running them.

Anonymous
2009-11-20T04:44:45+00:00

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.

Age of Empires * games freeze on a black screen between the last intro video and the main menu (but as tested so far once in a mission will not freeze)

Warcraft 2 BNE is the same as Starcraft.

Worms Armageddon is effected randomly as well.

Heroes of might and magic 1 and 2

Starlancer (between missions or on he main menu)

Blood Omen during during movie sequences

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.

This issue only occurs in games that also have the bad colours issue, so basically any 8bit/256 colour titles. 16bpp appear to be fine.

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Gaming

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  1. Anonymous
    2010-10-31T14:23:27+00:00

    halfnhalf altwinpos

    not

    halfnhalf

    altwinpos

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  2. Anonymous
    2010-10-31T14:17:20+00:00

    Wow, if this works  - awesome. But does anybody else have mouse problems - the mouse "locks" itself right on the top of the screen and the only way to get it down is by alt-tabbing but on the next click, the mouse locks again... altwinpos doesnt do a thing (I assume that the correct way to fill it in the cfg is just by having only "altwinpos" there)

    edit:hmm tried adding showlogo to the cfg and it did not work either, so what the catch? I got no new lines, no other characters, nothing there besides altwinpos

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  3. Anonymous
    2010-10-12T18:44:51+00:00

    Inform the guys on any sites you play starcraft at.

     

    DDhack works fine with starcraft, as long as you set Vsync to Force Off in your video card config.

     

    if requires altwinpos in the ddhack.cfg though.

    Hi, I hope this is not a stupid question but how do I set vsync off in a Radeon 4600?

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  4. Anonymous
    2010-10-12T17:38:23+00:00

    Inform the guys on any sites you play starcraft at.

     

    DDhack works fine with starcraft, as long as you set Vsync to Force Off in your video card config.

     

    if requires altwinpos in the ddhack.cfg though.

    thx!  SC finally works.  no crashes ever since applying the above.

    a very minor problem though: SC freezes when it loses focus (to what i don't even know coz i can't switch to the desktop to find out).  a couple of Alt-Tabs get the focus back and SC runs normally again.

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  5. Anonymous
    2010-10-12T15:04:11+00:00

    sorry for my english.

    after install starcraft on seven i got same crashs when background processus still runs.

    it's appear that vista's users don't have the issue so i try to download vista's ddraw.dll (found it here http://www.dll-vista.com/?lang=en) and put it in sc folder.

    1st i need to kill explorer.exe because taskbar can be view in game but:

    maybe it's just luck but never crash again so if somebody else could try it

     

    killing explorer is unnecessary, there is a registry patch available to fix the taskbar and colour glitches now. Also, the Vista Ddraw.dll doesn't fix it at all unfortunately.

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