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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
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.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Ok, let me spell it out for you in simple english
DirectDraw = / = Direct3D.
The topic is about DirectDraw, YOUR ISSUE IS UNRELATED AND OFF TOPIC.
Start one for D3D if you like.... however such issues are more to do with bad drivers, since i've not had any problems in any D3D games i play so far
Look Squall leonheart,
it does have to do with this. Alot of people are having issues with W7, this isn't only the game YOU play, it's all games and there isn't realy any forums to post on. Not only is it DirectDraw but everything we install to play crashes or freezes. We need a fix, and not just a fix for Starcraft, we need it for every PC game out there, this needs to be resolved. Please stop telling people that it has nothing to do with your issue, it has to do with most peoples issues on why does W7 keep crashing all games. If you want me to name all 18 games that don't work with W7 I will sit here and waste my time doing so. work with us and not aginst us.
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Your problem is entirely different.
The games you listed are Direct3D, not DirectDraw, and have been having freeze issues since the Win7 beta's.
I am having the same problem and thought I'd input some extra little tidbits.
I have attempted with Team Fortress 2, Shattered Horizons, Aion and World of Warcraft to see if the problem would continue - the answer is yes.
My Asus ATI EAH4550 graphic card has recently had its drivers updated for this problem
My Motherboard - P5B has been upgraded to the latest bios, chipset and audio driver available on the asus website.
The game does not necessarily 'freeze' The video problem begins with the mouse ceasing to function, allowing video and keyboard inputs for a short period of time. Within a few seconds (Generally 5, tops 30) the keyboard controls become inoperative, at which point the video becomes static and frozen where it is. All throughout this problem, the ambient music plays, but no environmental sounds come through. All commands placed into the mouse/keyboard come through, but are not shown on the screen. I can type to guildies/players, what have you with no tearing or freezing in the text, but only a minute or so later will the entire game unfreeze, playing all environmental sounds at once and all mouse keyboard commands are spat out at the same time in sequence.
I have attempted the games through Steam, which causes the crash, wihout steam, which causes the crash (Aion/WoW) and tried while running Skype (Which crashes it as well). I had noticed this problem had happened once before when I was beta-testing windows 7 - where if the computer would enter suspend mode and you attempted to play an intensive game such as this, the mouse and keyboard would freeze, followed by the screen eventually.
Hopefully this can be fixed as I am an avid gamer and the whole reason for purchasing Windows 7 was to play Shattered Horizons with my friends. As I cannot even play a game over 5 years old (WoW) with equipment that is still considered powerful enough to run the Crysis 2 engine, I'm surprised this is a problem.
On that note however, the problem only started on the 9th of December, 2009. The night prior, I had allowed Windows 7 to download and install updated KB976325. The next day, all of my games were freezing. Perhaps it is a coincidence, I do not know, but I have uninstalled the update and the same problem is still happening. From my research however, update KB976325 does not uninstall properly.
If someone could re-install their Windows 7 and see if preventing the installation of Patch KB976325 would prevent this from happening, maybe we'd have a good starting point for troubleshooting for Microsoft.
Thank you for your time,
~Kiljax.
