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
    2010-10-12T12:55:16+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

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  2. Anonymous
    2010-10-06T10:39:58+00:00

    altwinpos has nothing to do with vsync.

    altwinpos fixes the mouse stuck issue when in a game (otherwise alttabbing fixes it)

    while vsync fixes the stuttery performance.

    it seems though that the wrapper does not emulate ddraw enough to get it past the bnet checks..... works fine on pvpgn though.

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  3. Anonymous
    2010-10-06T10:12:59+00:00

    Update:

    "altwinpos" switch is not needed when using display driver's Vsync=off.

    But as before Bnet does not let me in, I assume that Starcraft does an integrity check, and fails because of the DDHack dll unknown to it.

    Any chance Microsoft will fix the broken DirectDraw.dll?

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  4. Anonymous
    2010-10-02T16:44:53+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.

    Starcraft works this way, thank you. But I cannot play online games with it - the moment I click on "Connect" (for battle.net) I get back to the desktop (in low res, assuming 640x480), and nothing more happens. I have to kill starcraft using the task manager.

    Any ideas?

    EDIT: I did not use VSync off before. Now this issue is gone, but battle.net complains, "..was unable to properly identify your application version [...] you may have a computer virus [...]" Seems like the DDHack dll's presence causes this...any workaround?

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  5. Anonymous
    2010-09-29T21:12:23+00:00

    Oh duh...

    They should've called those "readme" files "DON'T readme". Everyone would read them then! -.-

    Thanks once again for all your help. I'll post results here when some people test it.

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