This browser is no longer supported.
Upgrade to Microsoft Edge to take advantage of the latest features, security updates, and technical support.
![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(128, 8%, 22%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3EA%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
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.
I've had freezes with SC:BW in Win 7 64bit. The kind that lock up the whole machine.
I have never had one though when setting starcraft.exe's affinity to one single core. Can be done either with a batch file, or alt tabbing out after starting the game and doing it in task manager.
Which is not to say there aren't directdraw problems (like color, I assume) but setting affinity has fixed the crashing for me
You can add for certain the first two Heroes of Might and Magic games at the very least. I haven't tried any of the later ones for myself, so I can't vouch for their stability under x64 Windows 7.
I'd assumed it was an issue with those games alone, until I recently attempted to take Starcraft for a spin again and encountered the very same issue, which lead me to this thread.
Here's hoping that something comes of all this and that the wrap fix will eventually be slapped together somehow.
Thanks for your thorough exploration of the problem, Squall.
unfortunately he took a hammer to his gcomputer and no longer has windows 7 capable hardware :|.
there 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.
I just wanted to report that this has been happening to me since about 2 weeks ago with Starcraft: Broodwar. I have the 32 bit version of Windows 7 and i had never had this freeze up until now. It's giving a lot of losses since i have to keep rebooting my computer. I was actually thinking of a possible workaround so at least you don't have to restart your computer.
According to this thread, DirectDraw locks up input and drawing, but background processes will still run. Would it be possible to make an application that will forcibly focus when i connect a usb device? I was trying to do this by disconnecting/reconnecting my usb mouse and keyboard but Windows does not take control again (then again, if this is a graphic deadlock, this wont work either). Is there a way to forcibly destroy the deadlock (like closing an application, or a ddraw call that will reset current status)?
Squall, you mentioned in a previous post you were working on a fix with a friend, wrapping around ddraw.dll. How successful was this? Can I help in any way?
I'm not great with all the technicalities and programming stuff, but i'd like to put my two cents in.
I've had the same issues with pharaoh, but as long as i don't run it in compatibility mode, without the cleopatra expansion, it runs perfectly fine.
But when i add the expansion, which makes the kernal_FTthunk issue if i don't run it in compatibility mode with Xp, will freeze. And it still does even though you said the this manifest patch had fixed it. So, It least in my experiences, with the Cleopatra expansion the patch hasn't fixed the issue.
