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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.
the same is happening to me. the issue is NOT driver related, as I've tried 50 differrent drivers and none did help at all. also if I boot xp/vista I don't have a freeze ever. the issue is as squall_leonhart discribed. the ddraw buffer is locking up, some sounds are still playing and only the screen is freezing. a fix would be greatly appreciated.
Your Not the only ones having this problem, its all game that do it on my PC. Call of Duty 4 will play I get tears in the screen and it will play for a while but when I quit the game, eather the monoitor will go black and turn off, the desktop will be an assortment of collors (like if I was over heating the Vid Card) or the PC will just restart. This also happens in Aion, Wolfenstine, Crysis well any game I've tride playing. Now here is the funny thing, I'm also running XP on here and everything runs just fine and also ran Windows 7 Beta and ran fine. Now I don't know if it's cause I went to 64 bit or not but man this is starting to anger me. Don't get me wrong I like W7 alot, I get more FPS than XP (well when its running) but the lock ups are just annoying. Can we please get a fix for this in an update or sevice pack soon cause there are alot of people having issues and nothng I do or anyone else are really having no luck triyng to fix it. (the internets run fine along with music)
P.S. I did notice right after I reformat (3 times now) games will fun flawless for 3 hours or so, but once I turn it off and reboot all the fun begins. :(
Your issue is entirely unrelated to this one. There is no screen corruption or blackscreen (except in the case of age of empires when it freezes between the main menu and the intro videos)
very nice deductions, so if this is the real reason for this happenning, is there a way to patch them or to resolve the issue now?
wrapping to D3D, if microsoft cannot fix the problem themselves.
