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
    2009-12-14T13:12:13+00:00

    this is a one problem only thread, and it its about games that freeze because of DIRECTDRAW!, if you have problem understandig what that means, don't try to talk about something you know nothing about, if you need help with your problem, I am very sure there are threads for your specific problem. Even if not, make one your self. There are only 18 games listed because these are the games having problem caused by DirectDraw (again, you understand?, not D3D games) like the title of the thread says. Only by making a thread like this, containing one problem, we could be able to solve it, not by making a general "I have a problem with a game in W7" thread. Hope this clears thing out for you...

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  2. Anonymous
    2009-12-21T16:10:09+00:00

    All,

       As with any forum, when in doubt, create your own thread.  It is the best thing to do to get assistance with your specific issue.  This thread was started to discuss DirectDraw issues specifically.  If you have a problem with a game and you are unaware if it uses DirectDraw or not then it is probably safer to start a new thread.

    Squall,

        Most of the games you have listed are either not Windows 7 compatible or are currently unknown in their compatibility.  Make sure to check the Windows 7 compatibility center for any software before trying to install\run it on a Windows 7 machine.  

    Starcraft (information pending)

    Worms (not listed for Windows 7, listed not compatible with Vista)

    Sierra's Pharaoh/Cleopatra (not listed for Vista or Windows 7) 

    So with that in mind the only thing I could suggest would be to right click the game .exe file and change the compatibility mode to XP.  Also depending on what version of Windows 7 you have, you may able to install XP Mode and run it with that.

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  3. Anonymous
    2009-12-22T15:41:20+00:00

    Squall,

      I have a friend that is a Starcraft player.  He has installed and is running Starcraft on Windows 7.  According to him what you need to do is log into Battle.net and download the latest version from there.  It has some updated components that should get it it to run on Windows 7.  That being said I could not find any information that they plan on making any updates for Starcraft.  I believe they are focusing on Starcraft 2.

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  4. Anonymous
    2009-12-22T19:27:28+00:00

    the latest patch does indeed add the cpu throttling, however it doesn't fix the Win7 freeze.  I've already checked around and it seems it effects all DirectDraw applications and games in some form or another, some worse then others (worst being freeze).

    the x32 version of 7 seems to be ok, and Ddraw apps seem to lock the buffer properly, but in Win 7 x64, i verified in the emulator FCEUX that Vsynching with VBlank, and double buffering are not working at all.

    the XPM suggestion unfortunately is not viable, as it doesn't support display mode switching which some of these apps require.

    Changing the compatibility doesn't help either.

    Ah well, thanks for the help anyway, I'm working with a friend now to fix this and the ddraw colour issue  by wrapping DDraw to Direct3D via a drop in ddraw.dll.

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  5. Anonymous
    2009-12-26T11:04:28+00:00

    Just to chime in, I'm having the same trouble, Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit - Starcraft freezes within about 5-10 minutes of playing. I've tried the latest patches, latest drivers, processor affinity, in fact pretty much all the things Squall has listed, and I have the exact same trouble.

    As I understand it, DirectDraw assumes it can lock the primary draw buffer, and Windows 7 itself draws to the buffer, since so much of the GUI is now done in 3D e.g. Aero. At some point they both try and draw to the buffer at the same time, resulting in a freeze of the display (both programs are waiting for the buffer to be released, neither lets go, and thus you get a classic deadlock due to the inter-process race condition).

    XP Compatibility mode achieves nothing sadly - neither does XP Mode, as Squall mentions, the game can't switch display modes under XP Mode.

    Having re-read the Windows 7 Compatibility guide that Squall mentions (which I'd read for work but had completely forgotten about), it strikes me that this freezing sounds more and more like a Windows 7 64-bit bug. The default behaviour for Windows 7 is supposed to be, and I quote 'Windows Vista (default): Applications will be able to acquire a lock on the primary video buffer as legacy applications depend on this behavior. Running the application turns off Desktop Window Manager.'

    Going by Microsoft's own docs, older applications that lack the Windows 7 Compatibility manifest should be working in this manner, and yet clearly they are not in all cases.

    I'll be fascinated to hear if a wrapper DLL can work around the issue.

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