Starcraft System Crash

Squall, I'll admit that your friends sound much more computer-intensive than I am, but I still find it hard to believe that I can go from a 32 bit, 7 year old OS, switch to a 64 bit OS, and still have the exact same kinds of problems.

The point is, i've thrown Starcraft at multiple XP based systems and not had an issue, and now having upgraded those to Windows 7 i do. One of those systems even had a Vista upgrade along the way prior to 7 and it worked fine on there too.

I notice in your fix you mention something about your friends figuring out how to make it work by running it on a virtual XP machine. I think this works because it forces the game to run in a sort of window mode.

I never mentioned Virtual machines, rather I will be beta testing an application which makes DirectDraw games appear as native D3D apps, rather then have them be wrapped to D3D by DirectX itself (Starcraft with HQx scaling xD).

Done right this api routing will be transparent to the game and will not interfere with Battlenet.

I was under the impression that your fix for it ran it in a virtual XP environment, my bad.

Will your fix allow SC to run in full screen? Right now, the crashes won't occur (on ANY machine) if it's ran in a windowed mode.

Also, the reason why I'm still leaning towards some sort of hardware deficiency is because there are people on XP, Vista and W7 who have had this crashing problem (go search teamliquid or gosugamer threads) and there are plenty of people using W7 that don't have this problem. Looking at those two facts, it seems hard to blame it on W7.

Will your fix allow SC to run in full screen? Right now, the crashes won't occur (on ANY machine) if it's ran in a windowed mode.

It will be run in fullscreen D3D.

Also, the reason why I'm still leaning towards some sort of hardware deficiency is because there are people on XP, Vista and Windows 7 who have had this crashing problem (go search teamliquid or gosugamer threads) and there are plenty of people using Windows 7 that don't have this problem. Looking at those two facts, it seems hard to blame it on Windows 7.

Theres a million reasons for it, but the main fact is that if it was hardware, it would happen regardless of a fresh boot. Since it happens more while running certain applications it indicates that these apps are interfering with how the process runs in some way or another. That it works fine in a window, indicates that its an issue at the DDraw level, And i've seen how Ddraw code likes to have all these specific fixes to run in fullscreen on anything past windows 98.

Then it's not an issue that rests only with W7?

Like I said, plenty of people with W7 can do everything you say that will cause a crash, but won't have a crash. Yet there are others on XP or some other OS that are having the same crashes that you claim are unique to W7.

It doesn't make sense.

It is, because even without those applications, it will happen eventually. the lack of those programs just extends the amount of time till it does happen. Selective startup usually nets me 3 hours of play but it eventually happens anyway.

Multiple starts of the app also increases the chance of it happens, and such occurences are normal when using another application to create game lobbies (Xfire), Since games like age of empires have always used an external service to create mp games (MSN Games, Gamespy arcade, xfire) then theres always the risk of it happening as these are required to start as well as applying ddraw overlays to inject messages into the ddraw process.

StevenBonnellII said:

Then it's not an issue that rests only with W7?

Like I said, plenty of people with W7 can do everything you say that will cause a crash, but won't have a crash. Yet there are others on XP or some other OS that are having the same crashes that you claim are unique to W7.

It doesn't make sense.

just because other people have similar symptoms doesn't mean it's happening to everybody for the same reason. I had NO crash ever in windows vista, didn't change any hardware and in win 7 it used to crash every 1-3 games in starcraft. I tried various drivers for everything, and it still crashed. explain how it's not win 7 related please? even if I booted back in vista, there were no crashes at all.

but as I said, if I close skype and other applications as media players, I don't have any crashes anymore since I updated to the latest windows updates, nforce and geforce drivers. what exactly did solve the problem I don't know.

hax said:

just because other people have similar symptoms doesn't mean it's happening to everybody for the same reason. I had NO crash ever in windows vista, didn't change any hardware and in win 7 it used to crash every 1-3 games in starcraft. I tried various drivers for everything, and it still crashed. explain how it's not win 7 related please? even if I booted back in vista, there were no crashes at all.

but as I said, if I close skype and other applications as media players, I don't have any crashes anymore since I updated to the latest windows updates, nforce and geforce drivers. what exactly did solve the problem I don't know.

Here's my simple logic train, it's not really arguable:

Some people who play W7 can play without crashes happening at all.
Some people who play on XP have the same crashes with the exact same symptoms.

With those two facts, how can you even say it's W7 related? I myself went from XP x86 to W7 x64 and the crashes were the EXACT same thing.

With those two facts, how can you even say it's Windows 7 related? I myself went from XP x86 to Windows 7 x64 and the crashes were the EXACT same thing.

Steve, its not unlikely that for yourself, that your hardware could be a problem. However those of us who have gone from XP to Windows 7 and have the issue only crop up after doing so, we are going to place the issue at Windows 7.

That it only happens in Fullscreen, further indicates it is a problem in windows 7.
The same way that the colour palette issue is a problem in windows 7, that wasn't so bad in Vista.

I never mentioned Virtual machines, rather I will be beta testing an application which makes DirectDraw games appear as native D3D apps, rather then have them be wrapped to D3D by DirectX itself (Starcraft with HQx scaling xD).

Done right this api routing will be transparent to the game and will not interfere with Battlenet.

This sounds promising! Keep us posted!

StevenBonnellII said:

Here's my simple logic train, it's not really arguable:

Some people who play W7 can play without crashes happening at all.
Some people who play on XP have the same crashes with the exact same symptoms.

With those two facts, how can you even say it's W7 related? I myself went from XP x86 to W7 x64 and the crashes were the EXACT same thing.

ok same symptoms so it must be the same thing? lol?

and you say that's not arguable? ...

So what do you expect it is then, when everything works fine in my hardware with windows xp, windows vista and ONLY in 7 I get crashes? bad karma? ...

by your logic every bluescreen cannot be related to windows, since they happened in xp, vista and seven ...