StarCraft freezes after 1-5 minutes of playing

I had the same freezing problem... HAD! Here's my solution: before starting SC change your desktop theme to Windows Classic. After u start SC, press Alt + Tab, go to Task Manager and set affinity to CPU 0 only (for SC of course...). I've recently been using Chaos Launcher to play SC (maybe it has sth to do too...).

Affinity has nothing to do with this specific issue. the affinity specific issue was fixed in 1.16. Also affinity never caused Age of empires, or Worms to freeze.

Anyway. If microsoft has no fix, then i guess my friend will be getting busy and making a DDraw > D3D wrapper to bypass DDraw entirely.

How does HqX shaders sound for filtering? lol.

Thats an unecessarily destructive method. All you need to do is pause the explorer threads, which im sure you can do just as easily with a batch file

Instead of just sitting here waiting for the answer I've been looking for, I decided to take some initiative and e-mail blizzard support. This is their response delivered relatively quick.

Hello,

Thank you for contacting us regarding StarCraft. Unfortunately this is a known issue. Please right click on the StarCraft icon and select Properties, click on the Compatibility tab. Under the Settings section, please select "Run in 256 Colors", "Run in 640x480 resolution", "Disable Visual Themes" and "Run as Administrator". This should work for many customers.

Although forcing the colors to 256 colors as well as forcing the 640x480 resolution should resolve the graphical issues, we have noticed it doesn't for each type of video card. From other customers we have heard that force quitting the Explorer.exe file from the task manager and then running StarCraft right away seems to resolve it (CTRL ALT DELETE -> Start Task Manager).

Other then that the only other thing I can suggest is to play StarCraft while in Safe mode, since Safe mode will not load your video card drivers, it will not attempt to force the color scheme. To do this, please follow the appropriate instructions for your Windows version on this page:
Blizzard Support


If you have any Technical Issues, feel free to give me an e-mail.

Best Regards,

Kenneth
Blizzard Entertainment
Technical Support
Blizzard Support

I personally like to play my starcraft stretched on my 19 inch widescreen, and don't want it to be in the 640x480 resolution, but oh well... I have not tested to see if this works yet

Check your software and driver compatibility here: Windows 7 Compatibility Center home.

Cheers,
Tara
Windows Outreach Team

@Yottabyte.

It doesn't.

Issue 1.
Ddraw is VMd/Emulated on NT6+ using D3D. D3D requires functional Video drivers.
Issue 2.
None of the compatibility settings fix either the colours, or the freeze under win7. Though some have discovered using a 5:4 or 4:3 monitor can help with the colour.

Check your software and driver compatibility here: Windows 7 Compatibility Center home.

Cheers,
Tara
Windows Outreach Team

Don't give us that generic crap, if you aren't a senior developer you aren't qualified to be advising on this situation. There is a high level race issue in the operating system when running full screen 256 colour DDraw applications, which even developers who have written DDraw for years cannot seem to work out.

If it was the driver interface, it would be a low level race issue resulting in a bsod or hardlock, but since its only a freeze of the directx / display and secondary audio and applications continue to function in the background, the only point it could be is at the API level.

And when you enter the right search query... look what you find

http://www.codenamewindows.com/?p=58

As i have checked... DWM is not disabled when a fullscreen DDraw app is run on windows 7. This has been the case since the prebeta versions.

If I can help in anyway let me know, as I used to have the errors and now I don't anymore.
And it definitely was no hardware issue for me.

And the people suggesting to play in safe mode / other os and so on ... those are not solutions but merely bad jokes I hope. I mean I don't go to a mechanic with a car problem and expect to be told "well you can ride a bike ..."

This is what i was pointing to specifically

Windows 7: Applications manifested for Windows 7 cannot call Lock API in DDRAW to lock the primary Desktop video buffer. Doing so will result in error, and NULL pointer for the primary will be returned. This behavior is enforced even if Desktop Window Manager Composition is not turned on. Windows 7 compatible applications must not lock the primary video buffer to render.
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.

DWM must disable in order for the application to lock the backbuffer, This behavior can be reproduced in OpenGL applications that request a lockable backbuffer, but not in DDraw applications.

Now i've noticed 16bit and 32bit DD apps, such as emulators do not freeze in fullscreen, nor do they have the colour palette issue. However these apps have been adapted over time to support XP.

Hax, have you tried manually disabling the DWM service in Services.msc prior to playing?

How do you disable the DWM service ? i can't find it in services.msc

edit : btw i have the same problem on windows 7 64bit

I tried to use virtual pc 2007 but there is some latency in the mouse or its not configured properly anyway i cant play with it in the best conditions

Should i try VMWare?

Aral said:

How do you disable the DWM service ? i can't find it in services.msc

edit : btw i have the same problem on windows 7 64bit

I tried to use virtual pc 2007 but there is some latency in the mouse or its not configured properly anyway i cant play with it in the best conditions

Should i try VMWare?

No point, i just did some funky stuff with windbg and its not as simply as DWM not disabling, the blasted application is failing to lock the primary buffer regardless of DWM being enabled or not. God only knows why this is. The only thing i can think of at this point is that these games are behaving like windows 7 manifested apps for some reason so Primary buffer locking is not allowed regardless of dwm being enabled or disabled.

Its looking more and more like the only fix is going to be rerouting the api into D3D directly.