Odd game launching problem

Whenever I start a game (rise of nations in this example) and I am NOT connected to the internet, it doesn't load and "rundll32.exe" starts hogging up CPU cycles. Looking at the threads for the process shows "gameux.dll" is the culprit. When I kill the individual thread, the game continues to load just fine. Check out the attached screen shot to see Process Explorer and the "rundll32.dll" threads. This applies to all games that are listed in Games Explorer.

However, when I AM connected to the internet, this problem is non-existant. I have tested this multiple times on my machine and the only variable is my internet connection status. I have loaded Games Explorer and disabled "Game updates and news" as well as "Download art and information about installed games" and "Collect most recently played game information", but I still have this problem.

It is VERY annoying when connecting to personal LANs for old-school Unreal Tournament action where we don't need an internet connection. Does anybody have a solution?

Yes, no changes. Tried every compatibility mode during troubleshooting and trying to isolate the problem. This happens to multiple games (the games listed in Games Explorer), and it doesn't matter what compatibility mode it runs in, same problem every time.

I have the same problem but with NFSU2, the weirdest thing is that NFSU2 was fine two weeks ago and I am not internet connection since 6 months ago, I’m going to try replacing the gameux.dll with a fresh one.