StarCraft freezes after 1-5 minutes of playing

Doesn't work.

Look,

I've played StarCraft Broodwar for many hours with only a few lock ups. With a 56/ 76 record in Battlenet (nothing to brag about I know :)) I've played coutless hours during which I most always run Skype while actively talking to 2 to 3 other players. The only thing special I do is make sure to drop to a single monitor and open the "Personalize" window in the background before launching the game. This takes care of the color issues 95 percent of the time for me. If during the game, another app pops up in front or I have to ALT/TAB back to the desktop, the colors are ususally screwed until I restart the game, but not so bad that I cannot finish the game at hand. We were playing multi-player via my VPN until everyone finally purchased the BattleChest. Below I'll list all of the relevant hardware and sofware I can think of:

Asus PNE SLI Mainboard
Nvidia NForce Chipset
Nvidia 8800 GTS Driver 8.17.11.9562
Intel 6600 (2.4 GHz) Dual Core
1X4 Dual Channel SLI NEW EGG Memory (I think actually Crucial brand)
32 bit Windows 7 Ultimate
Windows Experience listed at 5.7, disk being the weakest link
Single SATA 150 GB WD Raptor drive, no RAID
Razor Copperhead Mouse/ USB
Generic old clicking Toshiba keyboard, PS/2
Creative XFi Fatality1 Sounds card with latest drivers 6.0.1.1373
Avast Home
Skype
Office 2007 including Outlook 2007

There is a huge amount of experimental software also installed, I'm not too cautious in trying things as I tend to format fairly often, every 6 months or so but the time frame has gotten longer from XP to 7. Never has SC Broodwar caused an an issue after several formats, so going from a clean system to a junked up system seems to not affect performance so I would say software is out but not for sure obviously.

All that said, I think the problem people are experiencing with Broodwar on Windows 7 are caused by hardware or drivers, maybe x64? I haven't had a reason to x64 on my desktop. Tried it, it sucked. Server is a different story. So far in this thread and others, I havent seen anyone put together a pattern to eliminate possibilities to bring this to a down common factor. That's my input for now, everyone should begin including similar specs and we may bring this to a close.

I am now 99% sure that Winamp has been causing SC to crash when both are running.

I have played for 3 weeks w/o Winamp with no crashes.

I used to get crashes that occured at the most random times. The game and computer would just freeze but the in Winamp will continue playing. it does not necessarily happen 1-5 mins. It can happen anywhere from 1min to several hours of play.

I hope this info helps somebody

any and all applications affect the amount of time till it freezes to an extent.

I completeley read the thread and I tried all the tips but didn't work for me to solve the freeze problem. I've got win 7 64bit ultimate. I downloaded from my battle.net account the 1.15.2 US starcraft installer which doesn't require CD and it solved the colour problem but freezing stayed the same. At first i though it was skype but I was wrong. Now it seems that an old winamp (winamp agent) can be the problem for me. I played 4 mission without any trouble. I didn't try battle.net yet. Just wanted to share my experiences maybe it's helpful.

VonRaynor said:

I completeley read the thread and I tried all the tips but didn't work for me to solve the freeze problem. I've got win 7 64bit ultimate. I downloaded from my battle.net account the 1.15.2 US starcraft installer which doesn't require CD and it solved the colour problem but freezing stayed the same. At first i though it was skype but I was wrong. Now it seems that an old winamp (winamp agent) can be the problem for me. I played 4 mission without any trouble. I didn't try battle.net yet. Just wanted to share my experiences maybe it's helpful.

Winamp isnt the problem

Is it just me, or does it seem like every single change you do to attempt to fix it only works once or twice when you open the application. Then the computer seems to remember the process you used and freezes the third onward.

also, I was bored and tried this and it worked. I minimized the game on a 2 minute interval, and re-opened it. Do it again and again, and it never freezes. But overall isnt worth doing.

This is a Windows 7 user. I have both Windows 7 32bit and 64bit Pro! They are both doing it. I do not even have WinAmp installed. I have been trying to get some kind of log file or anything out of windows and when starcraft crashes or hangs.. It doesn't give any kind of information..... I don't know- I just want to play starcraft. Ubuntu runs it better then Windows now!

I played many hours since I made my post and it's not freezing. I'm quite sure that in my case winamp was the source of the problem. I'll indicate if freezing returns.

In my case, the crashings were because of Winamp and Firefox with youtube open or any other videostreaming site. Also, sometimes Firefox doesnt close when I close it, so I have to finish the process on the task manager to close it completly, which also caused some crashes (Firefox had youtube open in those cases I guess).

So from my experience, any media player or streaming/music player site will cause a freeze on Starcraft.

I really wish this could be fixed, I play better with some good music heh

Between having an application open to simply having media player open. I have shut down every service except for Windows it self in Regular Mode. Starcraft keeps crashing. Even in Safe Mode Starcraft to crashes. The only way I can play Starcraft on my main rig is if I run SC from or in ChaosLauncher. Even then Starcraft and ChaosLauncher decide to crash once in a blue moon. At least its not the whole computer.....