Solved StarCraft fix holy cow!

[gamingaccess]

So there I was, stuck playing starcraft in crappy colors yet again, as it has always been during my beta testing of windows 7. For what ever reason, I decided to leave screen resolution dialog box open and what do you know- starcraft runs with its beautiful original colors.

If anyone knows what I'm talking about:

Symptoms:
Starcraft runs with bright turquoise colors everywhere in the menu system. It looks rather psychedelic.

On vista, it intermittently happened, on win7 it happens every time after the 1.16.00 patch installed.

Fix:
Simply open up your screen resolution window before playing, and leave it open. Doing so will result in perfect colors ever time. The same for vista, just open up personalize. I have no idea why this works, but I've tested it many many times- you just open the window- nothing else.

I've reported it to MS and Blizzard- blizzard quickly blew me off though with a "WINDOWS 7 IS NOT SUPPORTED" email.

Hmm... nope, don't care about spelling.

enjoy SC lol!

Works perfectly
I even updated my website GamingAccess/Gamingaccess - Pro Evolution Soccer 2009, FIFA 09, Pro Evolution Soccer 2008, FIFA 08, Pro Evolution Soccer 6 - PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii with your article

haha

 

[grimmster]

my update. The screen resolution trick was no longer working or anything else so I created the bat file to kill explorer and that is working just perfectly.

 

[gamingaccess]

Well, actually the update 1.16 did the trick
I thought it was the screen resolution, but now, the patch 1.16 did the trick, plus the compatibility mode

 

[diazdv]

create .bat file

I create a file .bat with the notepad:

taskkill /f /IM explorer.exe
c:\program files\starcraft\starcraft.exe ( or your game path)


saves as Starcraftwin7.bat

and run this file every time that u want to play the game in win 7


note: when u finish to play the game run from task administrator "explorer.exe" and your win7 run normally.

pd sorry for my bad bad bad bad bad english lol

 

[strider85]

Just change the extension to play Starcraft

I'm just expanding on the above post which worked GREAT for me! By adding one line, I've completely automated this .bat file.

open notepad and enter the following:

taskkill /f /IM explorer.exe
c:\program files\starcraft\starcraft.exe (or your game path)
c:\Windows\explorer.exe (this will run explorer once you close starcraft)

save this file as: Starcraft_Win7_Run.bat

That's it! Run Starcraft_Win7_Run.bat every time you want to play the game in win 7 (or Vista).

note: as mentioned above by diazdv, if you finish starcraft and for some reason explorer didn't restart on its own, then all you have to do to start it again is:

CTRL+ALT+DEL,
file > new task (run...)
type: explorer
and click "OK"

For your convenience: I've uploaded the file for those of us who are too lazy to make it ourselves. Once you download it, just change the extension from ".txt" to ".bat" and you'll be ready to go!!!

 

[edithegodfather]

Heheey, works perfectly . Say, how can i make that prompt window close after explorer is started? I tried "exit" but didn't happen anything.

 

[hax]

starcraft is still freezing for me on windows 7 RTM. it doesn't help to leave the screen resolution window open (that fixes the colors though, which I don't mind anyway) nor does setting the affinity to only one cpu core (altough that seems to decrease the freezes a little bit). the freezes happen randomly, sometimes I can play 3 games without problem, sometimes I freeze after a minute. the sound keeps playing, if I have a video / mp3 running in the background, even for minutes - but the screen stays frozen. is anybody else having this issue? and no, it's not a hardware problem, everything works fine under vista.

 

[kharkuss]

HMMM.... but YES IT IS!

Ok buddy sorry to hear that you are having problems... but I also regret to tell you that IT IS a hardware issue... for the following reason... the fact that you stated that the music runs in the background... makes it NOT a software issue because if it was a software issue, being the os freezing because of an unstable program, then, lets all think about it... THE WHOLE COMPUTER WOULD FREEZE... being that only your video performance freezes causes me to believe that it is your video card... and im guessing it works perfectly fine for vista because the card was made to RUN in vista and now you have windows 7 installed so your having issues because you think the vista drivers are working perfectly fine with win7 because windows accepted them and it installed... well your wrong... so download the right drivers made for win7 for your video card... or better yet do yourself a favor and buy something with a newer chipset... also i would guess that you have an onboard video card right? lets try to go with something that isnt onboard... motherboards made to be used with win7 drivers arent out their yet... hope this sheds some light on your problem...

 

[hax]

Well, first of all - I'm not a newbie, and well aware that it "sounds" like a hardware issue, but it definitely is not.

I have an Athlon X2 6000+, a Geforce 8800GT (which of course isn't an onboard card) and I've not had a freeze with Vista / XP in over a year, and suddenly 7 freezes, and it's supposed to be a hardware issue? I don't think so.

Especially since a lot of people have experienced the EXACT same issue.

Just because the Sound keeps running doesn't mean it HAS to be a hardware issue, you know?

And of course I've tried a lot of different drivers - currently the latest stable from Nvidia (190.62) but it still isn't working. and if it would be a hardware issue, don't you think it would happen outside some very old program like starcraft?

and yes I have also installed the chipset drivers (nforce 570).

 

[daviesow]

Perfect kill/relaunch script

Ok, after reading this and several similar threads I whipped up a TaskKill Explorer... script. Problem was I didn't like to hit a key after a pause and if I didn't pause I couldn't get Explorer to reliably relaunch. Sometimes it launched but left the CMD window opened, other times it only launched an actual file explorer window and not the taskbar. Very frustrating.

However, after a ton of tweaking, I think I've got it all sorted. Attached are the final bat file along with the same bat compiled as an Exe including the StarCraft icon so you can substitute it straight in any games links you may have.

 

[edithegodfather]

Mouch better, cheers .

 

[hax]

doesn't help for me...

still freezes randomly only in starcraft and no other application.

newest nvidia drivers 191.03 don't help.

also I think the problem might be related to the fact that I use two 22" widescreen monitors.

 

[Black Macgyver]

I too use dual screen Monitors (well one is TV) and i disable that to try and it looks like it worked a lot longer, but it still crashed in the end.

 

[hax]

I think it's related to these factors:

nvidia gpu (almost for sure), amd processor (maybe), multiple monitors (likely)

 

[Freelancer852]

I have two monitors and don't experience that problem, you can rule that out. I also have an nvidia gpu, so it's most likely not that either. It sounds like you're just having some unique software conflicts relating to your system.

I can tell you that it's not a hardware problem at all, though it may be a problem with the hardware drivers (a la software).

 

[jtw7]

hax and all,

I just had a lockup last night for the first time ever. I too have an 8800GT, but an Intel quad core (Q6600). I thought it may have been related to the length of time I was playing, but I just played for 3 hrs with no lockup. Mine may have just been an odd one-time glitch since I've only seen it once, but I thought I'd report it anyway. For what it's worth, I'm using the Nvidia drivers that came with Windows 7 (haven't gotten around to updating them).

-JT

 

[hax]

thanks for the infos!

I have noticed that the things that "seemed" to help - like setting the affinity to one core don't help for me at all, just letting everything on default works better. still sometimes the game freezes on me after playing for one minute, sometimes I can play for 2 hours without a freeze ... I still think this has something to do with NVIDIA's drivers. The newest beta drivers addresses an issue with 2D applications returning to 3D application and setting back the gpu's clock wrong, which to me sounds like this could really be the issue. However I have installed the newest beta drivers, and still no luck - the game froze. Hopefully they'll address this issue furthermore in the stable version of the driver...

 

[Black Macgyver]

I'd would love to agree with you Hax, but I don't think it's the Nvidia drivers as I don't have any hints of that on my gigabyte motherboard or Videocard (as it's AMD/ATI), and I still get the problem. I can't accurately time it on how often it crashes, as it is random. So far my best solution is exiting windows 7 and loading windows xp. VMWare fullscreen with starcraft crashes the system the same way but you can move the mouse all over the place, but keyboard locks up. Virtual PC works but you can't fullscreen unless change resolution.

 

[hax]

update: since I have installed the newest nforce and geforce drivers my system has yet to lock up. I was even able to watch a movie on the one screen and play on the other (which previously would crash the game after a maximum of 5 minutes)...

so grab the latest geforce (191.03 - listed on nvidia.com as beta drivers!!!)
and nforce (15.49) and give it a try...

I'm keeping my fingers crossed ...

 

[hax]

ok, I've narrowed the problem down a little more - it IS a software issue - if I run no other programs in the background like skype / miranda / winamp / vlc I have no crashes at all. Usually my starcraft gets very "laagy" for 1-3 seconds before the system freezes (while the sound still keeps playing) so I guess something wants to be rendered (like a skype popup / popin or something) and then the computer freezes...

once again: this only happens to me in 7 NOT in vista or any other os.