Starcraft System Crash

[squall leonhart]

I'm casting them aside as an unrelated user specific issue which is probably hardware related. However, The friend who created DFDD went from windows XP (Starcraft working fine) to windows 7 (starcraft freezing at random), So im fairly certain my assumptions are correct.

Not to place my circle of friends on a pedestal, but... compared to the regular starcraft gamers, these guys are in their own league (emudevs, game designers, game devs, Reviewers, and R.E'ers, etc). So when these guys are getting exactly the same issues after an upgrade to Win7, then im convinced its not a hardware fault.

Besides.
It spans, single core Sempron-LE, AMD Athlon x2 mobile, Intel Core 2, and Core i7, all of which run it perfectly on a previous XP install or current XP dualboot. The only Vista install i ever had access to also ran it perfectly fine.

 

[KnowledgeWorker]

I actually doubt it being a Windows 7 issue, but an x64 issue! Why don't you see this squall?

 

[squall leonhart]

because it happens on x32 as well

 

[HughShaw]

Maybe you guys should all install XP Mode and play starcraft on that. VMware Player will do the job nicely.

Edit: I got it working! Instructions in this thread!

 

[squall leonhart]

XPMode doesn't allow display mode switching.

besides, theres a fix for every issue, just have to find the cause first.
and since it only occurs in fullscreen, then that must mean its related to how ddraw is locking the screen, or something interfering with that locking.

 

[HughShaw]

You don't need to switch display modes since Windows 7 has the zoom-in feature. And I'm not talking about Windows XP Mode, I'm talking about VMware Player running Windows XP. Keep in mind that VMware can import your vhd from Windows XPM.

Everything is working perfectly.

 

[atlas01]

I tried the VMWare route. It crashed too.

 

[donutsrgood]

Unless there is a workaround for the graphics bug I believe the only hope is for the Koreans in mass to raise a stink. Then Microsoft might issue a patch or Blizzard might issue a patch. You can understand Microsoft being unwilling to jeopardize the win7 release with a change for a 10 year old game. And Blizzard is focusing on Softcraft 2.

Its not hardware related. Its entirely a issue within Windows 7.
The fixes that worked on Vista are not working on Windows 7 at all.

A friend of mine that was working on an app to fix the colour issues (by pausing the explorer thread on start and unpausing on exit) is able to reproduce the issues in most of his DirectDraw games, Warcraft 2 BNE, Starcraft, Age of empires, Fallout, Worms,

Others have reproduced these problems on RCT and Pharaoh.

The issues did not occur under XP or Vista to the extent they are under Windows 7.

BTW, the colour fixer has been (or will be) released in a short while. unfortunately my friend has gone back to XP as it runs all these games fine.

Affinity does not fix it
disabling DWM does not fix it.
Uninstalling drivers does not fix it
Compatibility options do not fix it.

It seems that the issues are caused by Race issues created when Microsoft added WDDM updates to DirectDraw overlay.

 

[HughShaw]

I tried the VMWare route. It crashed too.

VMware might take a while to get used to but it integrates just like XPM once you have VMware tools set up. There's no way it doesn't work unless some settings are wrong. Also, when starcraft is running, you have to click Ctrl + Alt to input to your desktop or the colors will become weird. Also, be sure to increase your virtual RAM here.

 

[StevenBonnellII]

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.

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 use chaoslauncher, a Starcraft tool that allows you to load .dlls, and if I run SC in Window mode, it works just fine. I can't adjust the window size, so I end up putting SC on my right monitor and scaling the resolution up to 800x600, but it gets the job done.

I don't really consider this a "fix" so I never bother mentioning it, but yeah, ANYTHING that prevents SC from running in full screen should keep it from crashing.

 

[squall leonhart]

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.

 

[StevenBonnellII]

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.

 

[squall leonhart]

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.

 

[StevenBonnellII]

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.

 

[squall leonhart]

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.

 

[hax]

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.

 

[StevenBonnellII]

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.

 

[squall leonhart]

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.

 

[atlas01]

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!

 

[hax]

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 ...