Old games being odd

Ok to start with ill say that this all worked fine 3 days ago but now it dosent. The problem is whenever i run a game from what id say is an old date like diablo 2 and warcraft 3 also red alert 2 but not yuris revenge expansion pack i click the icon and the little circle loading thing from windows 7 pops up after 3-4 sec's it dissapears and nothing so i wait and after about a minute (differs with each game) it pops up with the image of an orc etc to show that the game is starting then it loads instantly and bam no problems? so my question is why does it "idle" after those 3-4 sec? its been working all this time i cant recall makeing any changes since it worked and now it does as described? Another note when i hit the icon it shows signs of activity in windows with the small circle etc but then the minute where nothing happens the computer is "idle" it runs at 1% cpu and 1gb ram +- until where the game logo thingie popsup and it starts loading then the cpu jumps and so does ram as it should

My computer: 8gb ddr 3/1600mhz ram, nvidia xfx gts 250, 2 western digital caviar black 7200rpm harddisks in raid 0 plugged in 6gb/s ports, motherboard is a p8Z68 asus, cpu is a intel I3-2100 3.1ghz at 3.2ghz also its all custom cooled and goes at around 38C at all times its stress tested and so and so on.


Btw ive just noticed theres a gaming section ^^ so if a mod would please move this thread there ty.

Have you tried reverse compatability mode for the games that act like this? Usually a long delay is caused by the system waiting for a condition, and then timing out and continuing. This will cause the system to just about sit idle and then pick up the pace after the timeout has been reached. Would be interesting to figure out what it is waiting for before continuing, but I dont know of any tools that display what a program is exactly doing to follow its path to where the troublespot is located, if all programs get to a certain spot and then waits for time out.

Ty =) diden't think about that reason but unfortunately i have tryed the compatibility modes as one of the first options.

sounds like one of the gamefiles was registered unreadable by a OS update. And if the compatibility mode hasnt worked then it probably never will which I am sad to say. But I guess all good things have to come to an end sometime lol. It has happened to me with two games like that. They are NASCAR SimRacing and NASCAR Racing 4

I have today found an odd apearance in my folders cause i had another look around. Ive found that in my diablo 2 folder i have a file called diablo2.exe and another called game.exe now if i start the diablo2.exe file it waits the time before starting but if i run game.exe it runs instantly like before??? *censored*. Also ive found a similar file called something around game.exe in my frozenthrone directory and thus wc3 can also start instantly but when i found a game.exe lastly in my red alert 2 folder it did exactly the same as the ra2.exe slow startup etc.

[Moderator]

So that tells me these were apparentlly "Ahem" versions of the games...
You get what you pay for.

I dont exactly get what your implying but if your saying they are illegal your wrong i own the first decade wich contains ra2.exe and game.exe in fully legal version i also own 2 frozenthrone and 2 warcraft 3 reign of chaos i own every released blizzard game all the way back to warcraft 1. So no if your implying theyr cracked then thats wrong theyr legal and wc3 dont need a cd anymore with newer patches hence no need for that. So apparently i havent quite got all i paid for yet wich is why im in here searching answers.

but I dont know of any tools that display what a program is exactly doing to follow its path to where the troublespot is located, if all programs get to a certain spot and then waits for time out.

you can look for filemon by sysinternals which gives you an idea of what might be happening. if you're a pro, you could look at a debugger, but don't think about it if you're not a programmer.

Now that I think about it, that 's something that really needs to be made. A program that lists all system calls made by a program in real-time.

Ok so i ran the program you listed tho its called processmonitor now and i got this huge file list i started excluding stuff etc to only get warcraft3 and those that got started with it and then i ran it. But its got so much data running through i cant hit the buttom for new stuff being done. But i managed to see that it seems it runs Frozenthrone.exe first then after a while pingponging back and forth talking to dll's it starts rundll and that goes back and forth and then after run dll starts and stops the game starts and thats the war3.exe that starts then some registry stuff etc etc
But as said its a huge wall of text and i have no clue what to look for? i would have uploaded the wall but its 29mb logfile and thats from doubletapping desktop icon wait for game start and close it instantly.

Also it is definetly a with my computer and not only the specific games cause today i installed eve online and its doing the same thing doubleclick game icon then wait a while then the logo pops up and game starts instantly?

if you're a pro, you could look at a debugger, but don't think about it if you're not a programmer.

This post is just far too amusing.  I'm just sitting here laughing...  ...sides are splitting...

Dident really help resolve the problem there quantos =/?

Also more info being added now. It seems its not just Old games afterall i now have noticed a fully patched Eve client of mine also does the same thing.

I have XP and some VERRRRY old games that I love.  Most
of them are actually DOS games.  When I put them on the
computer (some are so old you actually don't have to
install them!), they won't run.  Instead, after the
screen goes to the DOS prompt for about 1 sec., it
immediately goes back to the desktop.
Now, here's the weird part.  I installed Duke Nukem 1
(yes, 1) on the computer, and not only did it work, but
now ALL the old games work.  It's almost as if
DN1 "taught" XP what to do.  And yes, this problem IS
reproducible.  If I open another user account on my XP,
the same thing happens... the programs won't run until I
install DN1 (I did try it, twice actually).
Something is not right here, but I don't understand what
causes this.  What did the program do?  Or did it do
anything?  DN1 is an "installed" game so I'm guessing
that had something to do with it.  Any ideas, hints,
suggestions, reasons and, most importantly, ways to get
around this in the future?  Everyone's help is soooo very
appreciated!

Were there any changes with Activex settings made at all during the installations?

if you're a pro, you could look at a debugger, but don't think about it if you're not a programmer.

This post is just far too amusing.  I'm just sitting here laughing...  ...sides are splitting...

Yes, the statement was a little redundant, but I don't understand what's so funny about it.

Were there any changes with Activex settings made at all during the installations?

This post is just far too amusing.  I'm just sitting here laughing...  ...sides are splitting...

This post is just far too amusing.  I'm just sitting here laughing...  ...sides are splitting...

Cool, it is contagious...

Cool, it is contagious...

I was talking about your post

Allow me to explain, you asked "Were there any changes with Activex settings made at all during the installations?"

Which I concede might be a interesting course of questioning, if the installations in question didn't predate any sort of ActiveX by nearly 20 years! Additionally, no part of ActiveX- or COM, for that matter- is used by the DOS emulation subsystem, so changes to those settings wouldn't affect them (and I question what exactly constitutes an "ActiveX setting" since to my understanding none exist, except within other programs. (Internet Explorer, for example).

My best guess might be because of the way windows deals with older software installations. it can "detect" some game installs- notably, Duke Nukum 1, 2, and 3, and sets certain compatibility settings to config.nt and autoexec.nt that will change how all DOS-based software works. autoexec.nt and config.nt are profile-level, I believe, which would explain why the issues are reproducible in a new account.

It could very well be that those changes are needed for the other game, which isn't something Windows takes notice of being installed. Best way to confirm this would be to use Process Monitor (Filemon is deprecated) and  capture events for the initial installation and then search those results for a file access to any config.nt or autoexec.nt files.

I was talking about your post

Yeah, I figured that out, I speak fluent sarcasm 
I still have a few titles kicking around that use Activex and I think there might still be one or two that need DirectX.  I've also found a couple that require an older version of DirectX - and neither of them will run with the newer versions.  I realize that it's probably a missing game patch, but I'm not to worried about it since it runs flawless in a VM.