New Computer and Old(er) Games

Technology and Gaming Help and Support
#1

Hey guys. I recently bought a new computer (parts then built it myself). For some reason though, some of my older games lag considerably when I ramp up the graphics. My computer runs Prince of Persia (latest one) on full graphics perfectly but struggles with Psychonauts, Warcraft III, Frozen Throne and Dawn of War (only when using the Daemonhunters mod). I am also experiencing severe graphical glitches in both Fallout and Fallout 2. The screen is filled with all colours of the rainbow, with only faint outlines of shapes visible. It’s pretty much fine in game but cutscenes and most menus are messed up. Here are my specs:

Gigabyte GA-P55-UD3R Motherboard
Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB
Intel Core i5 750
Patriot PC3-12800 2x2GB DDR3
Sapphire Radeon HD5770 1GB
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit OEM
Corsair HX-650 Power Supply

Thanks in advance for your help! :smiley:

#2

the color issue is due to the way old games used 256 colors. (I had the same issue with starcraft on windows7) When these games run windows explorer is still running in the background and using about 50% of those 256 colors. A quick (and seamless I might add) fix it to make a batch file that kills explorer, starts the game, then starts explorer once the game exits (I also use the same method for people who use object dock).

In the same directory as the game place a bat with the following code.

taskkill /f /IM explorer.exe Starcraft.exe start explorer.exe

replace starcraft.exe with whatever the game is. Now just forward the games shortcut to this bat and presto, no more color problems.

I’m not totally sure what your problem with slowdowns is tho, I’ll think about it some more.

#3

As far as I’m aware, a lot of older games are weird about multi-core processors, too. Though I’m not sure that your games would run at all if that’d been the problem. I’ve never tried anything older than 2004 on this computer yet.

#4

Thats a good point, after launching a game open task manager, right click on the process and hit “Set Affinity.” Turn off all cores with the exception of 1.

#5

Sweet! Thanks guys!

I’ll try that and get back to you

EDIT: Fallout, Fallout 2 and Psychonauts all work perfectly now! :smiley:

Unfortunately Dawn of War still lags and when I try to change cores running in Warcraft 3 I am told “the operation could not be completed. Access is denied.” I am the only user on the computer and an administrator but it won’t let me change the cores. This has only ocurred in Warcraft 3 and Frozen Throne so thank you for your help fixing my other games! :smiley:

#6

Yah, the cores thing was just a stab in the dark. Thats strange that Warcraft 3 runs as a system level process
[COLOR=‘DimGray’] (I mean I know that Blizzard is evil but I thought the complete and total take over didn’t start until WOW not back in the warcraft 3 days)[/SIZE]

EDIT: Apparently Dawn of war runs better if you right click on it and select run as administrator.

#7

Try modifying the settings on the warcraft folder. Right click on it, uncheck read only, go to permissions and set yourself to full read-write access. Something like that.

#8

Just wanted to mention that Warcraft 3 and frozen throne both run full speed on my friend’s PC which is running windows 7 x64, no modifications or tweaks apart from installing the latest patch.

#9

I haven’t got the patch yet unfortunately so I’ll download that and see how I go

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