Solution to a Very Common Oldies Problem

I though that even though this might not be as useful as the help I got on this forum, that I have to give something back
Soo, I found a solution to the problem with most games older than 2000 on Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.

The problem was very weird colors in game, and this applied to the following games(from my experience):

Fallout 1&2
Diablo 1&2
Starcraft

And others.

So this is the solution:

1) Right-Click the game shortcut, and click "Properties".
2) Go into Compatibility.
3) Check "Run in Compatibility" and select "Windows 98/ME".
4) Lower down, select "Run in 256 colors" and "Run in 640x480 Resolution".
5) Lastly, Check "Run as Administrator".
6) Click "Apply" and "OK".

That should fix it, It worked for all my old games.
Play, and have Fun!

 

why would you play D2 and F2 @640x480 instead of 1280x800 if your lcd supports 1280x800?

 

Tried it on starcraft and it didn't work

 

+1 since I've also tried all different combinations of compatability modes and other settings. Starcraft just remains that weird color

 

Strange, Because it worked on Starcraft for me, and my friend.
Make sure nothing else is selected, and make sure that the game is patched as well.

 

It's patched to 1.16.1 or something

 

Just put this code in a text document and save it as a bat file in your Starcraft folder. Fire it up (or create a shortcut for it) and it'll run fine and dandy for you:

Code:

taskkill /f /IM explorer.exe
starcraft.exe
Start explorer.exe

 

Hmm. When I encounter an old game with weird colours, I typically just alt-tab out and back in, and they're allll fixed.

 

Not me. Seems they're always fubar. This little bat file seems to fix it though.

 

hey there is a trick for this that someone told me while playing worms armageddon online which suffers from the same problem in later operating systems.

as long as you have a windows explorer page open you should have normal color. this is what the batch file does that htwingnut showed.

 

Closing explorer.exe is a mess.. Usually results in disappearing tray icons and explorer settings not being saved.

Once when i played Age of Empires II and Starcraft, and had this colour issue, and i fixed it by opening the screen resolution changer in win7.. Its so weird but it fixed it.

 

better solution from me for starcraft I posted it before but it was a long time ago.

Use your original game. Go to battlenet and register your game's CD key so you can digitally download it just like Steam.

https://us.battle.net/login/login.x...anagement/classic-games.xml?license=1&app=bam

The version your download is fully up to date and seems to work with Vista & Win 7 out of the box. Same for Warcraft 3, Diablo 2 and several other Blizzard games.

 

True that, I found that tweak out by accident 2 years ago, I felt big and tough!

 

None of those other solutions work for me, which is how I came upon this little bat file. And killing explorer.exe hasn't caused an issue for me so far. All icons return.

And no, what my bat file does is NOT open an explorer window. It basically kills the GUI, starts the game, and when the game terminates, it restarts the GUI.

 

Did you try the downloaded version? It worked for me on Vista x64 and Win 7 x64 out of the box on 3 different systems.

I love the convenience of digital download so I would do it regardless because I can download my games to any system I am on and dont have to worry about losing the original disks now.

 

You should also add that when playing Diablo 1 and 2, if you open your "Screen Resolution" and leave it open, then play Diablo, it fixes the colors.

Also playing it on Windowed Mode fixes it to.

To bad you can't increase the resolution past 800.

 

Yep, been playing with downloaded version for quite a while. Playing it on my desktop and laptop with same result. However, you have ATI and I have nVidia, not sure if that makes a difference?

That was already mentioned, and no it doesn't work for me for some reason. I've tried all those tricks before and it was annoying me.

However, how do you play in windowed mode? Starcraft doesn't support windowed mode.

 

Hmm not sure but your right all 3 systems were ATI based.

Starcraft can run windowed with hacks it even can run widescreen, wouldn't try it online though.

Also I cam across this tool called 3d Analyze I think it helps you run old games without a hitch on new hardware, even though I think it was made to do just the opposite.

http://www.techenclave.com/applications/3d-analyze-v2-26-graphics-card-91070.html

 

Oh yeah, I've used 3D Analyze a lot when I first got my Eee 900. Worked like a charm in a couple instances. I did find a way to play Starcraft in a window with a hack a couple years ago, but I didn't like it. And I did try the widescreen, but could never get it to work, and yeah, I did hear it can get you banned from Battle.net.

 

Well I don't know about Starcraft, never played it.

But you can try it on Starcraft, I know it works on Diablo 2.

Go to your shortcut, and go to properties. From there at the end of "Target" you want to add "-w" without the quotes. It should look something like this:

"C:Example\Example\Example.exe" -w
............................................^ Don't forget the space.