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Get Starcraft working on Windows 7: Three easy steps

Brian Ambrozy September 21, 2009 5:44 AM ET in Gaming

Win7StarcraftYesterday my roommate and partner in crime, Lincoln, busted out his Starcraft box (again). This time, however, he uses Windows 7 as his desktop OS.

He was dubious, and sure enough, the 11-year-old game didn’t work correctly. It did launch, but the colors were all whacked out and the graphics were glitched in random places, rendering the whole mess unplayable.

He tried the built-in Windows XP Virtual Machine, but that wouldn’t play it because the XP VM can’t change screen modes. Back to the drawing board.

After some searching and some experimentation, he came to the following three-step fix:

  1. Right click the Starcraft icon -> Properties -> Compatibility tab
  2. Check ALL the Settings, but do NOT check Compatibility Mode
  3. When you are ready to play, right click your desktop and click “Screen Resolution”. Leave this window open. Now launch Starcraft!

For whatever reason, this admittedly odd fix solves the color issue. The most important bit: leave the Screen Res window open while you play and you’re golden.

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36 Comments:

  1. taka
    Guest
    21 Sep '09, 8:38 am

    taka says no point in haggling with that junk guys keep an XP partition or machine next to your Windows7 set up so you can run DirectX 9 and down on the XP box and 10 and up and the 7 HELLLOLOOOOO wakeupppp poepleeeee

  2. FelixDeSouze
    Bring On The Trumpets!
    21 Sep '09, 8:57 am

    Lovin that this is on reddit

    http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/9mkow/odd_way_to_get_starcraft_running_in_windows_7/

  3. Anony
    Guest
    21 Sep '09, 8:57 am

    Punctuate much?

  4. Guest
    Guest
    21 Sep '09, 9:56 am

    or down(up)grade to windows xp....

  5. Thrax
    Cad
    21 Sep '09, 9:57 am

    (Down).

  6. redditor
    Guest
    21 Sep '09, 11:22 am

    This is a symptom that Microsoft are force obsoleting certain things and artificially requiring things to update to work on windows (as manuf. want them to!)

    Microsoft are bastards

  7. Snarkasm
    The Photographer.
    21 Sep '09, 11:24 am

    Or perhaps its a sign of progress within an OS that's now more secure, faster, and more capable than Windows XP ever was, but with a caveat - that they had to close some loopholes or rework some APIs that were out of date.

    But hey, you can call them bastards if you want, I guess.

  8. meh
    Guest
    21 Sep '09, 11:29 am

    Snarkasm, I am just posting this to say thank you. Good article, too.

  9. raas
    Guest
    21 Sep '09, 11:40 am

    Starcraft also runs fine in 'wine' on Linux, without any tweak, hack or leaving additional windows open. Just sayin'.

  10. Black Jesus
    Guest
    21 Sep '09, 11:57 am

    You guys are right. Microsoft is just dicks for not testing this 11 year old game out on windows 7. Let's all use Wine for our retro gaming! Can Wine do Zork too? I bet it can cause it's awesome.

  11. Karlos Marcus
    Guest
    21 Sep '09, 12:05 pm

    Use ChaosLauncher and you can play the game in windowed mode on windows 7.

    http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=65196

  12. hrmrmrmrm
    Guest
    21 Sep '09, 12:24 pm

    if you can run windows 7 why not just run a virtual xp machine? works for me...

  13. Thrax
    Cad
    21 Sep '09, 12:32 pm

    Because Starcraft requires 640x480, and XPM cannot change resolutions.

  14. Anon
    Guest
    21 Sep '09, 12:57 pm

    @Black Jesus:

    Zork runs well in Dosbox, but I guess Wine is fine too.

  15. Gatz
    Guest
    21 Sep '09, 1:41 pm

    @Thrax so use a different VM client instead.

  16. Fennec
    Guest
    21 Sep '09, 1:59 pm

    Another solution, is to launch the game, go back to windows, and open task manager, kill explorer.exe and use ALT+TAB to go to the game, it will fix the color issue, I did this with Age of Empires 2 and it worked, got this from somewhere online, I can't remember from where.

  17. shwaip
    elaborate bot
    21 Sep '09, 2:06 pm

    Running Windows xp in a Virtual PC 2007 vm (not XP Mode) allows me to play Diablo 2 in 7/vista. It runs much faster than any of the other hacks I'd tried.

  18. SuperBreakfasttime
    Guest
    21 Sep '09, 4:10 pm

    Try updating your video drivers, noob. SC works great for me under Windows 7, and the reason that you can't run it under Win7's XP VM is because it runs it through remote desktop and 16 bit colors.

  19. Thrax
    Cad
    21 Sep '09, 4:12 pm
    Quoting Gatz

    @Thrax so use a different VM client instead.

    I'm well aware. I was simply answering someone's errant statement.

  20. SuperBreakfasttime
    Guest
    21 Sep '09, 4:20 pm

    shwaip: You should be able to run Diablo2 natively in Windows 7. I haven't had a problem with it.

  21. SuperBreakfasttime
    Guest
    21 Sep '09, 4:22 pm

    "Starcraft also runs fine in 'wine' on Linux, without any tweak, hack or leaving additional windows open. Just sayin'."

    That's a lie. Multiplayer doesn't work under wine.

  22. shwaip
    elaborate bot
    21 Sep '09, 4:33 pm
    Quoting SuperBreakfasttime

    shwaip: You should be able to run Diablo2 natively in Windows 7. I haven't had a problem with it.

    Yeah, I had it working in vista too, but there are some other advantages - I can run 2 vms and have 2 cd keys for muling. I tend to get (much) better performance this way than running windowed (2d). I can keep the window open in the background and email/gchat/irc, rather than having it minimize when i do that.

  23. Joe Insult
    Guest
    21 Sep '09, 5:12 pm

    I'd rather pay Bill Gates to kick me in the balls than use that clinking, clanking, clattering collection of caliginous code called Linux.

    But then, I like being able to point the finger at one person when things go wrong instead of guessing which half-awake code monkey screwed up the latest distro.

  24. Brian Ambrozy
    The Icrontic Guy
    21 Sep '09, 5:51 pm
    Quoting SuperBreakfasttime

    Try updating your video drivers, noob.

    Sigh.. It's nice to have houseguests, but this reminds me of how much I love and appreciate the Icrontic community.

  25. Thrax
    Cad
    21 Sep '09, 6:53 pm

    I was thinking "try having suggestions that aren't obvious." Heh.

  26. Matt
    Guest
    21 Sep '09, 7:27 pm

    Seems like this may be an issue with his particular setup. I just installed SC and it ran fine for me on Windows 7 64. No need for any of this other stuff. However I should note that I used the version you can download from Battle.net, not the CD. Not sure if that makes a difference.

  27. Thrax
    Cad
    21 Sep '09, 8:02 pm

    It's not an issue with this particular setup. The Reddit comment thread reveals several other SC installs fixed by this methodology.

    And yes, the version you download from BNet makes a huge difference.

  28. Inskipp
    Guest
    21 Sep '09, 8:56 pm

    Works fine for me on 64-bit Windows 7, using nvidia 190.62 drivers. This is a cd-install from years ago.

  29. Brian Ambrozy
    The Icrontic Guy
    21 Sep '09, 9:28 pm

    For those that cannot get it to work, through whatever combination of hardware, this fix is for them.

  30. Lincoln
    Snapperhead
    21 Sep '09, 10:17 pm

    Further info on the system cited in the article: I'm running 32-bit Win7, installed SC from CD, and patched with the latest available from Blizzard. My video card is a Radeon HD 2900 XT with Catalyst 8.6 installed.

    I don't know what vagaries are involved with why this is necessary for some and not for others, only that I found significant corroboration for this combination working for others as well (though not as concisely articulated elsewhere).

  31. Thrax
    Cad
    21 Sep '09, 10:28 pm

    (Why 32-bit?)

  32. Lincoln
    Snapperhead
    21 Sep '09, 10:34 pm

    (It's what Brian handed me from E3 - I'm lazy)

  33. Jin choung
    Guest
    22 Sep '09, 1:02 am

    Starcraft started going buggy for me (same symptoms-whacked pixel depth making everything looked "solarized" in xp. Happened after I installed a desktop manager (in my case, stardock's fences). And from rare search hits, it seems like this is a pretty common for Starcraft to have issues with desktop managers so I'm betting that it has to do with win7 desktop management in general or aero in particular. But the fault seems to lie in Starcraft and the way it expects to interface with it's environment (old game can't be blamed) but hopefully blizzard will address in future patch (bless them, they're still supporting the game).

  34. rolleggroll
    Love by the TSA
    22 Sep '09, 7:46 pm

    Reading this article inspired me to re-install Starcraft. Followed the article. Starcraft works. I join a game. Lost Temple. A few minutes later, Reavers are in my base tearing me a new one as I can't micro lings for shit to defend myself. I remembered why I stopped playing.

    Good article though.

  35. Xaanix
    Guest
    21 Oct '09, 5:12 pm

    Thats because you played lost temple. You can always play money maps or UMS and you wont face such stiff competition. Also it usually helps to check your opponent's record, try to play someone with a record similar to your own.

    Usually i'll host a game and won't start it until i've successfully been able to /stat the other player and am happy with the opponent. I boot out anyone with a 'new' record (0-0) or obscenely bad (1-50-1) or obscenely good (120-10-0) records.

  36. raven
    Guest
    10 Nov '09, 4:54 pm

    it's amazing - it works! thanx m8

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