[JSkills]

I looked all over to try and find some help on solving this problem and came across this website. I would greatly appreciate it if you guys can help me solve it. I know SC is old, but hey its a great game and I love playing good rts games. The problem im having is the game seems to do 1 of 4 things when im playing it, and that is 1. It will come up with a error saying "Starcraft has encountered a problem and needs to be closed", 2. The game will just freeze completely to a point where I have to manually shut off the pc. 3. A blue screen will come up for about 3 secs and before I can even read what it says the comp shuts down. And 4 being the most common. The comp will just shut down and there will be no message. Now I don't understand whats causing this. My comp has all up to date hardware and I can play CS: Source, WoW, DOD:Source all with no problem. So why is a old game like this giving me difficulties, makes no sense to me. I have heard Windows xp doesn't go well with SC, but about 2 years back I was playing SC on this same pc using windows xp and having no problem. And now when I go to install the game and start playing it, its acting up. Im sure its not the cds either because I just bought the Battlechest (thinking it was the cd causing the prob). I have also tryed reinstalling the game, and still the problems occured. So do any of you guys know what the problem could be? I would list all my hardware etc but im pretty nooby when it comes to pc talk. You don't know how grateful I'd be if you guys solved it hah.

[Myke]

Have you noticed a pattern as to when these instances happen? For example, a particular cut scene, an audio clip, playing over BattleNet. This could help pinpoint what is going on.

In addition, there should be some minidump files which your OS creates when your system crashes. I believe that they are located in C:\Windows\System32\minidump. If not, just do a search for *.dmp files. I wouldn't suggest trying to read them, as they will give you one hell of a headache. Microsoft has applications which run in MS-DOS that can translate what the minidump files are saying.

[JSkills]

Yes it seems to happen when im in a battle.net game about 5-15mins into the game. Also my comp will even shut down after I just played sc and closed it.

[Myke]

Well, it could be an issue with the video adapter conflicting with the network adapter. Check your IRQs and make sure that they aren't conflicting with each other.

[JSkills]

IRQs?

[Myke]

IRQ = Interrupt Request

Essentially, certain tasks/devices/"ports" use specific IRQs, which stop the processor actions to use the processor. Your mouse has its own IRQ, as does your video adapter, soundcard, and system clock (a total of 16 different IRQs, but only about 5 or 6 of them are really configurable). If you have, let's say, your video card and your network adapter using the same IRQ, this could cause your system to crash because they are both trying to use the processor at exactly the same time. Think of it like a traffice jam on a major highway.

To check your IRQs, you'll have to go into your Device Manager in System Properties (it will be in the Details tab of a device's properties) and look through ceratin elements in there. Start with your soundcard, video adapters, and network adapters. If you notice a device using the same IRQ as another major device, this could cause conflicts.

I'm not saying that this is definitely the answer, but it could have something to do with it; most likely the video adapter, as StarCraft sounds like it is using a different resolution to play the game than what your OS is using, and your network adapter, as it's probably in constant use.