Giveaway of the Day Forums

1. 

   Dragonlair
   Member

   I'm still building my new Win 10 machine with games. I started with over 1250 and have installed and tested (and removed some failures) about 500 games.

   Some games that work fine on Win 7 and Win 8.1 fail in very strange ways on Win 10. I've got more failures so far than I did total with Win 8.1. That says that, although the basic "look and feel" of the OS being similar to win 10, the underlying workings is far different!

   Three of the games, so far, have failed in such a way that I have had to resort to a "hard boot" of simply shutting down the system unit and booting back up! I know that is very dangerous and the last time took a lot of time and effort to get back.

   When these games fail, the screen just goes BLACK and nothing I can do will stop the game and go back to the desktop. I tried alt-Tab and ctrl-alt-del and I can't get the game to stop! Is there anything else I can do that is safer than a hard boot?

   Needless to say, these games get tagged as "failed" and are immediately removed! The last one (and hardest to get out of) was Clear It (the first of the series). The 2nd - 5th Clear It games work great!

   This is a slow process and it will still be at least a month (at this rate) to complete the project.

   Help! Can anybody help me with these kinds of "failures"?

   Posted 4 years ago #
2. 

   ChrisS
   Administrator

   If you haven't done so, you should check Event Viewer to see if anything is reported. It might be a simple video driver issue.

   My guess, though, is that it's a problem with DirectX. Most of the older games can run on DirectX9c which was the latest version for XP. To check your version run the DirectX diagnostic tool (type dxdiag in the search box to find it). Theoretically, DirectX should be backwards compatible but it many cases theory doesn't work. I think you can install the older version of DirectX in Windows 10 but I'm not certain.

   The simplest solution would be to put the games in an XP or Win7 VM. Or, run "Disk2VHD" from sysinternals and convert the drive where the games work to a VM and install it on the new PC. You'd need a separate license for the VM.

   Posted 4 years ago #
3. 

   ChrisS
   Administrator

   Another thought:

   Take a look at the installed program list in your "old" PC and see what you have listed for the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable Packages (search C++) and compare to the new PC.

   You might need to install the older versions if they're not already installed. The programs that work might have included the needed files while the ones that fail might have properly required them to be installed on your system.

   Posted 4 years ago #
4. 

   Dragonlair
   Member

   These are all good ideas --- after the fact.

   I want to know how to get out of the situation when it does occur - as it has 3 times now.

   Posted 4 years ago #
5. 

   mikiem2
   Moderator

   If it were me I'd try win10's sandbox, but to run that you need win10 pro or Enterprise, and I don't know if you have win10 pro or home. There are articles online that say you can add the sandbox to win10 home, but it sounds like one of those things that *may* work, or not.

   windowscentral[.]com/how-use-windows-sandbox-windows-10-may-2019-update
   winaero[.]com/blog/enable-windows-sandbox-in-windows-10-home/
   ghacks[.]net/2019/04/26/install-the-windows-sandbox-in-windows-10-home/

   The advantage of the sandbox is that it *should* present most of your hardware to the game, and if it freezes, you just close the sandbox window. In my experience though, not all software will run in the sandbox. I would recommend something like Time Freeze or Shadow Defender, but Time Freeze hasn't been updated in years, & I had to stop using it, while Shadow Defender hasn't been updated in over a year, with no indication if it's been abandoned or not. Running one of those, nothing would be written to the hard drive, so if you did a hard shutdown, nothing at all would be lost or corrupted etc. -- starting it up again would be the same as starting it any other time it was turned off.

   I install all of the GOTD games in a VM, then copy them to my wife's PC & 2-in-1, and they almost always will not run in the VM, I *think* because it has no actual GPU. Direct X 9 will install fine in win10, and may well be necessary -- I installed it proactively on my wife's PC & 2-in-1 so I don't know how often it's helped. Her 2-in-1 uses the Intel CPU's built-in GPU, and there have been several graphics driver updates. To get them I had to download the .zip file package from Intel, unpack it, & update the driver though Device Mgr. Immediately afterward & since then I've used the regular driver setup file, and use the Intel Driver & support assistant to check for updates. If you install the assistant -- it's available from the Intel main download page -- it will tell you if updates are available, but if your device was blocked like my wife's 2-in-1, it will not install them until you've installed a driver direct from Intel rather than the manufacturer.

   Posted 4 years ago #
6. 

   Dragonlair
   Member

   Actually, my husband had a suggestion that seems to prevent the problem - or has since he told me the trick - alt-F4! That is "Exit". Sometimes, it wakes up the game enough to pop-up a question if I really wanted to quit and I click "Yes" or "OK", or whatever, and it terminates fine. Then I can get uninstall it.

   Sometimes, I don't see anything but if I hit "enter", it terminates. A third possibility is a second alt-F4 and it terminates.

   Regardless, it seems to be the answer to my question. Remember Alt-4 = Exit!

   Posted 4 years ago #

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