A fix for Windows 7 and Game Explorer

[662a984ee788dJDoran]

I've been asked to fix a laptop that sometimes refuses to load games. Turns out it's down to a stupid feature implemented by Microsoft (yep, another one...).

The laptop is running Windows 7, and the problem is down to a little known (and pretty pointless, it seems) feature called Games Explorer. What Games Explorer does, as far as I can ascertain, is watch for a game being launched, then Games Explorer checks online for updates for the game, and keeps count of the times you've launched that particular game. It also can be used to display information about the game.

The problem is, if the PC is offline, then the game doesn't start - instead Windows just stays forever in a loop trying to access the online database. It doesn't even tell you that there's a problem, it just perpetually loops. How stupid is that?

What you have to do when this happens is open Windows Task Manager, manually close the game from there, and then re-launch the game, and then it will load.

Over time, some users discovered or created fixes for the problem, but apparently Microsoft stopped these fixes from working in later updates. Microsoft didn't think it worth adding an option to disable Games Explorer despite people requesting this, but they did think it worthwhile to disable the various users' homemade fixes. You have to love Microsoft, don't you?

Anyway, I finally found a solution that seems to work. On the forum:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_other-gaming/windows-7-game-explorer-interfering-with-game/efd39c74-cfab-4c2c-b6c5-834b8849a1b3?page=2&auth=1

Is a post saying:

Here is a little script I wrote to automate getting rid of gameux.dll (in case Windows update makes it reappear in the future). Just copy to some .cmd file and execute with admin rights:
Do NOT change the "go to helll" part, this is important!




if %PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE% == AMD64 (
set filename=%windir%\SysWOW64\gameux.dll
) else (
set filename=%windir%\System32\gameux.dll
)

TAKEOWN /F %filename%
ICACLS %filename% /grant %USERNAME%:F
ren %filename% "gameux.dll - go to helll!!!"
pause





I copied the text to a file called "Disable Windows 7 Game Explorer.cmd", copied it to the laptop, ran it, and it seems to work great. Since it's Windows based, then the usual considerations apply; it might not work on even another seemingly identical machine + Windows installation, a future Windows update might prevent the fix from working, and it's not impossible that this fix could cause problems itself. But if Microsoft won't add an option to disable Game Explorer, then a third party solution seems the only way to go.

Thanks to SD Sdafasdfadsfadf for writing the fix, and for making it available on that forum.

[662a984ee7a55voodoo47]

could this be that evil unknown thing that delays SS2 launch if the exe is named shock2.exe? if that's the case, simply renaming the game executable should fix the problem.

[662a984ee7c09Kolya]

I don't seem to have games explorer in windows 10. But apparently it is possible to disable the games explorer online check that happens when starting the game.

https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/887850-removing-games-explorer/?do=findComment&comment=592582170

It is only a partial fix as it will still check when installing the game according to that post, but it should be good enough in most cases.

[662a984ee7fbbJDoran]

could this be that evil unknown thing that delays SS2 launch if the exe is named shock2.exe? if that's the case, simply renaming the game executable should fix the problem.

I don't know if Game Explorer causes the problem you mention, but you're right that renaming the .exe of a game does also get around this problem of Game Explorer (and hopefully it doesn't create any more, such as the file needing to access itself, or another file later on trying to call the now renamed file) but it's a nuisance if you have a lot of games installed, plus in this case, the laptop wasn't mine, so I didn't want to alter more on it than was necessary.

It just really annoys me that Microsoft add 'features' like this, without having an option to turn them off.

Kolya, it's good that you can turn it off in Windows 10 (I didn't know that), but there's no such option in Windows 7 (dunno about Windows 8/8.1). Even if I'd missed it somehow, the many people who've looked for it over the years wouldn't have.

[662a984ee80d0voodoo47]

nope, turning the game folder stuff options off (updates were already off) doesn't fix the delayed start on shock2.exe, so it's something else. no matter, both GOG and steam use ss2.exe now.

also yes, bs like this should have no place in a decent os.