WC3 starting slow as fu.... hell

[Luorax]

It's not really World Editor related, though it's kinda annoying while working on something, and AFAIK we don't have a section for stuff related to the game itself, so whatever.

So basically, my problem is that WC3 starts really slowly. When I run it, it waits for like 30-40 seconds (the "logo" doesn't appear either), then it immediately loads in. If I run it twice though, it starts immediately, and the error message that tells me I can only run it once appears with that 30-40 second delay. It's really annoying.

Does anyone have an idea what could be causing it? It's been really pissing me off lately.

 

[Luorax]

It wasn't doing it before, there must be something in the background that's causing this weird behavior. I study software engineering, I just can't say "oh well, whatever", I must know what happened

 

[Xonok]

It seems to be that the very first stages are done slowly or wrong, because the picture is the first thing that you should see. If you wait 30-40 seconds, then it's likely that the picture is shown briefly at the end of that period and then everything immediately loads.
As in, the loading works, but the display fails and thus causes the delay.
I don't know if this is how it goes, but that's my theory.

 

[Luorax]

Well, it appears that it only happens with "Frozen Throne.exe". When started with "war3.exe", it loads in immediately. I just noticed how the delay wasn't there with kloader, and after testing it, it appears that both my batch file and my regular shortcut work properly. I think that's pretty interesting.

 

[Binsu]

Maybe this two exe has some thing different in it though I cannt possibly say what it is. So I just suggest is open it in the exe file where you feel comfortable and the lag disappears and the starting screen appears but to be honest, I also experience this kind of thing.

 

[deathismyfriend]

get JNGP. my normal WE is slow starting up normally about 1 minute. but w JNGP its about 5 - 10 seconds.

 

[PurgeandFire]

Try reinstalling. If that doesn't work, then check if all your drivers are updated. If they are all updated, you may want to backup your files and reformat your hard drive or run disk defragmenter.

 

[Shyster]

Try reinstalling. If that doesn't work, then check if all your drivers are updated. If they are all updated, you may want to backup your files and reformat your hard drive or run disk defragmenter.

Sorry for necroing this thread, but I was surprised to find out someone actually had my issue has anyone encountered this and found a concrete solution? It started doing this a couple months ago out of nowhere.

 

[Tasyen]

This happens on my laptop, too.
On my laptop this appears, if don't have an internet connection.

 

[Kaijyuu]

Happens to me as well. I thought it some wc3 quirk I never noticed until recently.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Does anyone have an idea what could be causing it?

Very bad I/O speed with the underlying file system that WC3 and its dependencies are installed on. The second time works so fast because of the OS file cache in memory (so no I/O is actually done, only soft page faults occur).

If you have a mechanical drive then it is either under continuous high utilization (disk check, anti-virus, malware, etc) or it is showing signs of failure. If you have a SSD then it is most likely malware.

 

[Kaijyuu]

I don't think it's I/O (or at least not delays caused by slow hard drives). It happens solely with the Frozen Throne launcher for me, not with war3.exe.

The first time the launcher is opened something breaks but not fatally. It's obviously waiting for a timeout to recover from the failure since it consistently takes 20 seconds to actually have Arthas's ugly undead mug pop up. If I attempt to load launcher again, it will pop up instantly, but only if the first instance is still trying to load. If there are no warcraft 3 processes currently running, the launcher will always bug out and have to wait for the timeout. Because of that, I don't think it's an OS caching issue either (if it happened to work only when files are cached, then the launcher would presumably load properly for some time after warcraft 3 is closed).


As for the editor, I'm personally have 0 problems with that.

 

[Dr Super Good]

if it happened to work only when files are cached, then the launcher would presumably load properly for some time after warcraft 3 is closed

Only if the computer has enough memory that is not in use by applications to maintain the files being cached.

I would recommend reinstalling the game from an official source such as BattleNet. It could be a corrupted install. Also make sure anti-virus is not setup too strictly, as that can sometimes block.

 

[Deleted member 219079]

Make sure the resolution in WC3 is the same as your system.

Try OpenGL mode.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Make sure the resolution in WC3 is the same as your system.

What does this mean?

WC3 should use a 4:3 ratio which maximizes size for the display.

 

[Deleted member 219079]

If you have different resolution in Windows and Warcraft III, there will be increase in startup time of Warcraft III. Give it a go.

 

[Dr Super Good]

there will be increase in startup time of Warcraft III. Give it a go.

That is a result of the resolution change, and should be <0.5 seconds.

 

[Deleted member 219079]

For me, it was several seconds after having fiddled with 1440p.

Edit: Just tested, screen is in black for 3 seconds. Then when both are at 1080p, it is roughly 100ms.

 

[pyf]

I don't think it's I/O (or at least not delays caused by slow hard drives). It happens solely with the Frozen Throne launcher for me, not with war3.exe.

The first time the launcher is opened something breaks but not fatally. It's obviously waiting for a timeout to recover from the failure since it consistently takes 20 seconds to actually have Arthas's ugly undead mug pop up. If I attempt to load launcher again, it will pop up instantly, but only if the first instance is still trying to load. If there are no warcraft 3 processes currently running, the launcher will always bug out and have to wait for the timeout. [...]

What happens when you disable your antivirus?

With Patch 1.27a, only the war3.exe file is digitally signed. Therefore, the other game executables might trigger some kind of heuristics scan / cloud scan by your antivirus software. I know Frozen Throne.exe and Warcraft III.exe can even trigger FPs with a few of them.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Edit: Just tested, screen is in black for 3 seconds. Then when both are at 1080p, it is roughly 100ms.

I just tested and it is dark for less than half a second due to the resolution change from 1080p to 1440*1080 (4:3).

I know Frozen Throne.exe and Warcraft III.exe can even trigger FPs with a few of them.

They should never do that as none of them do anything virus like.

 

[Deleted member 219079]

1440*1080

According to this:

QHD / WQHD (2560x1440)
QHD (Quad HD), WQHD (Wide Quad HD), or 1440p

 

[Dr Super Good]

According to this:

According to it what? What does anything I said have to do with 1440p (2560*1440) which is a form of UHD?

I play WC3 at 1440*1080 because it is the most native 4:3 resolution one can get on a 16:9 1080p (1920*1080) display. In case people were not aware, 4:3 being narrower than 16:9 means the image is vertically limited, hence the same number of vertical pixels as 1080p but only 1440 horizontal pixels instead of 1920. It is highly likely a non-standard resolution as 4:3 was phased out or pushed to industrial usage by the time high resolutions become common.

 

[Deleted member 219079]

Senseless to try to replicate the slowdown with those settings.

I'm able to replicate the slowdown on another machine as well.

 

[pyf]

They should never do that as none of them do anything virus like.

And yet it may happen (or else I have a serious issue):

Warcraft III.exe
- 2016-09-30
- 2016-10-02 (fourth FP because of Rising)

Frozen Throne.exe
- 2016-07-03
- 2016-10-02 (FP fixed by nProtect, but Bkav adds one)

Bkav has lots of FPs, btw

I hope these two files will be digitally signed with next patch.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Senseless to try to replicate the slowdown with those settings.

How do I replicate it then? I have the game run in a non-standard resolution without problems. A worse case than that I do not know of.

Unless you use a D-SUB VGA connector of course. In which case a digital display like a LCD panel will have to tune to the signal which can take several seconds every time the display changes resolutions. In such a case swapping to a modern standard like DVI, HDMI or DisplayPort will fix the problem.

I hope these two files will be digitally signed with next patch.

What are you talking about? Why do they need digital signatures?

WC3 has inconsistent frame rate for me. Started with Windows 10 Anniversary edition. Starting the game once file cached still takes <1 second.

 

[pyf]

What are you talking about? Why do they need digital signatures?

A verified digital signature should be one of the indicators suggesting the signed file is legit. It should therefore help avoid FPs with antivirus software (though it is my belief some Chinese AV do not seem to take such signatures into account).

With Patch 1.27a, these files are now digitally signed (it was not the case before):
- war3.exe
- game.dll
- Storm.dll

 

[Dr Super Good]

A verified digital signature should be one of the indicators suggesting the signed file is legit. It should therefore help avoid FPs with antivirus software (though it is my belief some Chinese AV do not seem to take such signatures into account).

As far as I am aware none of the Blizzard WC3 files have ever shown up as false positives. They do not do anything to trigger the heuristics.

 

[pyf]

Yet, one can see 15 votes on VirusTotal, for war3.exe from v126a being malicious in some way.

On VirusTotal.com, non tech-savvy users generally vote for a file being harmful, only because of FPs. Which is absolutely not the proper way to use the 'Vote' feature btw.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Yet, one can see 15 votes on VirusTotal, for war3.exe from v126a being malicious in some way.

Many of the "cracks" used since no-cd was patched in are viruses. The game is still very popular to pirate, so the perfect target for malware.

 

[Kaijyuu]

Anti-virus? Whatever Windows 7 has (built in and/or from updates) and malwarebytes. I don't know enough about those to say whether they'd be checking programs I run in the first place (windows DOES pop up unknown publisher warnings occasionally so I imagine it is, though it's never complained about wc3).

 

[pyf]

As far as I am aware none of the Blizzard WC3 files have ever shown up as false positives. They do not do anything to trigger the heuristics.

Bkav has quickly fixed its heuristics with both Warcraft III.exe and Frozen Throne.exe.
FT before
FT after

Rising has already fixed its FP for Warcraft III.exe, but only to be replaced by McAfee:
WC before
WC after

Many of the "cracks" used since no-cd was patched in are viruses. The game is still very popular to pirate, so the perfect target for malware.

I believe it is an oversight by Blizzard, the two exes above have not been digitally signed as well.

 

[Dr Super Good]

I believe it is an oversight by Blizzard, the two exes above have not been digitally signed as well.

Digital signatures only took off after WC3 was developed and released so one can expect them to not be signed.

For the record, signatures are there to verify the authenticity of the publisher. The lack of a signature is not a sign that something is malware. Most open source software is not signed as it costs money to own a signature key (it is slightly a money making scam). All old software is not signed as the key either expired, or the software was made before the system existed.

The entire point of keys is to stop redirect "man in the middle" attacks. For example if one downloads Chrome through public wifi it is possible that the download file could be substituted for a fake malicious one. Since hackers do not have the Google private keys they cannot sign the installer and so it would come back with an unknown, or revoked publisher. That is a sign not to install it since that is malware. The genuine Chrome installer always is signed by Google, and no malware will be signed by Google. That said you can get malware signed by GoogleFake or any other publisher since any company can buy a key. Hence a slight money making scam unless you know the names of the key holders as nothing stops similar named holders from existing and signing software.

 

[pyf]

Digital signatures only took off after WC3 was developed and released so one can expect them to not be signed.

I can understand that. What puzzles me is: two exes out of three have not been signed with Patch 1.27a

For the record, signatures are there to verify the authenticity of the publisher.

[...] That said you can get malware signed by GoogleFake or any other publisher since any company can buy a key. Hence a slight money making scam unless you know the names of the key holders as nothing stops similar named holders from existing and signing software.

VirusTotal allows to verify this, and more (in the 'File detail' tab).

The lack of a signature is not a sign that something is malware. Most open source software is not signed as it costs money to own a signature key (it is slightly a money making scam). All old software is not signed as the key either expired, or the software was made before the system existed.

I believe a valid signed file would be more trusted than an unsigned one, in case of detection by AV software.

Some developers buy a digital signature, in the hopes to lower FPs / raise confidence in their software. This used to be the case with El Desaparecido and his UsbFix tool. The software was signed during the year 2015 (roughly from v7.812 up to v8.020 at least). Current UsbFix versions do not use a digital signature anymore.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Some developers buy a digital signature, in the hopes to lower FPs / raise confidence in their software. This used to be the case with El Desaparecido and his UsbFix tool. The software was signed during the year 2015 (roughly from v7.812 up to v8.020 at least). Current UsbFix versions do not use a digital signature anymore.

Some developers need to buy a signature key because starting with Windows Vista 64, all drivers have to be signed (Windows will refuse to install a non-signed driver).

 

[pyf]

Haha, I had indeed forgotten that one. Thanks for reminding me.

Anti-virus? Whatever Windows 7 has (built in and/or from updates) and malwarebytes. I don't know enough about those to say whether they'd be checking programs I run in the first place (windows DOES pop up unknown publisher warnings occasionally so I imagine it is, though it's never complained about wc3).

I understand you do not have Microsoft Security Essentials installed, then.

Since it would seem you did not install any third-party antivirus, does disabling Windows Defender solve / alleviate the issue?
Windows Defender - Turn On or Off - Windows 7 Help Forums
How to disable Windows Defender in Windows 7 - Simple Help

Also, is real-time protection activated in Malwarebytes Anti-Malware?
MBAM Premium allows to use real-time protection, but there is a free trial available for this feature.

 

[Kaijyuu]

Turning off windows defender did not change anything, and I malwarebyte's free trial expired long long ago.

 

[pyf]

[...] It happens solely with the Frozen Throne launcher for me, not with war3.exe.

The first time the launcher is opened something breaks but not fatally. It's obviously waiting for a timeout to recover from the failure since it consistently takes 20 seconds to actually have Arthas's ugly undead mug pop up.

Are you using (possibly third-party) Windows themes?

Using a sandbox, I have noticed the exe first tries to load (or so it seems) the system file uxtheme.dll.
I know some people might decide to use patched system files (at their own risk!), in order to apply unsigned third-party themes.

(windows DOES pop up unknown publisher warnings occasionally so I imagine it is, though it's never complained about wc3).

Could you elaborate please?


Also, do you have the possibility to please reinstall the game, as per Dr Super Good's earlier suggestion?

If you have different resolution in Windows and Warcraft III, there will be increase in startup time of Warcraft III. Give it a go.

I understand the issue is, the logo takes a long time to first appear. I believe the videomode switch happens afterwards.

 

[Kaijyuu]

Could you elaborate please?

Windows occasionally gives me one of two popups when running/installing things.

User Account Control warnings pop up when installing things, which is probably unrelated.
"Security Warnings" pop up with unknown publishers. Looking it up, it appears that Windows likes to mark downloaded files from the internets as "untrusted" if they don't come from a whitelist of sources, and that's the error that I was thinking of. Probably unrelated as well, as my frozen throne launcher wasn't directly downloaded from anywhere (I did download the game from blizzard's site, but that was their standard installer).

 

[pyf]

Therefore nothing suspicious at first sight.

@Luorax, @Shyster and @Tasyen: feedback welcome, since I can not reproduce this issue on XP (yet?).


I doubt the IsDebuggerPresent API can be triggered by the VC++ debug runtimes alone.

(sorry for asking the obvious) Using Regedit, in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Blizzard Entertainment\Warcraft III, do you have these entries properly defined: InstallPath, InstallPathX, Program, ProgramX, War3CD, War3XCD?

I suppose you already tried all kinds of compatibility settings with the Frozen Throne exe?
Using Program Compatibility Mode in Windows 7
(notably: XP mode, visual themes, desktop composition, display scaling on high DPI settings, run as an administrator)

I suggest you try upgrading your video card's drivers, just in case something GDI-related got broken:
Graphics Device Interface - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Windows Display Driver Model - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


If this also fails, I would then tentatively suspect a gdi32.dll update, since it would seem this issue happens out of the blue.

As far as I am aware none of the Blizzard WC3 files have ever shown up as false positives. They do not do anything to trigger the heuristics.

(@Dr Super Good)
Is there anything EMF-related in the Frozen Throne's exe?
Windows Metafile - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If yes, then could the slow loading have something to do with how gdi32.dll deals with EMF?
Microsoft Security Bulletin MS15-035 - Critical
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3046306

It might eventually explain the eventual few FPs too
And yes, I know this might be kinda far-fetched...

Fyi, the last gdi32.dll version for XP is v5.1.2600.6460 from 10/09/2013.


** update **

[...] WC3 has inconsistent frame rate for me. Started with Windows 10 Anniversary edition. [...]

Most probably part of a feature; not a bug
WDDM 2.1 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Dr Super Good]

Most probably part of a feature; not a bug

WC3 is D3D9 (since last patch) not D3D12.

It is most likely another issue with the legacy fixed shader pipeline WC3 uses. New drivers and OSes do not optimize for it because it has sort of been obsolete since D3D8 when programmable shaders were added (which means WC3 was actually developed for D3D7 with a change to D3D8 late during development).

I am guessing the frame rate might be an issue with automatic vertical sync. That would explain why it constantly changes from 30 to 60 FPS.

 

[Kaijyuu]

Are you using (possibly third-party) Windows themes?

Nope.

(sorry for asking the obvious) Using Regedit, in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Blizzard Entertainment\Warcraft III, do you have these entries properly defined: InstallPath, InstallPathX, Program, ProgramX, War3CD, War3XCD?

I checked those and not all of them existed. InstallPath and Program did, and I tried adding InstallPathX and ProgramX (since their values would be obvious), but that didn't fix anything. The CD ones didn't exist and I wouldn't know what to create.

I added the "Allow Local Files" thing a while back, but removing that didn't change anything either.

I suppose you already tried all kinds of compatibility settings with the Frozen Throne exe?

Yeah, nothing. Admin and winxp compatibility mode didn't change anything.



Is there any downside to just directly running war3.exe? I'm not sure what the launcher is even for (maybe applying patches?).

 

[pyf]

[...] I checked those and not all of them existed. InstallPath and Program did, and I tried adding InstallPathX and ProgramX (since their values would be obvious), but that didn't fix anything. The CD ones didn't exist and I wouldn't know what to create.

You downloaded your game directly from Blizzard, while I installed it from retail CD-Roms. This is why some registry entries are not the same.

For the CD entries, it is simply the CD-Rom's drive letter with a backslash, therefore generally D:\

Is there any downside to just directly running war3.exe?

None that I know of. With TFT installed, you can run war3.exe with the parameter '-classic' to launch RoC. More parameters here:
[Misc] - Complete Command-Line Arguments Guide

I'm not sure what the launcher is even for (maybe applying patches?).

The launchers / splash screens are a thing from the past, back when CD-Roms were mandatory to run the games. There is some talk about it in this thread.

Interestingly, even with the latest Patch, the shortcuts from my Start Menu keep pointing to Warcraft III.exe and Frozen Throne.exe. Both of these exes require and launch war3.exe; but war3.exe does not need them to launch TFT nor RoC.