I just had a case of several of my old windows games refusing to start while the CPU would saturate doing nothing (Win 7).

After investigating a little, I found out that the cause for this was the Game Explorer (gameux) who meddled as soon as the game got started. It would try to connect to the Microsoft servers to collect infos. But it seems that the MS server (https://games.metaservices.microsoft.com/games/SGamesWebService.asmx) is dead now. So it loops indefinitely doing nothing, and all these game won't work anymore.

This bug affects all games listed in the windows registry at this location : HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\GameUX. Others are unaffected.

This is totally silly, but can be easily solved. Some did it by deleting some dlls, but it is better to just change a registry key.

EvilEdDead explained it well here (thanks man !).
Just open Regedit, got to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\GameUX\ServiceLocation and change the server address contained in the "Games" chain value to 127.0.0.1 or localhost (do a backup first if you wish).

This will solve the problem once and for all for all the games which had it.

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Alternative method : copy-paste the text below to a txt file and rename the extension as .reg instead of .txt, then double-click on the file to apply it.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\GameUX\ServiceLocation]
"Games"="127.0.0.1"

And to undo the changes, do the same with this instead :

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\GameUX\ServiceLocation]
"Games"="https://games.metaservices.microsoft.com/games/SGamesWebService.asmx"

I suggest to contact Microsoft support about this (and if necessary contact Steam and Gog support)

(Windows 10 hasn't that key, or at least i can't find it; i don't know about Windows 8/8.1)

In my case I am conected to the internet and it still happens.

Really? Never happens to me on my 7 ult machine I keep offline most of the time for older games.
Always happened to at least half of my collection on 7 Home. Why I stopped using home ed.

That is odd it is happening while online. Hmm.

Their server (link in my first post) is dead, so it behaves the same as if offline.

I know about the games explorer reghack. It has been around for a bit.

I didn't know games explorer has been fubar while connected to the net.

Part of windows 7 end of life?

The weird thing is its very picky and choosey because a good amount of old GOG games I already have installed still works.

So I don't know why a select amount has this issue.

If this is correct it would only effect some games because the issue would be related to games that used the defunct windows game service. There may be something in the game itself looking to connect to a service that no longer exists. It would make sense.

The games affected are the only ones stored at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\GameUX.
All others should be unaffected.

Sadly for me, Morrowind and Icewind Dale 2 is affected.

Any other recommendation on how to fix this?

Uhm... i have a lot of games in that key...

Does the game work if:-

1. You temporarily disable your network adaptor (Control Panel -> Network & Sharing Center -> Change Adaptor Settings -> Right Click on Network Adaptor -> Disable? (NB: To restore it, just right-click -> Enable).

2. You temporarily set your Firewall to block by default (Control Panel -> Windows Firewall -> Advanced Settings -> Properties -> Outbound Connection (on Domain, Private & Public) to "Block". (NB: To restore it, just reset to Allow).

I'm running W7 with "block by default" Firewall as 2, and everything works fine (inc Morrowind).

Are you running a Windows 10 and this issue happens?

AHA! I wondered why so many games stopped working suddenly. Thanks for informing us!

A quick test and one game works again :-)