I have the same issue with Far Cry 1. I get very nervous poking about on the PC, so even Alt/Tab/Del to get task master, then stopping the process that was hogging the CPU (rundll32) was heart in the mouth time for me.

I've tried following the above chat but it leaves me cold (and none the wiser, other than it isn't just me).

I can see it's probably not GOG's fault, probably a microsoft thing either from an update or just failure to keep a webpage open for something to call home to.

I hope GOG can post some sort of universal fix. Maybe nor their responsibility, but it seems a lot of games are experiencing this issue now, and GOG does have a thing about getting old games working on newer systems.

On Win7 Pro I currently don't have the ServiceLocation key.
Maybe I'll try adding the fix just to be safe.

Thanks for the info.
I found this via the "rundll32.exe Suddenly Appears With High CPU with Recent GOG Games" thread, as I was looking for what caused rundll32 to have high cpu usage.

For me it affected HOMMV and HOMMV:HoF, not HOMMV:ToTE though.
(the standalone expansion, it doesn't register itself like that for some reason)
Both of those wouldn't want to launch on the first launch and just used up a lot of CPU, at first I had worried that I broke the game by trying to launch both at the same time and as such reinstalled them.
Turned out that it wasn't that though.


Did change the the mentioned key to localhost and now it works fine.
(wonder how though, why does localhost work for it, shouldn't that also not return any info, or are only timeouts an issue?)

I'd suggest adding the info regarding rundll32 to this thread and the title so others can find it easier.
Something along the lines of "Old games not launching, rundll32 using 100% CPU on Windows 7" should work.
Also, for clarity it would be better if you mentioned that one needs to change the "Games" key in the part where you explain to change the server address.

As for GOG Games, I do wonder why those Game Explorer entries get created. Do those really come from the game or is that something that GOG (inconsistently) does?
Either way, the easiest solution would probably be if Microsoft patched this (no idea if they would though) while the other would be for GOG to not create those entries during installation (although this would mean updating a lot of installers, something they did for Galaxy though)

MS won't care about a Win7 problem at all.
The only way to fix this for good is reporting it to Gog (maybe via a blue?).

Hmmm... I wonder what the cause is.

This is a little off topic, but i remember a programmer and compiler designer who talked about floating point, and showed a scenario where a loop would be infinite even if every normal logical comparison was being done, because floating points have NAN as well.

Though i'm pretty sure that isn't the case. Though i know Windows 95 required you to have a FPU unit to run it.

You have to contact gog/staff and ask them to do so via the support tab/contact us form on one of the pages.

Does that mean that at some point playing games on Windows 7 will be difficult / impossible ?

Hm, I installed Wizards & Warriors. When I start it with active internet connection, the game only gets to to loading screen, and then hangs. It doesn`t even let me alt tab out or get to the task manager, so I have to power off my laptop.
But without internet connection, the game runs with no problem. I`m wondering if this is related to what is said in this thread.

What do you mean with "playing games"? Any computer/OS will still do what it originally did if you keep it offline and only run software that was intended/made for it.

And yes, in the future more and more games/software will be released that don't work on W7 anymore.

Well yeah I guess disabling internet when you launch a game is a solution but it sounds pretty annoying honestly. So many people still uses Windows 7 on their everyday computer, it really sucks to have to do such things every time you want to play a game...

I know that at some point Windows is no longer supported by Microsoft but my Windows XP laptop still works as intended even if it's connected to the internet.

The registry fix eliminated the problem for me.

What I was experiencing was games not working. The client displayed the game as active, but no game loaded. Pulling up the Task Manager and Resource Monitor showed that the game EXE(s) were indeed running, but that the Rundll32 was eating up all the CPU cycles. The Resource Monitor showed all 4 CPU cores running at, or near, 100%. Killing the game process did not stop the heavy CPU load - only killing the Rundll32 process tree did that.

For all those still having a problem - just follow the fix as previously posted.

Create a text document on your desktop. Copy the following text and paste it into the text document. Save it. Rename it to something simple like: FixGames.REG ...and then double click on it to run it. You will get a warning about modifying the registry (Just do it, wuss). Enjoy life again, gamer.

Copy & Paste the following:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

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

To have it point to the local machine/loopback.

And looking at the GameUX \ Service Location for part of the path, this is to disable the networking search/connect features for said game, features/servers that are likely long since discontinued.

Hmmm for microsoft windows no less... i never did use the 'games' folder microsoft provided...

What happen if you try to remove GameUX string?
On Windows 10 i see gameux.dll but there isn't that key

Oh, try this https://s3.amazonaws.com/neowin/forum/uploads/monthly_05_2010/post-14624-12729862375745.jpg

try also regsvr32 -u c:\windows\system32\gameux.dll (or regsvr32 -u c:\windows\SysWOW64\gameux.dll)

Me too, if i would have installed every game i own, i would need a 4 TB drive for windows cause that folder is in the windows , on drive c, my drive c is almost full, thats why we have a 2 TB drive to install all the games.

win 10 is memory and space hungry

Just one of many Google results:

Windows 10 Will Soon “Reserve” 7 GB of Your Storage for Updates
topic: https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/windows-10-will-soon-reserve-7-gb-of-your-storage-for-updates/



Anyway, win10 should become faster lighter and less resource hungry, after these years one usually makes progress and improves things, not so for MickySoft, they become larger, bloated and consume loads of RAM and HD space and still mess up , even today (✖╭╮✖)


another fine example of M$ "failure" M$ messes things up and others can clean up the mess
This topic helps people fixing problems M$ created



Latest Windows 10 Update Problems and How to Fix Them:
https://www.maketecheasier.com/latest-windows-10-update-problems/