GoblinFX: Anyone know why my desktop disappears when the batch file is supposed to kill explorer.exe and my desktop disappears, but explorer.exe is still running? And when the batch file is supposed to restart explorer.exe it just opens the explorer window.
However, I did find a modification to the batch file. Instead of
taskkill /f /IM explorer.exe
"Dark Reign - Original Game.exe"
pause
start explorer.exe
change the last line of the batch file to:
taskkill /f /IM explorer.exe
"Dark Reign - Original Game.exe"
pause
start
"C:\windows\explorer.exe"
This restores my desktop.
If you have multiple instances of Explorer running... and that's pretty common these days... it's likely shutting down the first instance it encounters, and leaving other instances open.
You may have noticed an option Windows provides, in various versions, to open each new window in a separate process. That's a real issue.
In my case, it does shut down the MAIN "explorer" instance," and wipes my desktop and taskbar away. It never brings them back though, as the program crashes every time playing, and the command to restart Explorer never gets sent.
The "shutting down explorer" kludge is a TERRIBLE solution to the issue they're addressing... that is, the corrupted pallet issue. Of course, NONE of this would be an issue had Microsoft not removed DirectDraw from DirectX (it is "emulated" through a short routine in Direct3D, but imperfectly), or if they'd implemented their "emulation" in such a way that it did not share the "base system pallet" with Explorer and any other apps you may have running. That is, if they'd simply allowed their "emulated DirectDraw" to use a separate pallet instead of the "shared system pallet."
This is why you can find a TON of "directdraw wrappers" online these days. Many are custom-tweaked for a particular game, and others work with many applications. The one present in dgVoodoo works perfectly with Dark Reign (and allows me to have the game without any corruption, in proper 4:3, and even with anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing... and yes, at any resolution I like, not merely the original one, though the bitmapped graphics will still look "crude" rather than HD).
Unfortunately, instead of using a separate "DirectDraw fix" and "CD-check fix," GoG stuck both into a single EXE. You can't use one without the other. And the "shut down Explorer" kludge is just a TERRIBLE "fix" and one I never intend to allow to run again, as it basically means (to me) "log out and log back in" every time the game exits... whether intentionally or due to a graphics-based crash (common in the default Microsoft "directdraw emulation in Direct3D" solution)
