StarCraft II issues and fixes

So you just purchased StarCraft II. You boot up the game expecting a remarkable gaming experience twelve years in the making, only to be stalled by your hardware acting up. Fear not because some problems you may have can be solved by changing some system settings.

If you’re not getting the quality of play out of StarCraft II you were expecting, check out this list of known issues and fixes. These solutions come straight from Activision Blizzard itself and they know a thing or two about making a good game.

• A language pack error may occur under certain conditions.

Potential Fix: Ensuring your system clock is correct can help resolve the error.

• Players can send voice but do not receive voice in game on Windows 7 machines with Realtek HD Audio sound cards when the Output Device on the Sounds Menu option is set to the Speakers.
• Sound does not play properly on some hardware set to 7.1 sound on Windows Vista/Windows 7.

Potential Workaround: Change sound output speaker options to 5.1 or lower.

• Changing the OS speaker mode on Windows Vista or Windows 7 while the game is running causes all sound to stop
• Players that are attempting to download or install to a Hard Drive using the FAT32 file format will be unable to download or use the digital installer.

Workaround: Download or install the digital client to a NTFS formatted hard drive.

• Mac version 10.6 – Occasionally a crash is occurring with Nvidia drivers.
• Mac – Using a USB headset will drastically lower in game FPS.
• There is a chance where multiple graphic issues may occur for units, structures, terrain, and transmissions. This tends to be one set of objects (like a supply depot) or level of terrain where textures are swapped or look a bit psychedelic. It doesn’t affect the whole game screen or cause any other visual oddities.
• Galaxy Editor – Terrain editor lags when dragging the mouse around on the map.
• Galaxy Editor – Changing certain values in the Galaxy Editor is causing a crash while in detail view.
• Graphical corruption can occur when Paged Pool memory gets low.

Potential Fix: Close unnecessary background applications and restart client.

Install Issues

• The installer allows multiple copies of the game to be installed Unlike previous Blizzard installers, this one will always let you install another copy of the game. It does not check for previous installations so be careful of how many folders you end up making.

Compatibility Modes will not work properly

• Attempting to run StarCraft 2 on a compatibility mode (Windows XP SP3 from Windows 7, for example) will make it crash. Please run the game normally.

Certain screens make your hardware work pretty hard

• Screens that are light on detail may make your system overheat if cooling is overall insufficient. This is because the game has nothing to do so it is primarily just working on drawing the screen very quickly. A temporary workaround is to go to your DocumentsStarCraft II Betavariables.txt file and add these lines:

frameratecapglue=30

frameratecap=60

You may replace these numbers if you want to.

User report

• Security program flagging the beta downloader as a trojan. We had some reports where a security program might flag the beta downloader as a trojan. It is a false positive.

Black Screens

• There have been multiple reports of black screen issues being related to the use of a Quick Cam webcam. In some cases exiting out of the software has resolved the issue but others have reported a need to uninstall the software for the camera in order to resolve the problem.There are also reports where some security programs like Comodo firewall can cause the game to start and stay on a black screen.

The system requirements needed to run StarCraft II have also changed. Activision Blizzard has listed what processors and video cards will and won’t work with StarCraft II. Make sure you double check to see if you’re running the proper hardware.

Processors

• Athlon processors do not meet the system requirements. They’re the old Thunderbird models and go up to 1.2 GHz.
• Athlon XP processors with a rating of 2200+ and above will meet it.
• Athlon 64 processors tend to meet it. The very low-end Athlon 64 models (energy efficient models ending in e) may not. Check your clock speeds. Anything at or higher than 2.2GHz is a safe bet.
• For Sempron types, you’ll want a higher clock speed to make up for it lacking in other areas. Sempron processors exists across Socket 478-AM2 so you may want to see what type you have using CPU-Z. http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php
• First generation AMD Phenom processors (ending in 00) will work but you need to be aware of the TLB fix. It has a pretty substantial performance drop so you might see choppiness. We have a pretty large writeup on the World of Warcraft forum with a bit more information about it. http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10971909544&sid=1
• Phenom processors ending in 50 do not have this problem. All but the slowest models will meet the system requirements
• Athlon II and Phenom II should all be faster than the minimum requirements.
• Pentium III processors do not meet the requirements
• Pentium IV/D processors at 2.6GHz and above meet it.
• Intel Core 2 around 1.8GHz is a rough area but should be able to play it at low settings. 2.4GHz is the recommended number.
• Intel Celeron processors fall under a lot of different families of chips and sockets. There are those based off of the Pentium 4 of different types and those based off of Core 2. You may want to check what type you have using CPU-Z http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php
• Intel i3/i5/i7 exceed the minimum requirements.

Video Cards

• We require a GeForce 6600 or Radeon 9800 video card in terms of performance.
• Some of the more common ones that are under the system requirements:
• NVIDIA GeForce 6150, 6200, 7150, 8300, 8400, 9100, 9300
• ATI Radeon Xpress 200, 1150, 1250, X1050, 8500-9600, X300-600
• All Intel GMA adapters minus the one in the i3/i5 chips. Those tend to run better but we don’t know how much.

Via [Battle.net]