Cooking Dash 3 : Thrills and Spills Game on Windows 8.1 and 10 will work the first time I go to play it but after that it won't??

Possible fix for running the Cooking Dash 3 Thrills and Spills game on Windows 10.

After a good deal of digging on technical forums I happened to find a comment about these problems from a fellow who was a friend of one of the people who worked/works on these Cooking Dash games.

Here is what appears to be happening and it all hinges on the "native resolution format" of the game which is 1024 x 768 for the record.

When the game is first loaded and run on Windows 10 the OS detects that it should run the compatibility routine given cues in the game code, however, to be helpful Windows 10 does this in the background and typically allows the game to continue running without issue. When the user finally leaves the program after this first successful run the compatibility program then implements the compatibility, typically to Windows 7. This is where the problems start. Because of security differences between 7 and 10 the ability of the program to resize the screen to 1024 x768 becomes broken and even changing the compatibility back to Windows 10 does not fix it because the system still thinks that it is not compatible with 10 (which it will because of the basic code and date of the game). The User gets locked into an unrecoverable loop of persistent incompatibility settings in conflict with screen resolution resetting. That is why it starts to run, resizes the screen but does not display anything, and locks the computer up due to security / administrative right differences between 7 and 10, essentially.

The work around: (you need to be an administrator for this)

1. right click on the game icon to get properties and set the compatibility to Windows 7
2. click on Set for all Users administrative button
3. select Run program as administrator option, and apply (check that Windows 7 is still the OS option)
4. Apply and exit out of properties
5. set your screen resolution to 1024 x 768
6. Run the program from the icon you just modified
7. Accept to allow this program to make changes to your system prompt.

The game should run after allowing the program changes of step 7.

Letting the program just run under Windows 10 can work, however if your resolution is set to anything other than 1024 x 768 you run the risk of the compatibility routine asserting itself and causing this unrecoverable locked down loop.

Anyway - we made the changes and the game is currently running without an issue on Windows 10.

Note: There are reports of basic program problems in some of the upper levels of the game which may also be related to graphic issues.

Cooking Dash 3 still not working on Windows 10. It ran the first time after updating to Win 10 but now the screen locks at the game resolution and shows the desktop. We have to CTRL+ALT+DEL out and sign out because task manager is not active (accessible).

The game appears to be sort of stuck but with an invisible window and mostly locked up preventing access to any apps in the background. Just like others have mentioned.

The odd thing is that it ran fine the first time. Now, no mater what we try it does not run an does the same thing. We downloaded from the Game House and Big Fish game sites and both say that Cooking Dash 3 has been tested and runs on Windows 10. Other people have mentioned it running on their Win 10 systems so we know it is possible.

The fact that so many had been getting the same sequence of problems under Win 10 points to a common cause and hopefully a fix. The program worked fine on the Win 7 system previously and ran the first time under Windows 10 just a few weeks ago. But as soon as the compatibility settings are automatically set upon exiting from the first successful run, the program no longer will start up correctly.

The one thing we have not tried is the recent (2nd) Window 10 update... so there is always that.

Has anyone found anything else on running this game on Windows 10?

We have had the exact same problem on our system after updating to Windows 10 - went through all the above steps and still get the same results. It does feel like a problem with the Win 10 compatibility settings. We even got the same sequence of responses as noted above. Any progress in this regard on this program? The previous games in the series work fine, just the newest one does not.

Has anyone else found a work around?

I'm having the same problem in Windows 10, but I can't find a solution anywhere.

HI,

please re read the entire question that I posted before replying, as the issue I mentioned with the display had very little to do with the overall problem.

I'm honestly certain its not an issue with a graphics/display driver.

The issue I mentioned with the display can most likely be accredited to the fact that in the task manager it shows the game as "not responding" so the reason I can't interact with the desktop (and the reason the screen resolution is different) is because it's as if the game window is still open it is just transparent (and not responding) even though It appears as though im clicking on the desktop screen I'm actually clicking on the window the game should be running in.

Actually I'm almost certain its an issue with the windows compatability program, as the program runs fine the first time and upon exiting the game the first time it is played a dialog box appears stating that "compatability settings have been applied for this program" along with a button to "run program" with those settings applied, but upon doing so the game doesn't work.

No matter how many times I've tried running the compatability troubleshooter for this game and how many different combination of compatability settings I've tried, the game won't run, even though it did when it was first installed.

This tells me that the issue then lies with the windows compatability program as it is not properly saving the compatability settings that are used to get the game to run the first time.

I realize that there is obviously something different in Windows 8.1 and 10 (from windows 7/vista/xp) that is causing this program to be "incompatible" with the operating system, but thats precisely why there is a compatability program in the first place I would believe.