Windows 7 Game Explorer interfering with Game launching on systems lacking internet connections.

Question

I've been without the net for about a week, and was agitated to notice that many of my games would not launch immediately,  at first i thought it was my display drivers but more digging and watching the activity of Rundll upon a game launch, (and the fact that games not registered in the game exporer worked fine).

This has brought to light some issues in Windows 7 in regards to Gaming.

As we all know, Vista introduced the Game Explorer (GameUX.dll) which incorporates update checking and game information.

What most  on't know, is that the instant a game is launched, Rundll.exe is spawned with the GameUX.dll,gameshim parametre and constantly polls the dns, network and domain functions in the OS.

The problem here, lies in the fact that if this process does not receive a response, the Game's process will sit frozen until a response is recieved.

Now the Rundll process actually acts as a mask for the games executable until the response from the servers is received, that said closing the rundll.exe prior to the handover being made will also close the Games executable.

You can work around this in a way by killing the actual game executable, which will keep the rundll open, and then opening the game executable again. However as it is polling the net api's (Wininet), Rundll will consume a full core (13% for my i7), until you close it. which can cause a number of issues in single core games, and the like.

I don't have anyway to directly contribute this, but its an issue in windows 7 which needs to be addressed,  im sure it didn't occur in windows Vista, and i've reproduced it on multiple windows 7 installations, including my mothers home premium laptop and my brothers windows 7 ultimate laptop, as well as my own gaming pc.  A lack of an internet connection SHOULD NOT, interfere with games that are registered with the Game Explorer.

It seems to have something to do with the Last Refresh timing, as modification of this value in the games information values (Registry) would modify the behavior, such as launching immediately as expected it should, or not launching at all with the rundll process consuming a full cores worth of cpu usage.

Edit

Just to note, after my net was restored, Rundll no longer chews through 13% of the cpu as it isn't constantly polling the network functions, (verified with processmon) and disappears within moments to launch the game.

Answer 1

Just wanted to necropost to update the record on how much of a failure this is

==OVER A YEAR LATER AND ITS STILL BROKEN==

best part is, with updates it re-enables itself every so often

absolutely glorious

actually it's even worse than that now, it's been updated so that none of the above solutions work anymore

if you unregister the dll as per qwadrwr then rundll32.exe will get stuck in limbo trying to load, same if you deny read permissions to the files (albeit it doesn't consume 100% of the core it's running on, it just sits there)... only solution is for those that need it:

run one instance of the software, it will get stuck

run a second instance of the software, gameux is busy doing it's thing so this will launch

taskkill rundll32 responsible for the first instance

enjoy

Answer 2

this truly is the worst library ever written, ever... can someone, ANYONE from MS fix this?

does anyone from MS even read this forum?

Seconded. Had to stay in a hotel without working wifi and searched on my phone for a solution, nothing. This behaviour is unacceptable, who is designing software like that? I disabled every option to lookup cover art and ratings in game explorer and still this bugger  is completely eating up one core running in an endless loop. If there is no connection this thing really should stop after 10 retries or so.

The original report of this problem is over a year old and nobody bothered. :-(

Answer 3

I've encountered one problem since deleting the dlls:

When I go to launch BioShock:

http://i.imgur.com/dczdg.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/HMjmP.jpg