Game crashing after latest windows 11 update

[RadiantGamer]

Specifically Alien crossfire. It seems that folks in the GOG ecosystem are having the same problem. Anyone find a work around?

[nomrakram]

me too - I only run the Steam install. no patches. I tried various setting adjustments mentioned in this thread. disabled the movie (which never was a problem). when I changed ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=0 I was able to see a windows error dialog after the crash: (I of course cannot just paste it in here...) but it is a virtual memory warning. and recommends it be set to at least 128MB. I tried the page files thing:

Originally posted by Hade:

...However I always ask the same thing from everyone experiencing crashes from any game. Have you adjust your paging file manually and not what Windows recommends? Adjusting your paging files will often improve game performance from whatever the age the game is from. The paging files uses drive space. Mine is set at 49152 mb. I hardly ever get a crash from any game...

set it to your number 49152... no luck.

I did contact EA and asked them if they were aware of the issue. they said 'yes' but they have no plan to fix it.

[Liralen]

Just a data point, but SMAX still works just fine on Windows 10.

Yeah, I know, I'm living on borrowed time.

[nigel.burt]

With my SMAX I found that after the 24H2 update I couldn't save games properly and after trying to save, the game would end up in a weird unplayable state.

After the second time my PC decided to give me the Feature pack without asking I've decided to apply the Group Policy using GPEdit. Computer Configuration - Administrative Templates - Windows Components - Windows Update - Manage updates offered from Windows update - Select the target Feature Update version. If you enable this and enter Windows 11 in the first box and 23H2 in the second box, you will continue to get security updates without the 24H2 Feature pack installing itself. It will require a restart and can take several hours before the policy takes effect.

Alternately if you're comfortable editing the Registry directly you can use this, which does the same thing:

reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate /v ProductVersion /t REG_SZ /d "Windows 11" /f

reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate /v TargetReleaseVersion /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate /v TargetReleaseVersionInfo /t REG_SZ /d "23H2" /f

Hope this saves people having to go find these settings from search engines

[cytospawn]

Has anyone found a reliable way to get Alien Crossfire to stop crashing on Windows 11? I set the compatibility properties for all 6 .exe files to "Run this program in compatibility mode for: Windows XP (service Pack 2)," and it still crashed on turn 1. My brothers and I all just bought this, hoping to play together someday. 😅 I hope you all can help us make that dream a reality!

[TertiaryAdjunctUnimatrixZeroOne]

It shouldn't be this complicated! I don't care how old it is, if the platform offers the game and I pay to buy and install it, it should work. Fix it, Steam!

[4lM1BruCh3]

I just run the terran.exe in compability mode for WIN XP and it works.

[4whostruckjohn]

Originally posted by 4lM1BruCh3:

I just run the terran.exe in compability mode for WIN XP and it works.

terran.exe works fine. terranx.exe (the Alien Crossfire expansion) was broken in Windows 11 by a Microsoft update and no longer works.

[Donald]

Originally posted by nigel.burt:

With my SMAX I found that after the 24H2 update I couldn't save games properly and after trying to save, the game would end up in a weird unplayable state.

After the second time my PC decided to give me the Feature pack without asking I've decided to apply the Group Policy using GPEdit. Computer Configuration - Administrative Templates - Windows Components - Windows Update - Manage updates offered from Windows update - Select the target Feature Update version. If you enable this and enter Windows 11 in the first box and 23H2 in the second box, you will continue to get security updates without the 24H2 Feature pack installing itself. It will require a restart and can take several hours before the policy takes effect.

Alternately if you're comfortable editing the Registry directly you can use this, which does the same thing:

reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate /v ProductVersion /t REG_SZ /d "Windows 11" /f

reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate /v TargetReleaseVersion /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate /v TargetReleaseVersionInfo /t REG_SZ /d "23H2" /f

Hope this saves people having to go find these settings from search engines

I found out (the hard way) that GPEdit is not natively included in Windows 11 Home. Googled the error message and found several suggestions for adding GPEdit to Windows 11 Home, including a batch file which I downloaded and am installing via "run as administrator." (Microsoft will tell you to only download from trusted sources; hopefully the file I found is from a trusted source!) I will restart the computer to apply the changes, then follow @nigel.burt's suggestion to edit the Group Policy so that the 24H2 Feature Pack won't reinstall itself. (Per a comment up-thread, it is also possible to "roll back" 24H2, BUT only for a limited time immediately after 24H2 has been installed.)

[Donald]

Finished editing the Windows 11 Group Policy per @nigel.burt's instructions in post #18 in this thread, and restarted the computer about an hour ago. Alien Crossfire (from the GOG.com install) is still crashing immediately after one's initial colony is founded at game start; however, the instructions in post #18 did warn that it could take several hours before the group policy change took effect, so I will try again tomorrow morning. Don't know if (or how) I should have uninstalled the Windows 11 24H2 feature pack as well, since it's been several months since Windows Update installed it, so it cannot be gotten rid of via "Roll Back" at this point.

[Donald]

Windows Update has been nagging me today to schedule a restart to install:
2025-04 Cumulative Update for Windows 11 Version 24H2 for x64-based Systems (KB5055523) and 2025-04 Cumulative Update for .NET Framework 3.5 and 4.8.1 for Windows 11, version 24H2 for x64 (KB5054979). Double-checked what I had set when I edited the Windows 11 group policy, and it's still showing that I only want security updates for the 23H2 feature pack; however, that evidently did not get rid of the 24H2 feature pack (which has been causing everyone's installs of Alien Crossfire to crash). Feeling rather stumped at this point, and really missing the additional features of Alien Crossfire!

[ekze]

Here's a fix:
https://github.com/induktio/thinker/
Grab the latest development build (20250417 works at the time of writing), extract to game folder and start the game with thinker.exe

[creatio]

Originally posted by ekze:

Here's a fix:
https://github.com/induktio/thinker/
Grab the latest development build (20250417 works at the time of writing), extract to game folder and start the game with thinker.exe

This is the only thing, that worked for me without reverting Windows updates and all the other terrible things. Thanks a lot for the fix!

[Unknown-Alcho-Gamer]

You guys are the last phalanx of a dying/dead game. let it die so maybe they realise how important the game to us actually is,

[Fabrigade]

Originally posted by Unknown-Alcho-Gamer:

You guys are the last phalanx of a dying/dead game. let it die so maybe they realise how important the game to us actually is,

No, SMAC / SMAX is a Paragon among games. It's the best Civ-Game ever. Go away and let us SMAC-SMAXers enjoy one of the best games ever.

If you don't understand, go read the dev's comments on the global state from their manual book. Yes, there was a time the printed manuals and distributed them with Game CDs. Look it up and read it - you might understand why there are still a lot of gamers fond of this game.

[yandati]

Originally posted by ekze:

Here's a fix:
https://github.com/induktio/thinker/
Grab the latest development build (20250417 works at the time of writing), extract to game folder and start the game with thinker.exe

This worked! However, after downloading and extracting, when I started the game via thinker.exe I only saw the top-left corner of the start menu without being able to click anything. This was fixed by setting "video_mode=1" in the configuration file thinker.ini and choosing another window width and window height in the same file. Afterwards it worked just fine. Thanks a lot!