'My' solution for low FPS on Windows 8.1 and 10

[nortonex]

Hello everyone,

I have found this forum when I was searching for a low fps fix. I have tried that big VBS scirpt, but it didn't work for me (empty window with sound only appeared). I know that low fps is related with DirectDraw emulation in Windows 8 and higher, so I've decided to search for ddraw.dll patchez. There are many of them but every package workz differently and some gamez cannot be fixed by this way.

Eventually I have found a perfect solution, which workz perfectly sometimes with Gruntz and now I can play one of my most favourite games.

Here'z link to ddraw.dll library appropriate for Gruntz:

github.com/narzoul/DDrawCompat/releases/tag/v0.2.1

You need just to download ddraw.zip file and extract its contentz to Gruntz installation directory.

Edit: If you encounter random freezes after several minutes of playing, you will have to use a different DirectDraw library, such as dgVoodoo 2

[Zu]

Welcome to our forum, and thank you kindly for providing this solution. I moved the thread to the FAQ section, as I feel it's rather important.

[swietymiki]

We had a few people try this workaround and it works in a similar way to dgVoodoo but it doesn't minimize the game while opening message windows.

If you get an 0xc0000022 error on startup with this solution, this link might prove helpful: www.baswijdenes.com/portfolio/fix-the-application-was-unable-to-start-correctly-0xc0000022/

[Lahyme]

This works like magic !! Don't need any other program AT ALL.

[Don_Dominio]

Awesome! Works like a charm! Thank you very much, I've been looking for this fix for ages

[mvdev]

I have just created an account to mention this solution as I just came across it too but I see you've already done nortonex so I'll just up this and confirm that it works like a charm on Win10 64bit!

[Koleto]

Hi Guys! I upgraded to Win 10 only recently and decided to try Gruntz one more time. I tried this solution and the game started fine. Full-screen, no fps drop, no issues with controls. I experienced two (major) issues:
1. The game crashes at some point, usually about 15 minutes of playing;
2. I am unable to save the game, be it on a checkpoint or a standard save.

Can you give any tips on how to make it work? I have tried all other mentioned workarounds (D3D, dgVoodoo) but nothing works for me.

Thanks!

[swietymiki]

Mar 3, 2020 6:40:21 GMT -8 Koleto said:

The game crashes at some point, usually about 15 minutes of playing

Actually, I had a similar issue when I tried this solution on my new PC - the game would hang after some time and I had to terminate the process in task manager. Didn't want to discourage others from trying though, since there are comments from people saying it works for them.

I consider the VirtualBox solution to be the most reliable one, so you can still try that. There are also a couple of other minor settings that have an impact on the game - admin rights, compatibility modes and the "Disable Direct Video Access" setting, accessed by launching Gruntz while holding SHIFT.