I'm going to go with buggy. It essentially broke WMR by introducing some kind of bug in their logging instrumentation that causes extreme stuttering unless you run a command line to stop the logger every time you plug in a headset. After almost two months they are supposedly releasing a patch in next week's dump to fix it. Now that is some laggardly response time for you.

The crazy thing is apparently it was a problem even back when 22H2 was an insider build. It's like they don't do QA anymore. Something tells me there isn't a team looking at 20+ year old games.

These big feature updates have always been a step forward and a step backward. Though I'm not sure what the step forward is this time 🤣

Does Microsoft even *care* about backwards compatibility with these things? I have had far better luck running a lot of these old games under Wine ever since I moved to Linux.

I always thought all the compatibility shims were doomed to be forever broken moving onward. It's why I stuck with Windows 7 as long as I've had.

swaaye wrote on 2022-12-03, 19:37:

These big feature updates have always been a step forward and a step backward. Though I'm not sure what the step forward is this time 🤣

I think it is "preventing GOG games from working" in name of security (through whatever is called, some isolation mode that only allowed some signed apps to run?)

DracoNihil wrote on 2022-12-03, 20:25:

Does Microsoft even *care* about backwards compatibility with these things? I have had far better luck running a lot of these old games under Wine ever since I moved to Linux.

I always thought all the compatibility shims were doomed to be forever broken moving onward. It's why I stuck with Windows 7 as long as I've had.

Things definitely get broke. The EmulateGetCommandLine shims works on usage of a DOS supported filename, but Windows 10+ doesn't guarantee it 🤣. Windows 7 had and has its fair share of problems, the most issues I had was with rundll32.exe as it is very lagged and causes external hooks to fail. For things supported on Win10 and 11, the support instead got better imo, but for things that were removed, you know the story (Ramp renderer, default short filenames, old DRMs)

DracoNihil wrote on 2022-12-03, 20:25:

Does Microsoft even *care* about backwards compatibility with these things? I have had far better luck running a lot of these old games under Wine ever since I moved to Linux.

That's one of the reasons why me next daily driver would be a Linux machine. Still holding on to Windows 7, but eventually there will be no more (new) hardware that supports it properly, and I couldn't always rely on new old stocks.

So for GTA gamers, the old titles such as Vice City and San Andreas has issues on multi-core systems. To avoid modding, I enabled the Windows 98/ME compatibility mode because the game works correctly with that mode, and it also supported that OS. Now guess what, that method doesn't work anymore (EmulateHeap in action), because of the same damn issue, heap exceptions on sound processing!

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2022-12-04, 05:15:

I think it is "preventing GOG games from working" in name of security (through whatever is called, some isolation mode that only allowed some signed apps to run?)

The "memory integrity" / "core isolation" / HVCI thing? Breaks old drivers too like XFi cards and is part of why they want you on recent CPUs. It is annoying but it is easily disabled and is only on by default with the newest hardware. Maybe it has some value for protecting the typical helpless/hopeless userfolk.

swaaye wrote on 2022-12-04, 17:57:

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2022-12-04, 05:15:

I think it is "preventing GOG games from working" in name of security (through whatever is called, some isolation mode that only allowed some signed apps to run?)

The "memory integrity" / "core isolation" / HVCI thing? Breaks old drivers too like XFi cards and is part of why they want you on recent CPUs. It is annoying but it is easily disabled and is only on by default with the newest hardware. Maybe it has some value for protecting the typical helpless/hopeless userfolk.

And that Smart App Control thing. On second boot, I was astonished why no aWin32 apps would run (first instance was in Bioshock). That's all the security upgrade we see in the surface; as always MS has implemented new security things, that don't make the headlines.

I took some time to test the games which had the problem. First of all, Program Compatibility Assistant does something with the application that changes the exception point. With that change, I managed to find an mss32.dll that takes the game to the main menu and then crashes, instead of crashing in the intro video. That doesn't improve things, but that points to what was done to have the same problem.

I will try and test most games on this issue. The most problematic scenario will be for those games, that have Win95 compatibility set by default, or EmulateHeap set by default, or a guide on the Internet to manually do either of the one. Now I am worried I can't read books in Longbow 2 anymore. The ddraw wrapper DirectDrawCompat had to add a WinVerifyTrust function so that the ddraw.dll doesn't crash games, this problem may relate to the EmulateHeap issue as well.

So I had Windows 11 updated today with a cumulative update, and they probably fixed one problem. Now MechWarrior 2 Autorun runs with the emulate heap shim enabled. You still lose the sound, but its better than aimlessly enabling 16-bit color mode or 640x480 video mode to achieve the same.

Some more discoveries...

It turns out the EmulateHeap crashes, that are occurring with Win95/98/ME compatibility modes, can be countered by setting a FaultTolerantHeap shim on the application. Note that this will disable the EmulateHeap part of the mode.

23H2 out, and EmulateHeap is still broken...

I went on and on upto the 2nd preview of Win11 22H2: 10.0.22454.1000 and the bug exists there too!

Can you re-check this on Windows 11? Microsoft has actually broken EmulateHeap on Windows 10 as well at some point but they seem to have fixed it recently.

Nicknine wrote on 2025-04-05, 15:19:

Can you re-check this on Windows 11? Microsoft has actually broken EmulateHeap on Windows 10 as well at some point but they seem to have fixed it recently.

Do you have any source for that info? My computer seems to be fully updated but it is similarly broken

The only thing I am participating on is an external fixed module for it, being prepared by craczyc (one of the managers of OTVDM) and it is very much working at the current position.

If Windows really fixed it, we could stop the investigation there 😀

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2025-04-05, 15:33:

Do you have any source for that info? My computer seems to be fully updated but it is similarly broken […]
Show full quote

Nicknine wrote on 2025-04-05, 15:19:

Can you re-check this on Windows 11? Microsoft has actually broken EmulateHeap on Windows 10 as well at some point but they seem to have fixed it recently.

Do you have any source for that info? My computer seems to be fully updated but it is similarly broken

The only thing I am participating on is an external fixed module for it, being prepared by craczyc (one of the managers of OTVDM) and it is very much working at the current position.

If Windows really fixed it, we could stop the investigation there 😀

I have fully updated Windows 10. Need for Speed: Carbon (1.2) used to crash immediately with EmulateHeap shim but now it works. 3D Setup tool in Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit used to likewise not work with EmulateHeap but it does now.

Nicknine wrote on 2025-04-05, 16:55:

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2025-04-05, 15:33:

Do you have any source for that info? My computer seems to be fully updated but it is similarly broken […]
Show full quote

Nicknine wrote on 2025-04-05, 15:19:

Can you re-check this on Windows 11? Microsoft has actually broken EmulateHeap on Windows 10 as well at some point but they seem to have fixed it recently.

Do you have any source for that info? My computer seems to be fully updated but it is similarly broken

The only thing I am participating on is an external fixed module for it, being prepared by craczyc (one of the managers of OTVDM) and it is very much working at the current position.

If Windows really fixed it, we could stop the investigation there 😀

I have fully updated Windows 10. Need for Speed: Carbon (1.2) used to crash immediately with EmulateHeap shim but now it works. 3D Setup tool in Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit used to likewise not work with EmulateHeap but it does now.

I tested Win11 but nothing seems to be changed. The code apparently changed in Win11 and that causes issues with other components.
Dk when Win10 broke but as you said its working now

Bleh, I spoke too soon. NFS: Carbon crashes with EmulateHeap again (usually in C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\AcGenral.DLL).

Why use EmulateHeap with NFS: Carbon? It's a XP era game. Though if idea is to test the shim itself, I get it. But who knows if some game doesn't work right with 9x's heap manager like some don't work with NT's heap manager. Some related reading (I didn't find the original link): https://mcpmag.com/articles/2010/07/27/trip-d … mulateheap.aspx

I remember trying EmulateHeap with Mafia I some time ago, tried to see if it would prevent crashing when exiting through menu, it slowed down the game instead. I probably only tried with some version of Win10. This game is supposed to run on Win98 as well (hence the idea to try EmulateHeap), and that crash didn't happen when ran on Linux via WINE. Supposedly the version without the patch doesn't crash on Windows either, but haven't experimented with that version.

UCyborg wrote on 2025-04-05, 20:44:

Why use EmulateHeap with NFS: Carbon? It's a XP era game. Though if idea is to test the shim itself, I get it. But who knows if some game doesn't work right with 9x's heap manager like some don't work with NT's heap manager. Some related reading (I didn't find the original link): https://mcpmag.com/articles/2010/07/27/trip-d … mulateheap.aspx

I remember trying EmulateHeap with Mafia I some time ago, tried to see if it would prevent crashing when exiting through menu, it slowed down the game instead. I probably only tried with some version of Win10. This game is supposed to run on Win98 as well (hence the idea to try EmulateHeap), and that crash didn't happen when ran on Linux via WINE. Supposedly the version without the patch doesn't crash on Windows either, but haven't experimented with that version.

Base NFS: Carbon (1.2) crashes after EA logo on Windows Vista and up, EA actually fixed that in 1.4 patch since Vista came out shortly after this game. Microsoft later updated their system compatibility database so it automatically applies EmulateHeap shim to 1.2 exe which also fixes this problem... or it did until they broke EmulateHeap a few years ago.

Crazy! TBH, it was never a good idea to rely on compatibility shims, always best to patch the bug out, though it can be difficult.