How to fix Starcraft's bad colors or color problem

This is an instructable for fixing the bad graphic colors in Starcraft if your running Windows Vista or Windows 7.

There are 3 ways to do this, screen resolution window, run in Compatibility Mode, and a .bat file.

Step 1 Screen Resolution Window

First, open the screen resolution window by right clicking on your desktop and going to screen resolution.

Now just run starcraft and it might work. If it doesn't try the next solution.

Comments

[itsmypie]

Paste this into a ".cmd" file, this is the only thing that actually worked for me...

======================================================
taskkill /f /IM explorer.exe
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Starcraft\StarCraft.exe"
start explorer.exe
======================================================

-Or, manually shut down and restart your explorer.exe

[mbreukel]

is this for bad colors ingame? i had a similar thing with Age of Empires 2 which looked really creepy on W7. i fixed it with a small program called PalletteStealerSuspender(http://www.age-of-empires.net/gameforum/Blah.pl?v-print/m-1273316507/) just open the program and fill the location for the .exe, and play without any distorted colors

[mrluck]

Thank you for this amazing fix. I have windows 7 64 bit and i ran into an error stating it can't find starcraft.exe. If you have this problem paste this into the .bat file.

======================================
taskkill /f /IM explorer.exe
C:\"Program Files (x86)"\Starcraft\Starcraft.exe
explorer.exe
exit
======================================

Thank you once again, I hope this helps somebody.

[jhamby1]

ACTUALLY, Thanks mrluck, I realized I hadn't added the x86 to it. It seems to be working now. YES!

[jhamby1]

none of these work. I love starcraft, but f**k Blizzard for trying to force me into purchasing SC2 by not adding any fixes or patches. This is bull...

[graneri]

To make this a little easier for those unfamiliar with Task Manager, you can add two more lines to your batch file to automate the process of restarting explorer.exe

===================================
taskkill /f /IM explorer.exe
C:\"Program Files"\Starcraft\Starcraft.exe
explorer.exe
exit
===================================

Using this in your .bat will close explorer, run StarCraft, and when you close your game, it will restart explorer and bring back your desktop.

This has been tested on Windows 7 x64 Pro SP1

[jivjago]

Also, play with compatibility mode. I got Starcraft to work in Windows 7 perfectly by Checking all the boxes on the Compatability tab and   running it for windows 98/ME.

[Berserk87]

 I had the same issue when I was trying to play starcraft a couple years ago, I figured it out myself quickly, but hopefully this is helpful for others that didnt know how to fix it.

Waiting for starcraft 2 :]