Long Delay Launching Game

[Viper]

I have 14 different instances of it. 12 of them are in various folders in the winsxs folder which a quick Google search tells me is a backup folder for reverting windows updates. Can I ignore those and just rename the other two? I also have many files each with the names gameux.dll.mui, GameUXLegacyGDFs.dll, and gameuxmig.dll. Just leave those alone? Thanks.

Should only be two. I'll have to check the actual locations and post back for the ones you need to change.

[Viper]

c:\windows\system32
c:\windows\SysWOW64

[BrianZ111]

Yeah, those are the locations of the other two not located in the winsxs folder. And renaming those two fixed it! Not sure why it's not an issue on my other computer, but thanks for the help.

[Viper]

Yeah, those are the locations of the other two not located in the winsxs folder. And renaming those two fixed it! Not sure why it's not an issue on my other computer, but thanks for the help.

Awesome! Yeah, Games Explorer is a real pain and due to the difficulty of turning it off for many people they just leave it working. They don't realize how much of your life you will waste sitting there waiting for your games to load. I stopped suggesting it to people long ago as I know they just won't bother doing anything about it. Those that do disable it and see the results, they think it's the best thing since sliced bread. haha

[BrianZ111]

Since it doesn't do this on my desktop and it's not disabled there, I'm thinking Games Explorer downloads some info about a game from a Micrososft server the first time you launch the game and then it caches the info about the game on your computer after that. I'm sure Microsoft pulled the plug on that server when they stopped supporting Games Explorer in newer OS's so a fresh install of the game gets stuck doing the lookup until it times out but an old install has the info cached and doesn't do the look up on the server. Only explanation I can come up with anyway. I poked around in the registry and found that my desktop has more registry keys with info about the game where Games Explorer is storing them then my laptop. I tried copying those keys into the registry on my laptop but it didn't work. I'm not messing around with it anymore though since we have a working solution. Thanks again for the help, a nice Christmas present.

[Viper]

Since it doesn't do this on my desktop and it's not disabled there, I'm thinking Games Explorer downloads some info about a game from a Micrososft server the first time you launch the game and then it caches the info about the game on your computer after that. I'm sure Microsoft pulled the plug on that server when they stopped supporting Games Explorer in newer OS's so a fresh install of the game gets stuck doing the lookup until it times out but an old install has the info cached and doesn't do the look up on the server. Only explanation I can come up with anyway. I poked around in the registry and found that my desktop has more registry keys with info about the game where Games Explorer is storing them then my laptop. I tried copying those keys into the registry on my laptop but it didn't work. I'm not messing around with it anymore though since we have a working solution. Thanks again for the help, a nice Christmas present.

I'm not even considering why it works fine on one of your computers either as the problem is solved for you.
I can tell you it looks for game info every single time! It will still do it today regardless of the servers state and try and connect. Also doesn't matter if your PC is connected to the internet or not. I can't say if there is any caching going on but even if there is, it then still looks for updated information. The affected game will open up slow forever until Games Explorer is disabled. I know I've had a couple of games it affected greatly.

[BrianZ111]

It may work different for different games. Interestingly, since I can't seem to stop playing with it for some reason , I discovered if I open the games folder (Start Menu > Games) there's no delay to load the game while this folder is open, either from within this folder or from the desktop shortcut.

The only draw back of remaining the gameux.dll files is the built in Windows games don't work anymore. That doesn't really affect me since I pretty much never play them but if someone did this and sometime later tried to play a game of FreeCell for example, and couldn't figure out why it wasn't loading, renaming these files would be why. You'd have to rename them back to play these games.

[Viper]

The only draw back of remaining the gameux.dll files is the built in Windows games don't work anymore. That doesn't really affect me since I pretty much never play them but if someone did this and sometime later tried to play a game of FreeCell for example, and couldn't figure out why it wasn't loading, renaming these files would be why. You'd have to rename them back to play these games.

Yes, that's right. I don't know anyone who plays any of those games today. I thought the last good Windows game was Pinball on Win XP!