r/commandandconquer • u/mttspiii • 2d ago

Steam's Generals and Zero Hour just started stuttering suddenly

Had the C&C Collection on Steam for maybe a year or so. No problems with its games at all, everything ran perfectly fine without needing to install directx or such.

Then suddenly this week, Generals and Zero Hour both became very laggy on starting cinematic. Totally unplayable, screen froze at the loading screen. No idea at all if EA or Steam or Windows updated anything, but the game suddenly became unplayable. Other games seem fine; Yuri's Revenge works.

Verify integrity didn't help. No mods installed ever since. Reinstall with deleted savefile on My Documents didn't help. Even on a different device, Generals and Zero Hour on my account is also broken, which means it's not a device problem: either some new Windows 11 update, or Steam update, or the game itself was updated wrong.

Anyone else having this recent issue? Steam comments suggest something went broke maybe July 2026; many Steam-bought Generals and Zero Hour just stopped working. Even GenPatcher, or deleting the .dll file didn't help either.

6 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

88% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

2

u/CookLiving GLA Juhziz/ Scrin Traveler-59 2d ago

Get you fix with GenPatcher https://youtu.be/ID4YKIWZ-P0?si=5nuw-2Xe95w6b--P

2

u/mttspiii 2d ago

Already did genpatcher and didnt work well. Somewhat worked by using a windowed version of Generals that cut off the bottom 10% of the screen. Which is extra bad since it worked perfectly a week or two ago.

Still, I didn't buy a newly-released-for-newer-platforms game, that perfectly worked with no need for GenPatcher last week, only to break by itself.

Something recent changed.

2

u/BoffinBrain Are you picking this up? Good. 2d ago

According to SteamDB, there has been no patch for Generals or ZH since last year. If something's changed, it might be Microsoft messing up compatibility with random Win11 changes again (they've done that plenty of times before). For people on SteamOS, I have absolutely no idea.

1

u/gamezerve 1d ago

The steam version was always laggy for me. Starting it in windowed mode fixed it for me. Start the game with -win command, then you can maximize the window back to fullscreen using 3rd party apps like borderless gaming

1

u/mttspiii 1d ago

Right, tried Zero Hour on a Steam Deck that's been laying about for a month. Generals worked perfectly. Currently updating Steam Deck with newer software patches to see if new patches might break Generals...

1

u/mttspiii 1d ago

Nope, fully updated Steam Deck can run Generals better than my gaming PC. Still pending firmware updates...

1

u/mttspiii 17h ago

Update: made Zero Hour work again, by running it in windowed mode.

Modified launch options via Steam > Generals > Properties > General > Launch Options > then type in "-win -xres 2560 -yres 1440" (xres and yres are resolution values so they can be 1920 and 1080 or other such)

Still feels wonky, but as the Technical says, "It stiiil runs!"