StarCraft II Tips

Some users have reported that when StarCraft II tries to patch the BlizzardDownloader.exe process crashes at some point during the download and hangs. (The download usually dies around the 50% mark.)

When examining the running processes the following can be seen:

winewrapper.exe --wait-children --start -- C:/users/Public/Start Menu/Programs/StarCraft II/StarCraft II.lnk                                                            
/opt/cxgames/bin/wineserver
C:\windows\system32\services.exe                                                            
C:\windows\system32\winedevice.exe MountMgr                                                            
C:\windows\system32\explorer.exe /desktop                                                            
C:\Program Files\StarCraft II\StarCraft II.exe                                                            
[BlizzardDownloa] <defunct>

Running the game from the command line enables you to view any stack traces which may indicate where the problem may lie. The command can be run similar to the following:
"$HOME/.cxgames/Starcraft II_ Wings of Liberty/desktopdata/cxmenu/StartMenu.C^5E3A^5Fusers^5FPublic^5FStart^2BMenu/Programs/StarCraft+II/StarCraft+II"

Look for “xul” and “js3250″ in the stack trace. If seen this indicates a crash of the internal wine gecko rendering engine which emulates Internet Explorer.

The work around is to install the Microsoft HTML Rendering Engine 6 (or maybe 7), listed under Community Supported Applications into the StarCraft II bottle. Once done BlizzardDownloader.exe will no longer crash. The download will start as expected and complete successfully.