Killing explorer.exe in Windows Vista/7 to fix the color palette while running a game like SPWAW is not really the best possible solution. For one thing you may have problems restarting explorer. Secondly you can not multi task. I.e minimize spwaw and use email, etc.
However there are built-in compatibility options in Windows Vista and 7 that can be enabled to run older games without the need to kill explorer. The compatibility modes are enabled in Windows registry.
Now I have not tested how this works on SPWaW, but it has worked on a number of other old games having the color corruption problem on Windows Vista/7.
The easy way:
There is the fan made "Direct Draw Compatibility Tool" available that automates the registry editing process. The user only needs to run the Tool once and browse to the games .exe file he wants to patch and hit apply.
http://www.4shared.com/file/xeIljXSm/DirectDraw_Compatibility_Tool_.html
The manual method:
To enable the DirectDraw compatibility mode for SPWaW manualy you need to copy paste the folowing text string to notepad and save it to a file with the extension (.REG).
So you should then have a file called SPWAW_colorfix.reg for example. Then just run it and if all goes well you should get a promt asking if you want to add the information to your registry. Click Yes.
Copy paste the text below to your notepad:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\DirectDraw\Compatibility\SPWaW-v8.403]
"Flags"=hex:00,08,00,00
"Name"="mech.exe"
"ID"=hex:45,1a,94,43
If you have a 64 bit operating system you need to copy paste this text instead:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\DirectDraw\Compatibility\SPWaW-v8.403]
"Flags"=hex:00,08,00,00
"Name"="mech.exe"
"ID"=hex:45,1a,94,43
So if this works out you should be able to start the game from mech.exe and get no color corruption. Also note that this fix is for SPWaW (Steel Panthers World at War) version 8.403 and will not work on other versions of the game. It should work on Enhanced mod too because enhanced mod uses the 8.403 exe file.
