Game runs nicely most of the time - but I had some very serious issues so far. Apart from random crashes and freezing the whole computer (sometimes on alt+tab, sometimes when quitting the game because it suddenly got laggy), I have a very frustrating problem that probably will prevent me from completing something in the future.

Reference: this map SPOILER WARNING!

Every time I enter that army outpost in the lower left (east to the graveyard, south to where you first meet Alix) my game crashes. When I first got there, I seen some strange black fella, talking about me (the Marked One) having annoyed them long enough or something like that. Then some other guys teleported to him and my computer froze completely (had to reset).

When I tried it a second time, it already crashed before the black guy could say something. Every time I enter that outpost the game crashes (if I am lucky) or my computer freezes to death (if I'm unlucky).

Freezing is no common habit of my computer - actually DD is the only application that creates blue screens of death or freezes the machine completely. This didn't happen since I've got Win7 right after it's release. That's some years, so yes, usually this system is pretty stable - so why isn't DD running as it should?

I think maybe there are corrupt game files - do I need to backup specific files, or may I just reinstall? Don't wanna lose any savegames.

You can backup your saved games before reinstalling, to be safe (though you should be asked if you want to keep them when you uninstall). They are quite compressible if you wish to zip them (right clicking in Windows Explorer and select 'Send To | Compressed Folder', or something like that).

Each save is a separate subfolder in the '..\Divine Divinity\savegames' folder.
Under Vista/7, depending on how the user accounts are set up, if you install the game to the default Program Files path, Windows can create separate savegame folders for each user, and then map that folder to the game's savegame folder (so it will just see the saves for the relevant user).
C:\Users\ %account name% \AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Divine Divinity\savegames


You could also start a new game, use iZakaroN's SaveEditor (or from Kiya's site, with description) to give that character a large constitution (and maybe a bunch of experience) and run directly to the camp to see if you get a crash with the problem cutscene. If a new game works the problem is more likely in the save itself rather than the game, which may be fixable; if it crashes, then the game itself is more likely the problem, and a reinstall may help.

If you want to verify your game files, I reinstalled the game, set the resolution, started it once, deleted the files in the dynamic folder, and then used the program DVDsig to create a file with the md5 values of all the game files. Md5 is similar to the CRC-32 value (cyclic redundancy check) used in zip files to test the integrity of the compressed files.

Download this zip file (16KB) and extract the contents into your 'Divine Divinity' folder. It contains the program and md5 file. Run the program and then click on 'Verify' at the top left; any file different from my install will be listed (some of which will simply be configuration files with different options selected, etc).


If reinstalling doesn't help, you can zip your latest save (preferably near the soldier's camp) and email it to me (raze@larian.com), if you wish. I may be able to isolate the problem in the save, or if it is system dependent the cutscene may work on my computer.

Output of divsig.exe

The data is invalid. UNINS000.DAT
The data is invalid. CONFIG.DIV
The data is invalid. CONFIG.LCL
The data is invalid. INIT.CFG
The data is invalid. KEYLIST.TXT
The data is invalid. MAPIDS.000
The data is invalid. PERSIST.DAT
The data is invalid. DAT\usernotes.bin
The data is invalid. slashed-d3d6.cfg
Total:351 OK:342 Bad:9 Missing:0
The operation completed successfully. 351 files, 2260MB, 19s

Maybe you'll already see a file that shouldn't differ. If not I'll try the other suggestions this evening (1241 in Germany, just at lunch, back to work soon).

Thanks alot so far! :-)

/ps
It's installed to "e:\Divine Divinity\"..

All the files listed as different are configuration files, or system dependent, so it doesn't look like anything is corrupt.


You could try using the disk version configuration tool (there is a download link in this post) to switch the game to Software or Direct Draw rendering mode, and see if that helps any with the stability of the game.
A few posts above in that topic is a description of how to manually set the game resolution, if the old config tool changes what you have set.

I hesitate to make any suggestions after you have had such a bad experience with DD. If you decide to give it another try in the future take a look at this post. Win 7 requires some extra steps so these suggestions might help . . assuming you have not tried them already. I install all games on Win 7 using the method described.

I have yet to get a blue screen on a Win 7 system with DD so my first look, after installing correctly, would be at the video drivers. When first released here I could not start the game. My video drivers were 6 months old and updating them fixed the problem. The release of the current version fixed other problems I was having with the game.

What version of DD are you running? The current GOG version is V1.005A and should be displayed in the bottom right corner of the start screen.

This should be a link to the old DD config tool. I have used it to make DD work on certain systems on several occasions but rarely do you need it if you install it as described in the link above. Worth a try, most find it helps when setting it to DirectDraw instead of Direct3D. If no joy set it back to Direct3D before deleting the OldConfigTool.exe.

Edit: See the attached for screen shot of the old config tool dialog, make sure you run it as an admin by right clicking the exe and clicking "Run as an administrator" in the resulting dialog.

Yup, tis 1.005A alright and I made a habit of installing as administrator too - tho I never had trouble before that, I learned that the integrity check isn't repeated twice when running as admin ;-)

I even reinstalled DD.. no change.

nVidia graphics driver version is 296.10 and... wait a minute. The updater always tells me there is no update - now I see there's version 301.42 available? Now this is weird. Well, let's click download then... this is kinda embarrassing now. But anyways - my "old" driver dates back to 2012-05-22... hm. Okay, I'll give it a try with this new driver this evening - now I gotta head back to work ;-)