So, I decided to play through the maign IWD campaign before loading HoW. My problem now seems to be that every time I try to import my party and begin the expansion, the game stops working after I've signed off on the preferred party. Is this something that any of you have ever experienced? If so, what can I do to fix it? I am currently playing on a computer that runs Vista. Please help me figure this out. It bugs me to no end to have to move on to another game before I finish the one I'm on completely, but it looks like I might have to do that this time.

Load your last save in IWD main, then go to the hut in Kuldahar and Hjollder will cast 'Wind Walk' on your party, taking them to Lonelywood and the start of the HoW campaign.

I'M AWARE OF THAT OPTION. THAT IS NOT AN OPTION FOR ME. all of my saves exist after being transported back to East Haven (because I was told that I could simply import my party and begin HoW). I was asking anyone whether they've ever encountered the problem of finishing the main campaign and then being unable to activate the expansion. Thank you, dude, for that absolute lack of a solution...

There's no need to shout. Well, somebody is in a bad mood...

Well, you didn't answer the question I posted.

And that is a reason to act like a complete jerk?

Is your mom hot? I demand an answer.

Are you getting any kind of error messages or does the game just crash?

I just tested with a single character that was exported automatically at the end of the main game and it worked fine for me. Perhaps try one character and see if it works. If it does, save the game and start that game up again, this time importing a second character. If that works, save and import the third and so on. This will determine if it's just one character that's causing the issue or if it's something different.

First of all: Thank you, sir, for actually trying to address the question I posed, instead of parroting standard strategies or assuming that I'm some young noob who has a hot mom. As I recall, I haven't tried it since this initial debacle, the only message I got was that the game had stopped working (after roughly five minutes of dark screen and no activity after having clicked yes ans said done when the party screen came up). At this point, though, I'm not at all willing to try the game with another party. I've already played through the main campaign... I won't be ready to o it again for quite a while. Sir: My mother has been dead and in the ground since April of 2000. I am in my very late twenties. I am not some high school shitstain. You seriously suck. Get off this forum. This is not Reddit or 4chan. Dickhead. Besides: I also find myself hard into Plansccape: Torment right now, so... I wasn't acting like a jerk. I was pointing out that you chose to parrot a standard strategy, as opposed to actually reading my question and realizing that I needed a more comprehensive answer.

You were just like: Hey dude, load your other save game, duh... I would have done that If I could. My question was about whether any of the other members of this community had ever encountered the problem of playing the entire campaign, and then saving everything relevant to that game without leaving a pre-Poquelin (or however it's spelled) save game,but then not being able to load the expansion. I saved once I was back in East Haven. I cannot go back to before the revered brother. I should probably also explain that at the time that I posted this question, I was fresh from a whole process of asking the admins how to deal with my apparent idiosyncratic glitches, as far as IWD was concerned on my computer. It got so bad that they actually gifted me a game of an equal value to IWD. I was super friggin' frustrated, because I had been through all the hoops that they told me about, and then the damn expansion wouldn't load. But that doesn't change the fact that you assumed that I didn't think to load an earlier save game. You just assumed that I wasn't aware of basic parameters of the game, instead of addressing my question by reading it and suggesting that I look at my settings, or that I try re-loading direct x, or whatever other actual solution there might be to my problem.

I even specifically mentioned that I was running the game on Vista, in case anybody was aware of potential incompatabilities that GOG failed to notice between the older operating systems and their version of the game.

When you create the game and are on the party selection/creation screen, when you get to the screen where you select the gender, look down to the bottom right of that screen. There's an Import button. Click on that. A list of possible characters will pop up. In that list will be IWD1, IWD2, IWD3, IWD4, IWD5, and IWD6. These are your characters from the original game (they're automatically exported just before the final boss in IWD). Choose one of them and the character will be brought up**. You then need to choose the appearance and voice set (appearance is defaulted to whatever you chose in the first game, but you can opt to change it if you want. Voice set defaults to the first in the list. Choose whatever you like). Then you have to choose the name of the character (default is whatever you named it in the first game). Once you're done that, click on Accept in the bottom right (under the Import button). You'll be taken to the party selections screen. Hit done and you're good to go. You'll have to repeat this process for each character.

For this process of elimination, that means shutting down and restarting several times, but hopefully this will isolate the issue. If that still doesn't work, then perhaps try importing one of the pre-made high level characters. They should be the first ones in the list (I believe they have a + sign at the end of the name).. If that still doesn't work, then I'm stumped. But try that first and post back if you're still having issues.

*edit* Oh, when choosing the expansion, if you already have high level characters available, the game will say that it notices you have them and would you like to use them. Choose No. This will then allow you to go through the process I described above.

**Of note: any containers your character is carrying are not exported. So scroll cases, bags of holding, gem bags, are not exported with the character. Anything in them will be lost as well.

Once again, Coelo, you get right to the heart of what I and my fellow travelers are asking... Thank you for this explanation. I might say that you are the guardian of this particular rung of this community. I have heard, though, that the containers themselves are exported, but their contents are not.

*edit* Oh, when choosing the expansion, if you already have high level characters available, the game will say that it notices you have them and would you like to use them. Choose No. This will then allow you to go through the process I described above.
I guess this is what happened to me... I had a a far above average party that was oriented traditionally (2 fighters, 2 non-specific mages, one strong thief, and one druid. the druid was my main character)... the party as a whole was pretty high. this added to a high level party for what I had developed. But all it id was ask me to import my party. when I am not quite so engaged in PS: T, I'll heed your advice and see what might be up... Thank you, sir; you go abovve and beyond....