So I've just started playing Mandate of Heaven and have been enjoying it. Just a few minutes ago, we have one of those damn idiotic power failures that last less than half a second, but are enough to shut down your PC because manufacturers are too stupid to realize desktops can benefit from a battery back up. Even a ten second backup! Damn it! So after the reboot I simply loaded up the game again. When I tried to load my save game, it was gone. GONE! As I had just saved literally seconds before the power failure, this got me a bit ticked off. The autosave was still there, and as I had recently entered a new area it was almost identical to my save game. No big deal, right? Wrong! As I found out when I tried to save again, it damn well is a big deal. Clicking on the save game box now--get this--crashes the game! It crashes the entire game. I repeated this process over and over, with the same results. I can no longer save.

The first thing I did when I came here was look for similar problems. I downloaded the patch in the first stickied thread, but it didn't help. Any advice? I'd hate to have to reinstall the game and lose my progress, but that may be my only choice. I HATE that after over 30 years PC manufacturers haven't solved the problem of quarter-second power surges destroying all your work.

Sounds like either some game file(s) got corrupted or else the game tries to save over a corrupted file.
I would back up the auto-save and other saves you may have, and then reinstall the game.

Well, it was worth a try, but even reinstalling didn't solve the problem. I even went to the trouble of creating new characters, and as soon as I tried to save I wound up back at my desktop with all progress lost. WTF?

If you're on Vista or Win7 make sure you're running the game as Administrator. For older games it's often easier to install them outside of Program Files into a separate folder such as c:\games. You could also check the game folder in the Virtual Store to see if the save is there.

In addition, it appears you only keep *one* save, which can be perilous in a game of any length. I follow the old adage ' save early, save often' using multiple save slots ☺

Hmm. Using Windows 7, but running as an administrator had only the effect of disabling my keyboard. The problem isn't not having enough saves, it's that the machine spontaneously deleted all saves except the autosave.

Here's what I've done so far:
-uninstall but keep save games, then redownload the setup file
-the above, except delete saved games
-the above, except also manually delete the M&M subfolder from my GOG folder

Nothing works. Every time I hit the save button anywhere in the game, it crashes, dumping me back out into Windows. What I'm dealing with is a PC that remembers I was playing a game I liked, and decided that would not do. This is how my life goes, every damn day.

Thanks for the advice!

I'd say that might be an option since I do save frequently, but you'd think after a complete uninstall removing even saved files that it wouldn't reoccur immediately upon reinstallation. I really have no idea why this is happening, except that this is the kind of thing that dominates my life. They could make a movie about me, except no one would believe it!

Are your other programs running properly? If a full uninstall / reinstall doesn't help, I wonder if the power outage may have messed something else up, which in turn messes with MM6.

I checked the TELP M&M forums for a similar problem. One person was able to resolve a save game issue by not setting any compatibility mode. Try it first without any compatibility thru the shortcut settings(right click on the icon shortcut on your desktop to get to those settings).

P.S. - Windows 7 has a habit of changing settings without notifying you, although that usually happens for updates.

I think I may have solved the problem, or at least worked around it. I got to thinking that maybe the sector of my HD where the GOG folder lives got damaged somehow. I tried a few other games and they all worked fine, so I copied the M&M folder and pasted it into another directory. It seems to be working properly now. I'm not sure if that was the real problem or not, but I'm going to run some disk cleaning programs just to be sure. After I back everything up!

Thanks to all who replied!

Footnote: Now that I've outsmarted it and have some free time and am looking forward to playing again, it's starting to storm. Lots of lightning. This is my life!