I was just wondering if anyone had figured out a way to avoid the issue where when changing zones the game will minimize to the desktop, then re-open. This makes the loading of new areas take about twice as long as it should. From what I've seen on YouTube the Xbox loads a new zone in about 8-10 seconds, my PC takes around 20-25 seconds due to this issue. I've even considered sourcing an original Xbox + the game on eBay...

I understand this is mainly an issue with modern OS? Does this problem not happen with say, Windows XP? I've been kicking around the idea of also building a vintage gaming PC with a Pentium 4, and Geforce4 MX. [Not for DX IW specifically, just for old games in general]. But I digress...

I'm on Windows 10. Other than the loading issue, the game runs fine and I'd like to play through it but the loading times kind of ruin it for me.

On Windows 7, I solved the problem by creating a batch file that would stop the Desktop Window Manager Session Manager service while I played the game. Instead of kicking me to the desktop every time it loaded, I'd get a couple of seconds of black screen before it would load normally. Not perfect, but much less jarring.

If Windows 10 has the same service, try disabling it while playing and see if it helps.

It is a PC version issue. It seems to be happening differently to different users regardless of operating system. For some people it minimizes the game briefly, but for me the loading screen quickly flickers to black before becoming stable ,sometimes still flickering when the progress bar is animated. I'm running Vista 64-bit with an NVIDIA chipset graphics card.

This game damaged the reputation of gaming consoles among PC gamers for many years in part because of this technical quirk, as this was a hacked together multiplatform made to "work" on both the PC and Xbox, though most of the hate comes from needlessly simplified game mechanics and level designs to accomodate the limited hardware on the Xbox and the then still undiscovered design conventions (first person game design on consoles has come a LONG way since 2003).