Hi
So I just got Freespace 1, greatly looking forward to playing this excellent game again (and my first time playing its expansion!). I load it up and start playing. After about 5 minutes into the first tutorial mission (I'm a bit rusty!) and the graphics freezes. The game continues around me - I can hear sound effects, fire weapons, can hear engines etc - but the graphics freeze and there is nothing I can do about it except close the game in task manager. When I restart the game and go into the mission the 2nd time, it froze immediately. Every subsequent attempt the game immediately crashed completely as soon as I try to run it. I reboot computer, run game, at first it works - and then, same problem, it seems to crash after about 5 minutes, or almost right away. Also I've noticed when I quit the game without having to force it in task manager, it messes up my graphics in windows (top part of the screen is blurry and I can't fix that either without a reboot).
My computer is a dual core athlon (3800+), 1gb RAM, windows XP SP2, GeForce 6800 GS graphics card.
This has stumped me. I have never come across problems like this before - where it works at first and then refuses, and refuses to try again until I reboot! Anyone else had this or have any ideas how I can fix it?
edit: added some more info

I might be a bit used to overkill when it comes to graphics problems, and it's a pain. I'd reinstall your graphics drivers though.
Go to :
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_175.19_whql.html
and download the new drivers and if it is a zip file unzip it so you can access the installer.
Right click on your desktop > properties > settings > advanced > adapter > properties > driver
Verify that the Driver Provider is Nvidia (your graphics card company) and uninstall the driver completely. Restart your PC.
Then install the new drivers from scratch and hope it does something.
All of the above is of course invalid if you already have the latest drivers and is possibly overkill for your problem. It also might work, I reinstalled the latest drivers whenever I had problems and it was a pain but the last time I did it I found a set I'm happy with. I've also had to reinstall my drivers for nvidia cards until I found the right set of drivers for my computer configuration to get everything to always work.
Good luck :)

I'm having the same problem with Freespace 2. My system is
Athlon XP 3000+
nVidia 7600GS
1GB RAM
XP Pro
I'll try reinstalling my graphics card driver some time this weekend.

Same problem here. I'm using the newest drivers (GF8800GTS), even have fresh install of XP (incidentally but as the system's fresh I'm sure nothing old is causing the problem).
The problem got fixed for me partially by turning on system compatibility in the game's properties (win 95 or 98). Worse thing that the mouse now acts so sluggish I can't play anyway.

Thanks for the input. I'll try the compatability thing later as I don't really use the mouse much anyway except in the menus.
I'm wary of changing graphics drivers as this completely messed me system up once (a few years back now). How can I find out if I have the latest drivers?

Well the compatability mode didn't help at all. Now attempting to fix using drivers. Seems I hadn't updated my drivers in almost a year! Hopefull that was the problem...

Ok well I updated to the latest graphics drivers and it makes little if any difference. The game ran about 1 minute longer than its previous best, and then had the exact same problem. It seems I have wasted my money :(
I can see I'm not the only one with problems here. Anyone else have better luck?

Well, I'm currently using ForceWare betas (those with CUDA support) but WHQL certified versions did nothing to solve my problems.
BTW - what type of sound card are you using? I've got SB X-Fi, but on the mobo-integrated card the problem doesn't go away

I'm not sure what sound card I have actually. I seem to have some Realtek software.. it may be a realtek card. But I've never had any issues with that as far as I can recall, with this or any other game.
I have given up on trying to fix this for now, but I have got the Freespace Open Source Project thing that was mentioned elsewhere in these forums. Seems to work well so far once I worked out how to make it go! If other people here have same issues as me they may wish to try using the open source software instead of the GOG. I don't mind having paid for GOG's version of it though - the makers of an excellent game deserve the money :)

I'm having the same issues as the TC. I was able to play for a while and then the image froze, but I the seemed to be running completely fine everywhere else. Of course there isn't much you can do if you can't see what you're doing.
Has anyone received a message from the staff about this? I have the same problem with FS2....Sorta blows...

This error is triggered when you go back to windows desktop.
You can try to solve this on xp by
1 - right-clicking on the taskbar
2 - properties
3 - uncheck "keep on top of other windows" (or something like this, my XP is in french, it's the 3rd checkbox from the top)
4 - save
5 - run the game
Works fine for me, only downside is that I have to do it everytime I want to play the game (and recheck it afterward). Hope this help some of you

Same exact problem here. I'm using the latest drivers and Win95 compatibility mode.

Same problem here.... It happens when playing normally.
Running under windows xp sp3, with the latest nvidia drivers.
It looks the problem is caused by 3D acceleration not working properly...

Another same or similar problem. I run on XP SP2, 3600+ and a 7800GTX. I had bad problems with graphics lag and kept lowering the settings, without getting any noticeable gain in framerate. Got through training and to the third mission I think, the one where you attack the trade depot. There the game was reduced to a slideshow and eventually froze as described by OT. When I alt-tabbed to windows I had no picture there either though. Alt-tabbed back to the game and I could hear it still running, sound and all but still a black screen. Nothing for it but to reboot.
Hope this issue gets fixed, I'd really like to see the rest of this game.

I had the same problems with an ATI 2400XT graphics card where the screen went black (as well as the font distortion issue from another post), but after upgrading my drivers from a January release to last week's version, everything has been hunky dory.