I recently bought Myst ME and was happily making my way through the game, when it came time to stop for the night and save for tomorrow. File -> Save As -> Myst.mys -> Save. All of a sudden the game froze, the sound was still working but the dialog box didn't go away. After ending the task through task manager, I checked and was pleased to find that a save file named 'Myst.mys' was created.

The next evening, I started the game and went to Restore Game -> Myst.mys -> Open, but to my dismay the game immediately froze again and again I had to use the task manager to end it. I then tried to simply launch the game by double-clicking my save file, but alas it simply started me from the very beginning, with no progress saved.

I'm running vista, and the game was completely playable without having to adjust any compatibility settings or updating anything. My User Account Control is off and the program is run as an administrator. After scouring many forums including this one, I decided to try and do the Windows Update, update Quicktime, update DirectX, uninstall/re-download and re-install Myst ME, and try a combination of all the different compatibility settings, and nothing has worked. I've tried to use the command prompt to ensure my username has full administrative control over the files and attempted (to no avail) to remove the "Read Only" attribute from the files.

I have no idea what could be causing this, any ideas? Thanks in advance.