I have Riven from GOG. The game plays fine, and File Save works fine.

However, File Open refuses to work, not because it can't open file, but because it can't get that far.
When I use the File Open command, the first step is for the program to ask if I want to Save first, "Yes, No, Cancel". Alas, at this point the program accepts and ignores all button clicks, just sits with the Save? dialog mounted, refusing to progress further.

It is not locked in the sense of frozen with no activity - I can press the Yes button, No button or cancel, and the graphics show the button go in and out again - BUT NOTHING MORE.
As an additional sign of "something gone wrong", the "Save? dialog is not properly modal, but lets you mount the File menu - which it should not. Attached screen capture shows this

I cannot get past this screen.
Since the only way to resume a saved game is File Open, I cannot resume any saved game.

I an running on Windows 7-64 bit as an Admin user.
Riven is as installed by GOG - set to run in Windows 95 mode, disabling themes etc. and "Run As Admin"
I have tried twiddling options but it makes no difference.

This is most frustrating, as I can't expect to play the whole game in one run from start to end - I need to take breaks, eat, sleep, and turn off the computer in between... so must of necessity expect to save and resume.

This exact situation is happening to me, and I also haven't gotten a reply.

I really wish someone would help us.

You might try not installing to "program files" or if you do Right-Click-Properties-Security on your riven install folder and give "Users" Full Control of the folder.

Thanks for that suggestion, but it doesn't seem to have had any effect.

Do you know if there's any way to have Riven open the save.rvn directly? Like, by opening the file instead of Riven.

The only other thing I've found is (from the mystcommunity.com boards):

First, create a new folder in C:\Program Files (assuming that's where you installed Riven). Copy over everything from inside your Riven directory (BUT NOT THE FOLDER CALLED "DATA") to this new directory.

Inside your new directory, create a folder called "Data" (without the quotes). Go into the Data folder inside your Riven directory and copy/paste everything from that into your New Folder/Data directory. Run the game from there, and you should be able to save and load with no problem.

You are a genius! Thank you so much; now I can load my save files with no issues at all!

Is it okay to delete the old folder now?

Should be able to.

I'm running in a Windows Classic theme, and there's no issues here.