Hi! I'm on the level with the "living planet" and while the game ran beautifully up until then, now every explosion, every guy killed, etc, seems to cause the game to LOCK HARD for around 2 minutes. Needless to say this makes the game completely unplayable. There is no hard drive access, just staring at the screen for 2 minutes at a time. My specs are as follows...925 quad at 2.8ghz 8gb of ram, hd4650 with 1gb of ram, and windows 7 x64 Like I said everything was perfect until this level, and the graphics look fine, it is just upon any destruction or alteration of the environment that I get this hard lock. any help would be appreciated as I was quite enjoying it until then. thanks.

That's a difficult one but you could try changing your renderer and/or graphics settings to see if it makes any difference for that particular level.

Nope, tried that before posting. Resolutions, graphic detail, you name it I switched it and still after nearly every single kill it locks hard for 2+ minutes at a time. I really hate it but if I can't find a way to get around it this will be the second game in a month from GOG that is completely unplayable (the first was i76 where after trying every solution the graphics were still a mess and the game too slow).

If this keeps up I may have to give Steam a try even though I hate DRM. It doesn't do much good to be DRM free if the games don't actually work.

Have you tried installing the DirectX 9 redistributable package from the Microsoft Download website?

Win7 comes with DirectX 9.0L, DirectX 10 and DirectX 11. They are independent of each other. The thing is (and this is also true of Vista) DirectX 9.0L is not a complete DirectX 9.0 and is missing library files. As such, to get a complete DirectX 9.0 you need to download and install the redistributable from Microsoft. The latest is dated June 2010, prior to this it was November 2008.

Lastly, have you contacted GOG support?

For the record, I've 11 games from GOG installed and none have had any unresolvable game-breaking issues. I've also a fair few that I'm yet to get around to installing and playing. It is always a good idea to check the forums for known issues, I find. I had considered getting I76 but found that that game is extremely troublesome, mainly because its speed is directly related to CPU clock speed and therefore needs slowing down, so I haven't yet purchased it.

I hadn't heard about Win 7 having a subset, so I'll have to try it. I still haven't figured out how to actually contact GOG for support yet. I pick on the "contact us" link and all I get is technical issues, which just brings me here, and the rest are about payment or downloading problems with feedback at the bottom. If they mean for us to use feedback to contact over game issues it is REALLY a bad design on their part!

And lastly DO NOT BUY I76! I had the original back in the 90s, and had thought that like Redneck Rampage (the game that first got me shopping here) they had figured a way around the problems via emulation. But nope! The game is pretty much unplayable on modern hardware from what I've found. I've tried every trick and hack on the forums and between the graphical tearing and both my car and the AI partner simply unable to get enough speed to do the mission required jumps it is pretty much worthless.

But thanks for the heads up on DX9, I'll download and install it. You'd think though they'd give these games a few spins on various hardware before certifying them. I honestly can't see how they could say I76 is working, seeing is how I have tried two different OSes and three different hardware setups and it is still a mess.

To contact GOG support, once you've clicked on Contact Us and then chosen Technical issues with games (which is the same as clicking on Support from the main header bar) you then get to choose which game you need support with.

After you've clicked the relevant game title you see some common links to questions asked on the community forums. However, instead of choosing one of these options look at the right hand side of the page for a Contact our support team box. If you click the I can't find solution for my problem link you can then submit a request for support from GOG.

Alternatively, use this link:
http://www.gog.com/en/support/contact/technical_issues_with_games/

I think the design issues are all due to the old beta site being converted to the live site which it is today, and some issues with design have occured due to the big re-design that has been undertaken.

When you submit the support request make sure you provide as much detail as you can and also information regarding any attempted fixes you've tried. GOG's support team may not get back in touch with you immediately but from my own experience I've always had a response from them when I've needed to contact them.