Now that I finally have time available to play this massive game, I can't even get through 10-15 minutes of spaceflight without having my buzz killed :(

These freezes often seem to happen when I click the X button of an in-game window. Apart from that they're unpredictable, and lock up my machine so hard that I can't even alt+tab out of fullscreen. I was experiencing this in Reunion multiple times so I bit the bullet and installed Terran Conflict, but that hasn't changed a thing (apart from the prettier interface). The game runs smooth as butter in the meantime. Am I alone in trying to diagnose this problem?

I'm halfly posting this for WinterSnowfall to see; I'm still trying to write the first page of that diary, buddy!

Oh, never heard of such and certainly never experienced it.

Are your drivers up to date? Latest version of DirectX installed (from 2010!) (if on Windows)? NO codec packs installed?
But those are just standard things to check that I guess you already have done.
Hmm, are you playing on Windows, Linux or OSX?

I really cannot think of what else could cause such behaviour unless your computer is not up to X.
Game is unplayable like that.

Drivers are the first thing to update when annoying stuff happens, so I'll get onto that soon. It doesn't feel like a graphical issue though. I'm running Windows 8.1 in 64-bit.

I'd play in a window to see if that helps, but the launcher has a really weird list of windowed resolutions.

Quick look in my X3TC launcher: All resolutions look very normal and they are the same for windowed and full screen modes.

Some security programs (specially AVG) can create conflicts, try disabling it.
Also X2 and X3 games sometimes enter in conflict with FFDShow codecs, You have theses installed?

Not for me. I'm using a 2160p monitor and none of the ultra-HD resolutions go taller than 1200p, even though they keep getting wider and wider. X3R only lists one resolution taller than that, and it's 2560x2048, which is basically square. Heyy, as a matter of fact I do. I guess I'll try uninstalling those tomorrow. Hopefully I don't need them for video playback.

This. I've seen it happen back in the day. It will actually hang unpredictably (insert dice roll here) whenever an in-game video is played. Of course now I use MPC-HC for video playback, which uses its own sandboxed FFDShow codecs, so I no longer have this problem. Hehe, well, at least you're trying :D. As DalekSec has said, also try disabling your antivirus if uninstalling FFDShow has no effect. I've had some issues with the antivirus too as some point, though it was with the retail version, not the one from GoG.

I'm using MPC-HC too. Do you have an \ffdshow folder in your x86 Program Files? I don't remember installing it separately, so I wonder if that's actually part of the player.

Nope. And sorry, MPC-HC has not been using ffdshow for a while now - they've switched to LAVFilters - so you should really, really not have any need for ffdshow.

Thanks Winter, that's helpful to know. I'll try everybody's suggestions and report back here soon :D

I DID clearly say in my first answer "NO codec packs installed?" This is the culprit to 50% of all technical problems in X3 if I am to belive all the threads I have read on Egosoft's forums.

These games are OLD (X3R 2005, X3TC 2008). They do not have all the modern resolutions that are in use now, especially not above 1920x1200. There might be mods to support larger but I do not know.

Let us hope you will get it rolling now!

Unfortunately nope - even with my Radeon drivers updated and Kaspersky disabled, it's still hard-locking at random moments due to some unknown issue. X3 is the only game on my system which trolls me like this.

I might have to put this on the backburner for another time guys, because each crash is so time-consuming to test. There's a strong chance I'll refresh my Windows partition sometime this year, and when I do, these will be the first games I reinstall. It could be a hardware issue for all I know.

:-(

I don't think so. I think it's still about some codecs or bits and pieces left over from what you once had installed which are messing with X3.

When you reinstall your OS, avoid codec packs at all cost (they're pretty obsolete by today's standards anyway, unless you're encoding video).

Today while doing totally other things it came to my mind that maybe it is audio related. Again, NO extra codecs installed and audio driver updated?