Can't load saved games

[mortisboc]

Hiya - I had a problem last night on Dungeon Level 4. I was talking to the elf/hill giant w/ my druid when the game froze mid-dialouge. I ended up having to hard boot my computer to get out (tried to escape, exit, cntrl/alt/delete - nada!) and now I can't load any saved games. I can start a new game or go to the tutorial, but when I click on load saved game it "flashes" to the load screen then the game quits and I'm on a "blackened" version of my desk top. Any suggestions on what I can do or why it is doing this? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers!

[Melpheos]

reinstall the game keeping the saved file...

maybe the module to load the saved game has been corrupted somewhat

[Lord Plothos]

That, unfortunately, does sound like many reports of save corruption. It's always best to have several saves for your party, and I'm not sure how it helps but the sages over at co8 recommend turning off autosave. It apparently is responsible for a lot of corruption.

You can try the uninstall/reinstall thing, but if the save is corrupted there's really nothing to be done about it, I'm afraid.

[mortisboc]

Thanks for the suggestions. I ended up contacting Atari Tech Support and he said that I did end up with a corrupt file possibly from something running in the background. The only way to fix it was to go in and delete EVERYTHING (all game files, temp files) that had to do with the game, uninstall it and start all over. Ah well, two weeks of play shot to Hades. I've started again and it took me about a week to get back to the point I was at before. If anyone else encounters a similar problem, then e-mail Atari for the specific instructions of how to safely delete what you need to. And as for the patches for the game on their site, I couldn't get any of them to download.

Thanks again!

[Lord Plothos]

There's a mirror for patch 2 at co8:

http://www.co8.org/files/patch/TOEE_USA_ANY-PATCH2.EXE

Also, this game should not be played unpatched (patch 2 alone will help with a lot of corruption issues).

I also recommend temple.zip:

Temple.zip
----------
http://www.jadri.com/temple.zip
-or-
http://www.co8.org/files/patch/temple.zip

1. Unzip the patch. (Double click the folder you downloaded and choose the extract all files option in the corner of the window (XP))
2. Find the file in you GAME'S directory called "temple.dll" and remove it. (Put it somewhere you can find it again.)
3. Take the "temple.dll" file from the unzipped patch folder and put it where the original file was.
4. Inside the patch folder should be a folder called "data". Inside that folder should be three new folders. Take all of them and put them into the game's "data" folder.

Lastly, if you or anyone finds themself in this position, you may have to start over, but it shouldn't take too long. If you use the console to set your PCs back to where they were XP-wise, you can go through all the hoops quickly and get back to where you were with just a bit more XP than you had. See the sticky thread on this forum on console commands for more info.

[mortisboc]

Cheers! Thanks for the patch info.