I was a little confused about patches and such, but when I borrowed the game off my friend, I installed Icewind Dale and Heart of Winter. to try and cure the skipping, I installed the patch for 1.06, and it really messed up my game, and my potion bag and scroll case went missing, along with a couple of my character portraits. I asked my friend and he told me that I don't need a patch if I have Heart of Winter, so I uninstalled it all and reinstalled Icewind Dale and Heart of Winter, and now, while the game still runs, it also still skips.

I find that it tends to not skip when I first start the game, and I found that if it starts to skip badly, restarting my comp helps. I reckon therefore that it might be a memory issue? Mine doesn't freeze completely, so I think I might actually have a different problem from BlakJak, or his might just be that much worse.

Anyway, I have the feeling that I'm talking crap so if anybody understood everything I just said, then well done :)

Sorry, I forgot to mention that I don't have any antivirus programs running when I play Icewind Dale

Mojo- the skipping was my major problem, it used to freeze once or twice. Like you, the skipping only starts after I have been playing a while. Now I have reinstalled Icewind Dale without the patch, there is no skipping- I think your problem could be due to you having Heart of Winter installed, as this contains the 1.06 patch. I am beginning to think that the 1.06 patch may be unsuitable for UK versions of the game- on the Interplay site they list a 1.05 UK version patch, but when I installed this the cheat mode wouldn't work. I am not sure but you could try installing the 1.05 patch "over" the 1.06 version as found in Heart of Winter- don't blame me if it messes the whole lot up though! Cheers, BlakJak

I have a UK version of the game and no skipping.

Theres a patch for HoW as well somewhere, which is needed for ToL. Which is a free official expansion for HoW.

If its starting after playing for a while, it could be a memory leak, in which case its not the game - its your drivers. Upgrade them, especialy graphics card drivers cos their updated far too fast, and motherboard cos everybody forgets to upgrade them. OR you might have set the cache too big (go into the cofig program, 140Mb usualy works fine) or not have enough RAM (go buy more, 64 Mb should be sufficient, 128Mb for preference).

I had what sounds like the same problem and it turned out the computer was using up to much RAM trying to handle all the game info being thrown at it while other programs were running in the background. (Printers, Antivirus Tools and the like) I only had to turn off unnessary programs in the start-up menu and reboot. It's worth a try at no cost.

GOOD NEWS!
I've managed to solve the problem- thanks andrewas- the cache was too high and now that I have lowered it, the game works great, even WITH the 1.06 patch installed.

MOJO- try setting your cache down to 100-150 and see if this will help.

*Unfortunately another problem has occured! (Not too bad though)
The game is now running at a refresh rate of 60hz (instead of the usual 85hz) I've put in a newer post so if anyone knows how to solve it can they get back to me asap.*

Thanks again for all your help, BJ Birkin

<font color=silver>Glad to see you managed to solve this problem, BlakJak. Thanks for the insight on the cache setting, ANdrewas [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img] </font>

No no no no no!
I thought I'd fixed the problem, but now the game is totally freezing! It must be the 1.06 patch, I didn't get a single glitch when playing it before, the patch is what has caused all the problems. I have uninstalled the game *again* and I don't intend to put the patch on again- thanks to everyone who helped me out though! Cheers, BlakJak

And if anyone does know how to solve this problem please tell me [img]smile.gif[/img] , as I will be keeping this post open ;)

Thanks-

<font color=silver>BlakJak, I saw someone else report what seems to be a similar problem to yours on Balck Isle's IWD tech support message boards. A suggestion was made in that case to try disabling 3D acceleration and EAX as possible solutions. The thread can be found <a href=http://feedback.blackisle.com/forums/showthread.php?s=067ec06086c3b1de02551ecb72beb234& threadid=47212>here</a>

You might want to check out the those boards for other possible solutions.</font>