i just got a new system a PIII 866 with 256 mb ram,sound blaster live & a Creative Labs Annihilator 2 card ,running windows 98.The game runs badly locks up,lag big time & sometimes when i go to save it just goes black & brings me back to the first screen .Can you guys help me out

Background programs can really slow down the game. Screen savers like Seti@home or Norton Utillities and other similar programs hog all you RAM. If you close these you will free up RAM that IWD can use. Also make sure you download the latest drivers for the Annihilator and check the Interplay website to see if they know of a confilct with the card. Using the quicksave might fix your save game issues.

Hmm, I don't think that it's a RAM issue (especially with 9. I had instances where the game just slows down so bad that I could actually hear the annoying hisses in the background and echoes. The game just slowed to a crawl...the best I could do was to restart. Most likely this is a Direct X issue. I suggest that you get the Direct X 7.0a (the latest) and use that instead of whatever Win98 has. Sometimes they use the older Direct X (like 6.0). That's all I can think of in your case.

MACHINE ISSUES:

- run IWD in 32bit colour resolution, IT'S FASTER THAN 24bit. This is a mathematical issue, the CPU is a lot faster when operating with even objects (32bit = 4 bytes) rather than uneven objects (24bit = 3 bytes).

Another thing: disable the 3D option in the IWD setup prog. It's there, but it's VERY experimental, and a big whoop in bad performance.

PS: I've an Athlon 700, 512MB RAM, Matrox Millennium G400, SB Live 1024, and the game runs flawlessly.

If you need more technical stuff, please mail me (see my profile). The more specific your question, the more precise the answer.

So anyway: