Okay, after beating this big bad boy the first time I noticed that there was an open quest pertaining to his summoning still in my journal. I reloaded a save from just prior to the summoning only THIS time i used Karlat's wand to cast protection from evil on both myself and my henchman. Belial appears and I initiate the dialogue - and try to persuade him that I need a magical item (option 2). WHAM!!! Game locks up tight with no error message and there is no indication that a tech error log has been created. Ctrl-alt-del will NOT terminate the program and I am forced to actually cut power to the system. OUCH!

I have the latest v1.19 patch installed.

What gives????

I've never heard of this before...try reloading it and see if it happens again. I hope you saved it right before summoning him, it seems like a good place to save it.

Deathcow,

I did save before (standard procedure first time in a new game is to make a temp save before MAJOR stuff like Belial); and its totally repeatable. Happened both times i tried, and didn't try a third as having to cut power to exit the program is NOT something I like doing.

I thought all my drivers were current but I am double checking them.

thanks