[Bungleau]

Okay, sorry for the delays. I reinstalled tonight, and here's what I found. I'm running XP SP2, DX 9.0C, and a paltry 1GB of memory (1.5GB fixed swap, I believe).

I reinstalled just straight, no patches.

First, that introoff.dat file simply bypasses the opening video. So that's a red herring.

Second, after the opening video, you're put into the main screen with the picture of Kerah and the Start/Load/Credits/Exit options.

I took start and it brought me into town. IIUC, you're saying you don't even get this far?

I was able to add a character and start the game. I saved outside town and was able to get back in town.

While in town, I couldn't access the top row of buildings or the right-hand gate. This is consistent with not virtualdubbing, which I hadn't done yet.

Applying vdub to the video files did fix that problem. However, I have a problem on my machine when I look at a directory with those expanded .avi files. Explorer craps out and dies... every time. I had to rename and copy the files at the command prompt, but it worked.

From the town menu, I could go in to the control options and set the gamma and video driver settings there.

A couple of interesting things...

When I start in Win95 compatibility mode, the game hangs when I leave. This happens in Win98 mode as well... but *doesn't* in WinNT mode. I'm playing there now.

Also, I tried checking nothing more than the compatibility mode -- no screen resolution, no other flags. Everything seems to be running fine... but I haven't done any long-term testing yet.

So... where in that process is it dying for you?