ok, this just happened. i had just BARELY got to Arx and i just finished talking to the captain of the guards, Carlo, he told me to go to the castle. so i walk out the door of the room he was in on my way to the castle, i turn the corner and KABLOOEW!!!! fatal memory error msg pops up and the game crashes and just shuts itself off......wtf.
i dont mean to diss on gog but i've had nothing but problems with this game since i bought it. took FOREVER to get a working copy, had to download the game probly 15 times before i got an uncorrupted copy, and half of the time the game wont load save files.....and yes i've tried all of the prescribed methods that i found in the forums. usually i have to start the task manager, change the priority, go back into the game (which usually takes a while for my computer to process that) and then hold ctr until i can actually see and play the game normally.
i know that gog had their own special patch for this game, V1.19, and still all these problems? this is a great game but i dont know if i can tolerate all these annoyances and continue on with it.

First of all, on the saves not loading - they do load. At least for me. They just take an EXTREMELY long time. More often than not, the first time you load after launching the game, expect it to take several minutes of an entirely black screen (or a black screen with the mouse pointer and nothing else). It also seems to get progressively worse the longer I play. In the beginning, it only took me 1-3 minutes to load. Last time I loaded after a Fatal Memory Error(!!!), it easily took 5-10. This is infuriating, seeing how the game crashes constantly due to Fatal Memory Error(!!!).
About the Fatal Memory Error(!!!), I heard that running it in Windows 95 Compatability mode helps, but I haven't tried this myself - because after running it in compatability mode, it resets the resolution and doesn't offer any widescreen resolutions. If you're not using widescreen, go ahead and try that. If you are.. well then you're out of luck for now.
I get constant Fatal Memory Error(!!!)s, followed by extremely long initial savegame-loading time. This is making the game virtually unplayable for me.
Fatal Memory Error(!!!) occurs when you bump into NPCs or Enemies, for some reason. As a pickpocket, I find this.. detrimental to gameplay, to say the least.

Just a unrelated-to-the-thread general question; Do you get long load times everywhere? I only get long load times the first time of every session. Extremely, frustratingly, ridiculously long load-times, but still only once every session.
To me, it's the combination of the two issues that gets to me. If it "just" crashed to desktop but had a quick re-launch, I could live with it. If I "just" had the long initial load time, I could play long sessions without crashing - and again I could easily live with that. But both at the same time is just so incredibly frustrating.
But if you have long load times everywhere, I can see how that'd be completely unplayable from scratch.

Well, it's only at the first load, and also seems to be area specific. But that's really annoying for me anyway, I can't help it...even moreso since I tend to play in spurts.
I recently heard back from the GOG team about it, after trying to help they said, "Unfortunately it always seemed like long load times were a specific "feature" of the game. :/ I'm afraid there isn't much we can do to help at this point."
:(

yup - long load times here as well, but it Does load, you just have to go and make a cup of tea or summat while it thinks about it..;o)
As for the fatal memory error - I had it constantly after about 3hrs of gamepley, every 15 minutes or so, rendering the game unplayable. GOG were told, and replied saying they were aware, but could do nothing - the best they could do was offer the usual things, turning off DEP for Arx, turning off UAC etc etc. None of which actually worked. I grumbled and moaned a bit, then moved onto Gothic...;o)
That was back in January of this year......recently however I heard of the compatibility fix - I'm currently trying again (new start) with Compatibility set to Windows 98 , and Im about 5 hours in with - fingers crossed - no fatal memory error yet. Still getting the long loads though.
Worth persevering with if you can - its a great game!

Try this, it worked for me:
Launch Arx Fatalis (As Administrator, as always - although I don't know if it's required).
After the game has launched, at the menu, tab out.
CTRL+ALT+DEL, launching the Task Manager.
Right-click ARX.exe, set priority to "Realtime".
Tab back into Arx Fatalis.
Load savegame.
Now, after this, and saving, I noticed that I didn't get the long load times at all anymore. Naturally, milage may vary depending on your specs, etc. All I can say is that it worked for me. Let me know if it helps and any possible quirks you run into.

Also found another instance in which my game gets a guarenteed(sp?) Fatal Memory Error(!!!); Whenever I enchant anything, anywhere.
That means that I can't enchant any of my items. D:

luckmann, thats a great suggestion.....and i tried it without success. i followed your steps and when i try to change the priority to realtime a window pops up and says that it was unable to change the priority to realtime and set it to high priority instead. it still seems to help a bit more i guess.
and as for the loading my save files, it always takes me like a good 4 or 5 minutes to get the game to load, usually i try to load the game and then bring up the task manager and set the priority of the game to high, then my comp locks up for a bit and takes a few minutes to load arx back up, but when it does load back up i hold down ctrl and usually my game works after that.
is it necessary for me to go thru all of that to get my game to load, or should i just load the file and wait for like 5 minutes without messing around in the task manager?

Much appreciated...but doesn't work for me either. :(

Bah. :(

I just bought it and after casting the first spell I take some steps and bam Fatal Memory Error!!!

I've had the same memory error but my load times are fine - I'm running it on Win7 64-bit QuadCore CPU with 4 gigs DDR3 - but the game is buggier in Win7 than it was in XP. I don't have a fix yet but I'm going to try running it in good old fashioned XP mode.
Don't forget, either the developer or studio (can't remember which) was also responsible for Gorasul.

I was getting the fatal memory error constantly. Then I ran it in Windows 98 Compatibility Mode, and bingo--no more fatal errors. I didn't have a resolution reset, but then I've been running it in Window rather than full-screen mode--which also makes waiting out the load-times a lot less annoying, as I just switch to another task in another window for the 10 minutes it takes to get started.
I really recommend running it in Win 98 Compatibility Mode--it's turned what was rapidly becoming an unplayable game into a good experience. And it's so easy to do in Windows 7--just right-click on the app icon, pull up "Properties", and go to the "Compatibility" tab.

Well I tried Win98 mode as you said.... no errors for over five or six hours. No long waits either. I "only" had to wait about 1 minute before but its about 5-10 seconds now.
Thanks for the advice.