Just like when I originally played, wanted to create and use my own full party. In olden days, you could do this my creating a multiplayer game and using that to effectively play single party by only using created party members.

However, when I try to do this and create a game i only get options of tc/icp and serial. When I do the former it crashes to desktop when I try to create, if i use latter it just doesnt do anything when you click button.

I know I am probably doing something stupid, any input appreciated.

Go into windowed mode before clicking "Create". (Alt+Enter)
After the loading screen you can go back to fullscreen.

Thx much, not sure why its necessary to do that, but it certainly worked

Although you didn't specify your Windows version, I believe it's a problem with the newer DirectX in Vista and 7 as that where I have had this problem appearing. It happens for all releases of the game, whether from CD, DVD or GOG.

EDIT: No, wait, BG2? Didn't read correctly... that's interesting, can't say I've seen this with anything other than BG1.

Me and my friend is having the exact same problem, except we want to play together.. Anyone know a fix or workaround?

Edit: Just now saw the alt+enter suggestion, but I can't seem to make it go into windowed mode :S

You are probably using the widescreen mod, right? There's a problem with that. If your BG resolution matches your native resolution, you can't go into windowed mode. Basically any resolution below your native res. will work.

Edit:
3d acceleration may also solve this problem.

Yess, thanks that did the trick!

Never mind; the TC/ICP trick was the one I needed, though it took either a full install and/or changing the install directory from Program Files to C: (if anyone finds this thread as I did (i.e. looking for a solution to the specific problem discussed) I have no idea which change fixed the problem since I did both, but trying to just let it through the firewall with a minimum install in C:/Program Files crashed the game).

EDIT: It seems that even after the above, the "window during game creation, full screen afterward" trick is still necessary to avoid the same crash issue with TC/ICP.