izzynobre: Pretty much self explanatory. I cannot play this game longer than 10 minutes without it crashing. The sound gets "stuck" (usually when skipping the turn), the mouse pointer freezes, and the game dies. Is this a known issue?

I'm on a HP Mini 210 Netbook with a 1.6ghz Atom processor and 2gb of RAM. Windows 7 Starter. I've tried all compatibility modes, tried reinstalling it, tried running as an admin. Nothing works.

What is GOGs policy on refunds? At this point I'm convinced HoMM3 simply does not run in Win7. Googling the issue takes me to several message boards where people are trying, to no avail, to make this game run in Win7.

The only solution that seems to work is "partition your hard drive and install a copy of WinXP".

I understand that we can't always expect old games to run flawlessly on newer hardware/OSs, but if GOG makes the claim that it runs on Win7 (and the product page for HoMM3 does make that claim), I expect it to work.

dean66683: I had same problem on win 7 ultimate. The only solution for classic old games like this is the microsoft virtual pc an xp mode. (Runs xp inside win 7 basically). took me a year to get this anwser!

DoctorGOGgles: Heroes 3 frequently crashed for me on Win Vista 64. Compatibility modes didn't help. Apparently Heroes 3 crashes on modern systems with more than one CPU core (or hyperthreading). To see if this is the problem for you, start the game, open the windows task manager, right click the Heroes 3 Task and set affinity to only CPU 0. The problem with this approach is, that you have to do it every time you launch the game as the setting for affinity is not saved.

The solution to permanentely change the game to only use a single cpu is to patch the Heroes3.exe with the imagecfg.exe tool so that the game only runs on a single CPU core. You can get imagecfg from here http://www.robpol86.com/index.php/ImageCFG Make a backup of the original Heroes3.exe first, since imagecfg changes the file. If you get an error message when trying to apply the patch, move Heroes3.exe to a temporary directory outside of Program Files (since that directory is protected in Vista and Win 7 and can only be written to by an Administrator), then patch the file and move it back.

For me this fixed the crashes. I've been playing for hours without compatibilty mode enabled in Vista 64bit on a Core2Duo. You don't even have to launch Heroes3.exe directly. Using gogwrap.exe works too. Maybe GOG should update their installer with a pre-patched Heroes3.exe.

zyriak: This solved my problems with Heroes 3 crashing, thanks a lot!

DoctorGOGgles: Heroes 3 frequently crashed for me on Win Vista 64. Compatibility modes didn't help. Apparently Heroes 3 crashes on modern systems with more than one CPU core (or hyperthreading). To see if this is the problem for you, start the game, open the windows task manager, right click the Heroes 3 Task and set affinity to only CPU 0. The problem with this approach is, that you have to do it every time you launch the game as the setting for affinity is not saved.

The solution to permanentely change the game to only use a single cpu is to patch the Heroes3.exe with the imagecfg.exe tool so that the game only runs on a single CPU core. You can get imagecfg from here http://www.robpol86.com/index.php/ImageCFG Make a backup of the original Heroes3.exe first, since imagecfg changes the file. If you get an error message when trying to apply the patch, move Heroes3.exe to a temporary directory outside of Program Files (since that directory is protected in Vista and Win 7 and can only be written to by an Administrator), then patch the file and move it back.

For me this fixed the crashes. I've been playing for hours without compatibilty mode enabled in Vista 64bit on a Core2Duo. You don't even have to launch Heroes3.exe directly. Using gogwrap.exe works too. Maybe GOG should update their installer with a pre-patched Heroes3.exe.

DoctorGOGgles: <snip>
For me this fixed the crashes. I've been playing for hours without compatibilty mode enabled in Vista 64bit on a Core2Duo. You don't even have to launch Heroes3.exe directly. Using gogwrap.exe works too. Maybe GOG should update their installer with a pre-patched Heroes3.exe.

DoctorGOGgles: Heroes 3 frequently crashed for me on Win Vista 64. Compatibility modes didn't help. Apparently Heroes 3 crashes on modern systems with more than one CPU core (or hyperthreading). To see if this is the problem for you, start the game, open the windows task manager, right click the Heroes 3 Task and set affinity to only CPU 0. The problem with this approach is, that you have to do it every time you launch the game as the setting for affinity is not saved.

The solution to permanentely change the game to only use a single cpu is to patch the Heroes3.exe with the imagecfg.exe tool so that the game only runs on a single CPU core. You can get imagecfg from here http://www.robpol86.com/index.php/ImageCFG Make a backup of the original Heroes3.exe first, since imagecfg changes the file. If you get an error message when trying to apply the patch, move Heroes3.exe to a temporary directory outside of Program Files (since that directory is protected in Vista and Win 7 and can only be written to by an Administrator), then patch the file and move it back.

For me this fixed the crashes. I've been playing for hours without compatibilty mode enabled in Vista 64bit on a Core2Duo. You don't even have to launch Heroes3.exe directly. Using gogwrap.exe works too. Maybe GOG should update their installer with a pre-patched Heroes3.exe.