Hello !

I've just installed the game and it runs perfectly (no graphics, sound or frame rate bug observed). However, everytime I attempt to save or load a game ( the autosave ! ), the game crashes and I'm back to the Windows desktop.

Apparently, the problem is frequent with GOG games. So, I hope to get some some help from this Community ! :)

Here is some ( hopefully ) relevant information :

1) My retrogaming PC runs under Windows XP SP1 ;

2) I installed the game via the downloaded executable ( no GOG Galaxy ! ) ;

3) I didn"t use the default installation path. The actual one is : D:\Freedom Force vs the 3rd Reich ;

4) I have only one user account and it has the administrator rights ;

5) After a look at the game folder, I haven't been able to find a dedicated folder to saves ( but they may be supposed to be elsewhere like for many other modern games ? ). I suspect that this may be the main cause of my trouble...

Many thanks for your time !

Use this encyclopedia to find out various info, including save locations.

Thank you for your quick answer !

Unfortunately, the site experiences problems at the moment... :( I will give it a look as soon as possible.

Still no success with my attempts at solving the problem. :(

I have installed a fresh copy of the game. At first, I could load and save whenever I wanted. Then, after a few hours, the problem happened again and now the game crashes every time I select the load and save options. Except, curiously, the autosave (with the "Continue" option in the starting menu).

Another strategy was to remove the write protection of the hard disk via Regedit but nothing happened.

I have the feeling that I'm on the right path, though, because of two anomalies :

1) I can't find any saves folder for the game ;

2) Just after the first crash, another of my games, Fantasy General, started to malfunction as well whereas it was running perfectly before. I made a test with Shogo and to my dismay, I observed that only the autosave worked from now on.

So, my theory is that the saving process (possibly botched) has caused some kind of alteration in the Windows XP settings : user rights, hard disk access, security alert and so on.

Do you have any ideas ?

Have you tried looking here specifically for XP? As %LOCALAPPDATA% default paths varies between operation systems. Its kinda hard to troubleshoot really old systems, but nevertheless let's try:
1) I've noticed you're using SP1 pack. Can you update it to latest SP3? Maybe its an OS issue.
2) Does your game directory contain galaxy.dll? I believe this file, that communicates with GOG Galaxy, only optimized to work on modern systems and could bork things on older ones. Try to rename/move/delete it.
3) There is a dedicated to freedom force series forum, where its more likely to get answers about these games. You should to try ask there.
P.S. I've found on the forum this FAQ post about various common questions, one of which is talking about enabling logging. Try it, maybe you will see exact error you're having. There is also an Windows Event Viewer to look into, see this article to how to find and use it.

- I have already played the game with Windows XP SP1 and without any problem, so I don't think that the OS is faulty ;

- I've checked the installation folder and found no "galaxy.dll". As a precaution, I had activated the "Show hidden files" option ;

- The FAQ doesn't include advice about this issue. Is it so rare ?!?

- I will follow your suggestion and submit my case at the Freedom Reborn forum.

Oh, and I managed to find the saves location thanks to the the wiki page you've sent me. :)

I made a test by deleting all saves except the autosave. After it was done, I could access the load menu normally and the autosave was working. However, the game crashed again when I wanted to make a new save !

So, I still wonder why regular saves don't work at all. The access to the load menu could mean that they are corrupted in some way ?

I mostly sent you to this FAQ to follow the instruction on how to enable logging to be able to create crash logs.
It could contain an exact human-readable error explanation you're having problem with. It might be a problem with read/write permissions after all.
You might create these files as an admin, while the game can't access them as non-admin user.
Either try to start the game with admin rights, or make the saves folder available for everyone to read/write.