This game is not playable because it freezes every 3 to 10 minutes and becomes unresponsive. The Task Manager shows it as "Not Responding."
I have tried everything, including disabling the antivirus, running in admin mode, using compatibility mode, DDdraw, Wine, and more.

On Windows 11, it is impossible to play through the game. Do you know the cause of these random freezes?

This has also been happening to me since the last patch.

Game will freeze when moving to different zones. It will also freeze when changing druid forms.

Unplayable at the moment for me.

Disabling the full screen optimizaiton under compatabliity tab seems to help with stability.

Crahes all over the place. Absolutely unplayable! This game should not be sold like that at all by GOG!

Game is crashing again, particularly when there is an in game cut scene.
I am running Windows 11 with the Enhanced Edition mod installed.
Due to crashing, I cannot progress past the first chapter.

The game always freezes when I talk to Oswald in Targos. I was able to get pass it by changing the DDraw.dll but now there is a 50/50 chance of freezing when saving.

24h2 problem. Many old games have this problem with the new update.

I have the same problem, trying to use different resolutions with wide screen mod, but it seems it's not always working.

You can try to disable auto HDR and/or rollback your GPU drivers. For me with a RTX 4070ti, doing both was the solution.

What I ended up doing was adjusting the cnc-ddraw config to borderless and changing some of the compatibility settings.

Found a Fix. Doesn't completely remove freezes, but makes them very minor. From seconds to milliseconds.

Steps:
1. Launch the game (with all your widescreen mods and ddrawfix patches)
2. Open Task Manager
3. Go to Details
4. Right-click on iwd2.exe
5. Select "Set affinity"
6. Choose CPU 0-3, leave all others deselected.
7. Done

Your game should now be less laggy when saving, changing locations, changing druid forms, summoning.

P.S. You can try running with just 2 cores, by selecting CPU 0 and 1 if you have problems with more threading. Honestly, it looks like the game is unstable only when running on a single core.

I figured I would add this post here, for anyone still wondering or for those who come here in the future...

I had the same issues, freezing or the game seizing up on save or loading of a game or randomly during the game...

I am playing Icewdind Dale 2 (Special Edition mod from Nexus nexusmods.co m/icewin ddale2/mods/4?tab=description ) I am using the cnc-ddraw app, the direct draw fix that is included in the special edition (NOT Enhanced Edition)... I use compatibility mode on the exe, I also use some of the fixes in the cnc-ddraw app.

Anyways the workaround to play this game is a little odd... You have to run it in windowed mode, and to make it full screen... I use Windows magnifier to fill up my screen (I have a 4k monitor and Im running it at the 1080p) and turn off the options "Have magnifier follow my mouse pointer, keyboard, text, narrator". and then center the app window on my magnified portion of the screen...

For the occasional freeze I still get... I open task manager, and set the priority of the game to "realtime" and "affinity" to all cores of cpus... I've found that the game loses all the cores when it freezes...so reapplying that gets the game running again...

So to summarize...

Windowed mode
Windows Magnifer - Accessibility > Magnifier > View (Change settings so the magnifier doesn't wander)
Task Manager - Set Affinity to All CPU Cores and Realtime for Priority (in the event of a freeze).

Godspeed my friends.