maydayp: you don't open the imagecfg, you open the command promp, then type in the code (http://www.gog.com/en/forum/heroes_of_might_and_magic_series/homm_3_crashing_quite_a_lot_windows_vista)

hmoore14: I have the issue with Pharaoh of the intro cinematic (and I assume every cinematic) not working, with just a frozen black screen and the sound playing as normal. Another problem on a lot of GOG downloaded games, such as Populous: The Beginning and Torin's Passage is that the sound is horrible. Spiky and jagged would be the best way of describing it.

Now, assuming that this fix would solve these issues, I'm not very good at doing complicated things such as what you describe here. Case in point: I can't even run the IMAGECFG.EXE. A black box with text in flashes up briefly and disappears when I double click on the application.

I have no clue what I'm doing wrong, but even if I could get it to work I'm still not sure I could alter anything with any confidence. What, for example, is a 'batch file'? I might be asking a lot, but a step by step, detailed guide to what you need to do would be really helpful.

Thanks.

pH7: Some older games, especially those using Miles sound system, always crash, freeze and/or stutter violently on my multicore CPU (an i7 920 quad core running 64bit Vista Business edition). Launcing the process and then try to change CPU affinity isn't really an option when it fails on the intro, so I'm using a small utility to change this permanently: imagecfg.exe

IMAGECFG.EXE was part of the Win2k distribution and can be a bit hard to find, but here's one place to get it: http://www.robpol86.com/index.php/ImageCFG. I've created a small batch file that I just drop the game's executable on to permanently change the affinity to the first core:
[code]
@echo off
if not exist %1 goto end
if exist %1.bak goto end
copy %1 %1.bak
imagecfg -u %1
imagecfg -a 0x1 %1
pause
:end
[/code]
(Neither this batch file or the imagecfg utility will work with long file names, but that hasn't been a problem yet; if it becomes one, just rename the game's executable and then change it back afterwards.)

If you don't want to make a permanent change to the executable (I guess it could interfere with some anti-cheating schemes - I don't know) you can either use PSEXEC.EXE (XP and newer) using the -a switch, or START with the /AFFINITY switch (Server 2003 and newer).

Finally, you have the option to download and install ACT (Application Compatibility Toolkit) from Microsoft, create a new application fix, enter the path to the executable, select none on the compatibilities modes page, select SingleProcAffinity, finish it, save database, and - finally - right-click your database and select Install.

Personally, I prefer imagecfg.exe and my batch file - it's about as quick and easy as it gets. I've done this to a lot of GOG titles - if there are problems with movies etc, this usually fixes it - without any problems at all.

I hope this may be of help to other GOG'ers =)

khnk222: I tried doing the first and last option you mention but I am having no success I used the ACT the way you said it should have been used and It still does not show the cinematics. I have OCD so it's rather difficult to just ignore not having them, I do think you forget to mention something though about the ACT right before I finish setting up the SingleProcAff. it allows the checking and unchecking of files related to the game and I don't know which files to check in or out. I used the 32bit compatibility admin. program in the ACT package and I installed the fix but still it does not work. I hope that you could explain in more detail what I should do with the ACT I also might try the command prompt again.