I'm experiencing the same issues a lot of people have reported where cut scenes will cause the game to crash. I've tried all the fixes I've seen on this board and elsewhere online, so far with no success. So my question is this: How much will I miss in terms of the story if I disable the movies? Are they all just transitional shots of starships flying back and forth etc. or do they contain any information crucial to the actual plot?

Well, Yes, You might miss some parts of the plot, particularly in case of one, called 'Revelation', if memory serves.

I'm having the same problem. I was just gifted this great game by the ever generous trentonIf and have installed it right away, however the only way to avoid the game from crashing on startup was to disable the movies in the setup. I've updated my drivers and everything but to no avail. So far nothing I've found anywhere online seems to work, so frustrating :(
I was just about to start a thread with the same question so thanks for starting the topic!
Hopefully there is a way to fix this problem as I would sure like to not miss the videos.

What version of Windows are you running? For me, in Windows 7 I needed to tick the following options in the Compatibility Tab in the properties for swkotor.exe:

* Disable Visual Themes
* Disable Desktop Composition

You can also try ticking Disable DPI Scaling, though I don't have that option ticked on my nVidia-based desktop.

In Windows 8.1, I didn't have to change anything in the Compatibility tab (Steam version). This is on an AMD Radeon-based laptop. Your mileage may vary.

Flynn

Isn't at least part of that scene rendered in-game, though? Might be enough to get the gist. I don't remember finding it odd on my last playthrough with movies disabled, but that might just be because I've already played through the game a few times with them turned on.

To answer the question: most of them aren't that important, but some do provide useful information. Still, if the choice is between disabling the movies and not playing it all, it seems like an easy choice. As a last resort, you could look the cutscenes up on Youtube.

Thanks for the reply, that is the very first thing I had tried but to no effect, it also doesn't seem to work for everyone else having the same problem as I noticed while browsing for a solution online.

I'm running Windows 7 64bit Home Premium
My laptop has Intel HD graphics which could be a problem but I thought KOTOR is supposed to work with the newest Intel drivers, unfortunately it isn't for me.
On the other hand, many people with proper graphics cards and higher specs are having the exact same problem with the game crashing on startup, sometimes it crashes after the Lucas Arts logo and sometimes I gloriously get to the Bioware logo and but this is where the game crashes at the very latest, and all I get is the standard "this program stopped running, look for a solution" message...

Did you try deleting the intro movies altogether? That might help. I have an Intel card as well, and I was also forced to eventually delete the movies.

Sorry to hear that. Unfortunately, I don't have a way of testing Intel HD as my desktop doesn't even show it as an option. Maybe if I removed the video card - or maybe there's a BIOS setting to enable it. I'll have to check. My laptop is an AMD A10, so no luck there. If I get the chance tonight, I'll look at the BIOS options on my desktop and see if there's a way to enable it temporarily.

Flynn

same as me - steam version ran fine AFTER I changed compatability settings to xp3, run as admin, get rid of desktop composition AND

I used flawless widescreen (stickied at top of forum - though the site seems to be down, theres an alternative in the comments).

THAT sorted it.

Thanks to everyone for the replies. I finally gave up on trying to get the movies to work so I started to play the game without them, in the lower cities right now and so far no crashes as long as I don't touch any of the graphics settings such as anti-aliasing etc. I've tried to delete the 3 intro movies but the game still crashed instantly on startup, only thing that worked was disabling all movies in the "swconfig" setup file.
Unfortunately, this means I'm missing out on all the CGI cutscenes :/ I tried the alternative widescreen fix which unfortunately didn't work even though I followed the instructions to the letter (including adjusting the resolution in the swkotor.ini etc) so I'm currently stuck with playing at 1024x768 which isn't too bad on a laptop screen. I'm just glad the game works at all even if it's a bit aggravating having to go without the videos.

btw I have "Intel HD graphics" which is the equivalent of Intel HD2000 so I'm generally worse off than if you have Intel HD4000.

I've played the game on the old GMA 950, and it worked fairly well, as did many others, so I'm always loath to blame Intel for a certain problem. I've been trying to reproduce the problems people are having, with variable luck. I'm currently running and AMD APU, Win8.1 x64.

One thing was that the movies would occasionally minimise. I assume that's not it, and the game crashes outright? Have you tried running the game in a window? Also, if you've been trying widescreen fixes, what resolution were you attempting? Some of the lower ones are tricky to get working.

Also, could you list what dll files you have in your KotOR folder? GOG or Disney/LA have added a bunch, while my old copy only has binkw32, mss32, and patchw32. FWIW, my bink is version 1.5.21, circa April 2003.

-Yes, have tried windowed mode (no difference)
-Attempted resolutions: 1530x864 and 1440x900 (everything else is too high for my system and laptop monitor)
-Attached a screencap listing all the dll files in the GOG Kotor directory including subdirectories:

Weird: one of GOG's support tips is removing some ati libraries in the folder, so I thought they'd thrown in a bunch of stuff in there for compatibility. Guess not quite...
Damn, even the binks match up. Let me think on this a bit.