I have many of the GOG games and this is the first one that has me stumped.

I am pretty sure it has to do with unanswered sound requests cascading to a critical mass. The main menu is where I get, can get a little past if I hurry, before the ticking time bomb of unanswered sound requests cascade and cause the full lock up. Happens on both a SB X-Fi Titanium HS and a Real-tek bult in, both on current drivers.

I have tried editing the game .ini file but that doesn't seem to control anything afaict (yes using admin). I have about 200+ games installed and plenty more where that came from and this is the first one that actually does this. I have on a few games heard a little distortion now and then but this one takes the cake. Tried plenty of fixes and various tweaks but all end the same way (with all 3 shortcuts, T&L crash of course). If I *have* to play with no sound as a temp work around I will, or try a window or some other alternatives, but I can't find a way to alter any of that.

NOTE: I just ran The Guild, got out of the game before the lock up. Then ran a different game, THAT game then assumed the same M.O. of staticy sounds and then proceeded to hard lock the system. So something in there is tossing a monkey wrench on sound and it is staying memory resident. Would be happy to work with someone to figure it out if anyone is able to get a better handle on it.

> So something in there is tossing a monkey wrench on sound and it is staying memory resident.

Look at all the processes running (using task manager)
run guild, quit.
Look at all the processes running (using task manager) See if there's anything hanging around.

Cleaned my windows install up sound wise, not much to do but made sure. The only processes coming up are the wrapper, Europa1440.exe and the server if you get that far. Installed K-lite codecs and movies sound amazing but still didn't fix the issue. game.ini file isn't in control apparently after the addon files take over about the 3rd-4th video. I am thinking the settings there may be causing this:

"•A game's audio samples may have levels, or DC biases, that are unusually high. These samples can overload the X-Fi audio enhancement algorithms which result in output streams that clip, or exceed, the allowable output signal swing."

The volume is waaay too loud at the source level once you get that far in (4th video for sure). I don't speak German so not going to poke around the files.

I don't think it's a process as much as it is something happening while running the game that taints the Windows 7 64 sound environment. Anyways, I am done messing with it for now until I get some sort of lead on something I can actually change.

Shame... I really wanted to play this game after hearing so many good things. Here's hoping The Guild 2 is available and able to run Win 7 64.

> Here's hoping The Guild 2 is available and able to run Win 7 64.

Got Guild 2: Renaissance at GamersGate last week. It seems to run with no audio disasters* on my Win7/64. O of course so did Guild Gold so it's possible the same flaw will mess you up on that one. But the game is many years newer - probably they don't use the same code

*frame rate is slow but I was just testing to see if the game worked - didn't try to optimize anything.

Well this is a very old build I am running and it's gotten atleast 400 installs over a couple years I have had it. There is no telling what is setting it off on my end if that is the case. About to rebuild on SSD soon and will try again after that. Did you get The Guild Gold here or at GG?

> . Did you get The Guild Gold here or at GG?

I got the GG - No DRM (on the Gold and Renaissance parts).

Interesting. Thanks for the info! I think I am going to try their version and see what happens.

Both versions do exact same thing... (GOG and GG)

So I removed all sound from Win 7 64. Still locks up fullscreen same way.

Aftersome tinkering I was able to get it working fine at another point before this fix at fullscreen, but I changed too many things too fast, all at once, and can't reproduce it. Might have been just skipping past the movies as I still think that something loading around 3rd or 4th movie is the culprit (expansion).

Here's the fix for Windows 7 64:

If you have catalyst and ATI video, go make a game profile that turns everything off or assigns control to application, BUT max out vsync to always on (be sure crossfire is set to disabled).

If you have Nvidia you may need to make a profile as well, not sure as I am running ATI 5900 series.

1) Right click Notepad, run as admin, open game.ini file in the main directory of Europa 1400/The Guild Gold (To see game.ini, you will need to change to "all files" at the lower right when browsing directory).
2) Change FULLSCREEN to DIRECTWINDOW (be sure to leave a space between the = and DIRECTWINDOW or it will not work right).
3) Change show_intro=1 to show_intro=0
4) Change cur_res=1 to cur_res=2 (sets 1152x864 resolution) (I tried up to cur_res=10, no such luck as a hidden higher res set. Didn't look to see if this could be manually set deep in the data files).
5) Save and exit notepad.
6) Create a shortcut for the Europa1400 T&L exe by going in to the main menu of the game and sending the exe to desktop (this is exactly opposite of what most people use to run this game).
7) Right click and go to compatability. Check tick box compatabilty mode for Windows XP SP3.
8) Go to shortcut tab, click advanced. Check run as Admin so that the game.ini file will actually work.
9) Double click the Europa 1400 T&L shortcut, and the game should run fine.

Game should work fine with the exception of a small strip of black piller box on the right side. Ignore the black piller, in the game you should have full screen. For best results I set my desktop to 1152x864 BEFORE running the game and you get almost full screen. If you do it after the menu selections do not work right.