If you summon a doll and use its secondary skill menu BF icon to enter the BF, does that make any difference? I wouldn't expect it to, but you never know.
You have not entered the BF at all yet in act 2? Have you gotten to the imp village yet and tried to leave? You get summoned the first time you leave the village, and if that occurs trying to enter the BF, it does take longer than usual. Try running out of the village, and then after being summoned save and see if you can get to the BF. Since the game is crashing sometimes (rather than just appearing to hang) this probably isn't the issue, though.
Try deleting the files within the dynamic folders (not the folders themselves, though);
'
..\Beyond Divinity\Acts\Act1\Dynamic', '
..\Beyond Divinity\Acts\Act2\Dynamic', etc.
These folders are used as a cache for the game. Files are created / copied there from the save game folder when you load, and written / copied to those folders when you save a game. The files will be re-created as required the next time you start Beyond Divinity. If there was a corrupt file in those folders, deleting the files should fix the problem.
Do you have any old act 1 saves? If so, can you reload them and enter the BF?
If not, you can start a new game and relatively easily get to a BF key, especially if you
hex teleport (teleport your hero to the crystal bag room, then take the stairs down to the pentagram room, then take the south stairs to the room with the second level 1 BF key). Alternately, you can start a new game and save, then download and extract my
data.000 file (295KB) into that new save folder, then reload the save. Each save is a separate subfolder in the '
..\Beyond Divinity\savegames' folder.
If a new game works, then the problem is something in your current saves (a missing or corrupt file). You could compare a save after entering the BF in the new game to your current saves, and see if there are any obvious differences.
If a new game also hangs or crashes, then the problem is likely with the game itself, in which case re-installing should help. Alternately, there is a file verification procedure you could try (see below).
To do a clean re-install of the game (and patch);
Zip or otherwise backup your saved games folder to another location first, just in case. Each save is a separate subfolder in the '
..\Beyond Divinity\savegames' folder; the 5 '
bd_act#_start' folders are created/updated by the game/patch, and do not need to be backed up.
Un-install the game, re-boot, in Windows Explorer browse to the '
Beyond Divinity' folder and make sure there are no files or folders remaining, except within the '
savegames' folder (though the 5 '
bd_act#_start' folders should be gone). After that, shut down all non essential programs (especially anti-virus), re-install the game, re-boot and shut down all non essential programs again. At this point you may be able to start the game and see if any problems persist. However, if you saved games in the patched version, they will not be playable in the unpatched game version. After that you can (optionally) reboot and shut down all non-essential programs before re-installing the patch.
~~~~~
The install program should report any problems, such as CRC errors, during install. However, if it fails to do so, or a file becomes corrupt after installation, the integrity of the files can still be verified using a program such as
FileCheck;
download (194KB). This is a small freeware program (no install required) to calculate the CRC-32 values (the cyclic redundancy check used in zip files) of a number of files. It can also compare a previously calculated CRC file with a set of files/folders.
After doing a clean install of BD and rebooting, I deleted the files in the '
..\Beyond Divinity\DirectX9' folder (since they are not needed if/once DirectX 9 is installed). Then I used FileCheck to create a crc file of the game folders, installed the 1.45 patch and did so again, both before starting the game (I repeated this procedure with the 1.47 patch). If you compare the appropriate CRC file to your install, it should tell you if there are any corrupt files. You do not need to worry about moving any saved games out of the
savegames folder or deleting the files in the dynamic folders, since new files will not be tested by FileCheck, just those listed in the crc file. If you have started the game and changed any options, there will be differences reported in the
config.div and
keylist.txt files. In my install the '
..\Beyond Divinity\Editor\dgen_themes.000' file was also reported to be different.
There are several files in the
Beyond Divinity folder created when the game is started or options are changed, including
init.cfg, mapids.000, persist.dat, sinfo.000, slashed-d3d6.cfg, slashed.cfg, sound.cfg and
starlog.txt. A couple other files are also added, but another crc file including these wouldn't help much, since most or all are system or option dependent, so these files would usually be reported as different regardless of being valid or corrupt.
At least the
config.div,
slashed.cfg and
slashed-d3d6.cfg files in the
Beyond Divinity folder can be deleted, and the configuration program / game will recreate them the next time it is started.
Beyond Divinity CRC files (285 KB)
[*] These crc files are based on the UK English version; the North American version should be the same, I think, but the Australian version will have differences (it uses a different copy protection).
[*] FileCheck expects the files to be in the original locations to verify, so if you installed BD to a location other than the default (
C:\Program Files\Larian Studios\Beyond Divinity), open the CRC file in Wordpad (for example), and do a search-and-replace so the file/folder paths match your install.
If your CRC values match, it is not the game itself, but likely a conflict with something else in your system or a problem in the saved game folder. When examining the list of 'errors' FileCheck produces, potential problem files would be those with an error trying to read, or with a large size difference (especially zero byte files) from the known good install.
