I also want to add that I just installed the VIA Latency patch suggested by Larian/CDV's tech page. Not sure that will make any difference in the errors I was getting, but I suppose it could based on the contents of that page.
Running the game after installing the VIA latency patch had no effect on my problem (still crashed during sword load). Still, the latency patch difference might only kick in PRIOR to install (to avoid errors). If this is the case, I would have to attempt the install yet again from scratch with the latency patch now in place.
