when attacking the orc boss in the rivertown map at the bottom right in his big tent. i attack him and after 4 hits the game just crashes. no way to kill him.

So don't? He's optional. You can try using Polymorph on him, I think that's bugged so it never wears off. There's a free spellbook of it around, too:

You could try killing him faster (when you have better equipment) or using a spell / scorpion trap, or something, and see if that bypasses whatever the problem is. Freezing him might also work.
Someone else had a problem when fighting Shrimpo, a crash triggered apparently when he would turn to heal himself (the crash occurred when his hit points got down to about 40%).

I have major, MAJOR issues with crashing. Not sure if it's the version or my hardware/software. I was going to quit at one point because of it but I have too much time invested to do so. I wish I had better advice than "save early, save often..." but I don't.

There was a point that I was trying to use the Scorpion traps and run off screen to kill large groups of enemies (too much on the screen is what seems to make mine crash) but I did that once, ran away... sat there and it crashed. Seems to be unavoidable for my setup.