Larian Studios Forums Divine Divinity (English) Technical Problems quick saves wont load

The game crashed on me, and now none of my quick saves will load. it asked me to clear all dynamic files (i deleted all files in the dynamic folder) and to reset the graphic options, which I did, but still no luck. it goes all the way thru the loading bar, then crashes to desk top. I have the latest patch. I also get random crashes to desk top several times per gaming session.

Make sure you exit all non-essential programs (especially ant-virus) before starting Divinity.

Try starting a new game and saving/re-loading it. If that works, there may be a problem with your saved games. Some things which can do this are; (links to old forum)

missing file - Found out what is the savegame bug !!!

read only - Load crashes

version number corruption - savegame version misery and the FIX!

If all else fails, uninstall with the uninstall Divine Divinity program and then reinstall.
I had to do this with other games, cause for the problem is still unknown to me.

If you make a backup copy of the game files (not including savegames), you can just copy them over the corrupted game files to clear up the game. It takes a few minutes for Windows to copy a couple gigs of data, but it's still faster than reinstalling.

Could someone tell me what this "savegame bug" is?
The old board doesn't work.

I reinstalled the game a 2nd time and this time around I can't load any of the save games. When I try, I get a beep and the game crashes. I can save and load new savegames. I also noticed that compared to the new savegames, the old savegame directories are missing an "inv.b0" file. What does that mean and can I fix it?? I really don't want to play from the beginning... I was getting far!!!

This is part of the savegame misery

I just scored! I experienced my second major technical disappointment with this game, that being the savegames would not load (previous is the aura of command bug). Here is the info;
I BOUGHT divine divinity, played for some time (40+hrs), got the aura of command bug, patched to .32, played for awhile then eventually got tired of load times on the startup so i put on a nocd patch. worked great except for cut scenes. Everything was working fine for two weeks, lotsa play, lots n lots of saves. well, last night i got home from work and went to load my last quicksave and it said that it could not load because it was from a previous version. I reinstalled DD and did not patch it but to no avail. tonight i was checkin it out and on the load screen i see "V\.A" for the version! I noted that other working savegames had "V1.0032A" for the version, and they loaded fine. At this point, every save game i made produced a v\.a version which would not load.

so. i grab a hex editor (http://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/micro/pc/simtelnet//win95/editor/hexed2_2.zip) and get to work looking for the version info. there it was, in the file quickinfo.000. i located the string V\.A and replaced it with the correct string, V1.0032A, saved it, then sparked up DD. well, because the savegame was v.32 and i just reinstalled w/o patching, it did the 'crash to desktop' dealyo. so i patched the phuqr to .32 and the savegame loaded no problem!

i was about to kick some larian ass but looks like y'all get to live another day... heh heh! still can't use aura of command...


Another part of the savegame prob
After reading many posts on the savegame bug, I found out that the bug comes out with the patch (1.32 for sure , 1.31 is not supposed to have that bug). If you read out what are the new "features" installed with the patch, you can see that :

- "Saving now first happens to a temporary folder and only when it is completely successful does it remove the previous savegame that is being overwritten (if there is one)"
( from http://www.larian.com/Site/english/divinity/english.html )

wich was integrated to protect the save game to corrupt if game crash while saving. But there comes the major bug affecting us, the game DOESN'T
ALWAYS copy ALL savegame files (!!!!) wich cause the said savegame to be unloadable =(.

I think the only way to play with "good" saves is to play with version of the game that came BEFORE the implatation of this feature. If anyone knows where to et patch 1.31, please tell us where it can be dnloaded (I couldnt find somewhere i could get patch 1.31 )

And Raze to this topic
This problem is probably not exclusive to the 1.32 patch. However, the change in how games are saved may have increased the chances of this happening, which may be a problem with Windows, rather than the game directly.
I am familiar with a file manager which, on some systems, occasionally does not delete files when told to (i.e. when deleting a large number of files, it might miss 1 or 2 of them). It makes the call to Windows to delete the files, Windows puts this on its 'todo' list, tells the program the files have been deleted, then does not get around to actually deleting them. Something similar may be happening when Divinity is moving files from the temporary save folder.


And hopefully the last part of Raze's links
have made copies of saved games with different names and extracted saves from zip files, without any problems loading them (on the same computer). Were your saved games compressed? If so, you should have gotten an error during extraction if a file became corrupt either uploading or downloading.
Your computers don't have CD-Rs? Most systems I have seen recently with XP come with burners instead of CD-ROMs. Can you try zipping one saved game and emailing it to yourself (or zipping it across a few floppies)? That will at least let you know if there was a problem somewhere with the online storage process.


i have the same problem but iam sure that the files is good becuse i used a cd so what is the solution for this problem please help
IP: Logged


Check the attributes of the save game folder and the files within it (in Explorer select the folder / all files, right click, select Properties). Make sure the Read-Only attribute is cleared (no check mark). In a less than elegant fashion, the game will crash to desktop if the save game folder and/or files are marked as read-only.

Thanks Mohammed, had you not mentioned a CD-R, I would never have thought to check that. Hopefully that will fix the problem for both of you.


HI all,
I'm having a very similar problem with the crash to desktop in DD and other games as well (IL-2). The read-only fix is the only suggestion I've heard, but I can't get the box to STAY unchecked, whenever I click back, its checked in again and its always kind of grayed out. Any help? Its XP and I may be getting 2000 next week cuz I can get it cheap ($5). Any advice is much appreciated.


A greyed checkmark in the properties means some of the files are read-only and some are not. If you went through one at a time, they would be either clear or checked.
Do you have administrative rights in the profile you are using in XP? If if is the folder which stays marked as read-only, you can create a new folder and copy all the files from the save game folder.

Thanks for the info Kiya. Unfortunately, my problems do not seem to fit in either category. Does anybody know if the game reads & rewrites the save games on startup? I had a properly working savegame directory yesterday and today I reinstalled the game and forgot to apply the patch. I run the game and it crashed - then I remembered the patch. So I applied it and run the game again and my savegame directory looked like this:

*all inv.b0 files were gone (I'm assuming that they were there before since new savegames create them)
*my three last saved folders had extensions .tmp

When I try to load one of the old savegames, the game crashes at the start of the load. I tried to copy an inv.b0 file from a new savegame into an old one and it prevented it from crashing at the start of loading the savegame, but the game crashes after done loading the savegame. So I didn't gain much. Does anybody know if there is a way to recreate the inv.b0 files or do I have to <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/memad.gif" alt="" /> start playing from the beginning hoping this will never happen again??

Missing files by Raze

If there are missing files in the save you can not load, re-installing the game will not help. Replacing those files from the most recent working game might help, but try it on a copy of the latest saved game folder.

Incidentally, this may be a problem with windows. I am familiar with a file manager which sometimes does not delete files when told to, on some systems (when deleting a large number of files, it might miss 1 or 2 of them). It makes the call to windows to delete the files, windows puts this on its todo list, tells the program the files have been deleted, then does not get around to actually deleting them. Something similar may be happening when Divinity is moving files from the temporary save folder.

Otherwise, re-installing may help. Zip or otherwise backup your saved games folder to another location first, just in case. Then un-install, re-boot, shut down all non essential programs (especially anti-virus), re-install the game, perhaps start the game and see if the problem persists (usually not necessary, but would help identify problems cause by the patch), re-boot, shut down all non essential programs, install the patch, re-boot, shut down all non essential programs, start the game. This procedure is a bit over-cautious, but the best way to avoid install problems.

--------------------
If the game crashes mid-save, all of the required files might not have been copied / created in the folder. It might help to make a copy of the save game folder, then replace any missing files with those from your most recent working save.
This happened to me once; I lost a very nice set of leggings, but that was it. Windows was reporting the wrong amount of free disk space (FAT32 partition), so the game did not give a warning before starting to try to save.

The .tmp folder is meant to prevent the game from overwriting a working save with a non-working one if there is a problem during the save. If they re-named the original folder, then just saved directly under the save game name, I think they would avoid some of the problems with this procedure

Barnabus asks if you have the write protection (read only) activated in your savegames files. If you then try to load a savegame, you get a crash - cause writing occurs in the savegame file during the loading procedure = so new files can't be created.

His additional question: do you only have this problem with quickloads or with normal saves, too? (Cause this topic was originally about quickloads <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />). I understood you had this with your normal ones - we only want to make sure.

On startup there is no writing in the savegame folder. The "writing" part starts when you try to load saves. It is impossible that your inf.b0 files disappeared due to installing the latest patch. Neither patch nor hotfix change the savegamefolder.

Just copying the inv.b0 files won't do, you should have taken all inf.b* or better all inf.**. So the whole inventory is in your savegame. Did you save them all before??

If your latest/newest saves are TMP, please, check if you have enough space in your partition and if the swap file is large enough and able to increase. During saving procedure this swap file needs 50 MB more, but then goes back to the old value.
Please check if in \Divdiv\temp other files are besides points.dat. If so, delete them, just points.dat should remain and then emtpy \divdiv\run\Dynamic.
Last Tip to avoid problems with saves: don't overwrite saves of an older version with the newer one. It is better to create NEW sves after a patch or hotfix. So, load the old save and then save under a new name.

(Did you understand everything? I didn't, I just translated <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/silly.gif" alt="" />, good luck)
Kiya

Thanks for all your help.

I think it's a lost cause though since probably those files cannot be recreated. Oh well, at least I'll know more about the decisions to make when playing a second time around with the same character <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />.

As per the missing files, they are missing in all savegame folders. I think I'm beginning to get an idea why they are missing. If this is the case, then my liking of windows xp decreases exponentially <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />. I just bought a new HD and tried to install xp on it but because of conflicts with my hardware, I was unable to do it. I installed the game on the new harddrive and played some after copying all the savegames. To try to fix my hardware conflicts I used win xp's newest and nicest (ARGH!!!) function of system restore. What this nice little thingy did is erase all my exe files from the entire hard drive (even those that had nothing to do with windows and were my own). Good I had all the files present on my old HD cuz that would have been a big loss!!! I would never suspect that system restore would touch files that don't belong to the system - I'll never use this "feature" again!!! So in conclusion, I think what might have happened is that the .b0 files were somehow deleted by system restore together with all the exes, etc. Then I just coppied the folder (since I had more recent games there) to my old HD thus deleting the old - working savegames. So it's probably due to my carelessness and the "excellent functionality" of windows xp.

I made some progress so I thought to share it in case someone else might run into the same problems.

I copied over the inv.b* files from a different savegame into my last one and all my skills and story line is preserved and I can play. Unfortunately it wiped out my entire inventory so I don't have certain items that are very important (like the teleporter scrolls and letters). Does anybody know of an item editor for DD? It would help me get back my items!!

Another update. I used File Scavenger (proggy to extract deleted files off an NTFS partition) and was able to extract an inv.b0 file from a previous save game (the last ones were lost) that was only 2 days ago so it's much better than starting from scratch. I'm in a better mood now <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />.

If you are still missing any items, check;

Lost Items -guide and directory of inventory files