Save files won't load, game crashes on load screen

[Unseen3927]

So I've decided to take my copy of KotOR 1 (CD version) out of my dusty old collection to play it again for the nostalgia, and I was faced with two options: I could play it on my dusty old PC (running Win XP SP2) as I have in the past, or try to play it on my new school laptop (Win 7, and I won't be administrator on it till I get my final grades, so another year to go :'( ). I'm tired of playing games on my PC though, as it is so bad I have to play them on the lowest settings (IF I can play them in the first place). It can still run the game without bugs from start to finish on those low settings fine, but I can't bear the low quality anymore.

 

I installed the game onto a portable USB hard drive so I can run it on my laptop, considering I can't install anything on it without administrator privileges. It runs amazingly well on the highest settings, but then I ran into the problem of not being able to load my save files (except autosaves). I searched all kinds of forums, which all said to delete the 'currentgame', 'futuregame', 'gameinprogress' and 'temp' folders from the game directory.

 

I did so and everything worked completely fine, until I got to Dantooine. I found two areas in the game so far that my laptop cannot load (Jedi Enclave and the Grove), as it crashes on the loading screen every time with an error message saying 'swkotor.exe stopped working'.

 

As you would expect, I decided I would save and switch over to my PC every time before entering those areas, then save and switch back to my laptop after exiting them, but I ran into yet ANOTHER problem (life just isn't that easy, right). Turns out it cannot load save files on my laptop that I have saved from my PC. Any suggestions? I have literally tried everything I found and nothing worked after hours of Google searching. I really love this game. ;-;

[Unseen3927]

I managed to solve the issue, though at the cost of having to restart the game. I uninstalled the game including the save files and reinstalled it, then did a bunch of procedures that many forums have told me to make the game compatible with Win 7. I discovered that the Dantooine crash was caused by the fact that I deleted the 'currentgame', 'futuregame', 'gameinprogress' and 'temp' folders from the game directory.

 

IF YOU ARE FACING ISSUES WITH LOADING SAVE FILES, DO NOT DELETE ANYTHING FROM YOUR DIRECTORY. Do the following instead.

 

For those facing similar issues as I had in this thread, here's what I've done to get it working (you might not be able to do these exact steps if you don't have a computer running Win XP):

1. Installed the game onto my USB hard drive using my Win XP SP2 machine.

2. Right clicked on the entire 'LucasArts' folder and in Properties, I un-checked 'Read-only' and applied it to all sub- folders and files.

3. Opened the 'swkotor.ini' file and under '[Graphics Options]' I changed the value of 'Grass' to 0 (only disable the grass if it causes your game to lag and/or glitch out), added the line 'Disable Vertex Buffer Objects=1' (this can prevent certain crashes on Dantooine), set 'FullScreen' to 0 & added 'AllowWindowedMode=1' (these will make the game start in windowed mode, but you will still have the chance to switch to fullscreen by pressing Alt+Tab in-game if you want), and set 'EnableHardwareMouse' to 0.

4. Then connected my hard drive to my Win 7 laptop (you can move the entire game to the computer, but I couldn't for some reason, so I have to access the game from my USB).

5. In the game directory, I right-clicked and opened the properties of 'swkotor.exe' and 'swconfig.exe' and in the 'Compatibility' tab, I set them to run in compatibility mode for 'Windows XP (Service Pack 2)'.

6. I created a shortcut for the 'swkotor.exe' file and placed it on my Desktop.

7. In its properties, in the 'Target:' box I ADDED [C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C START "Star Wars - Knights of the Old Republic" /high /affinity 1 ] before what was already there (without the []). This step is only necessary if you have a multi-core CPU, as this will set the game to run on single core.

8. I start the game using this shortcut every time I want to play it.

 

If you do not have a machine that runs Win XP, then follow this link:

http://deadlystream.com/forum/topic/2302-get-kotor-12-working-on-vista-and-windows-7/

 

I hope this will help people out.