Having Planescape issues; Please help!

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Can anyone help me on this one? I've had the 2-Disc version of Planecape: Torment now for a while, and I finally got around to playing it on my laptop. Before I started, I installed the Platter Mod (Unofficial patch v1.37). I then started a new game, and all seemed well until several saves later, when, for some reason, nearly every time that I went to save (including autosaving), the little "progress bar" at the bottom of the save screen would go about 3/4 of the way full, and then go back down to 1/4. The game would immediately boot me to the desktop with no error message, other than a "Not Responding" when I go to close the tab. I should note that saving the game this way still works in a way (as the new save is there when I restart Planescape, but keeps me from moving to new areas due to the autosave feature.)

After this, I tried a full install to see if it would fix the problem. I copied the contents of disc two (out of two disks total), and put them on my hard drive, and then changed the .ini file to match the new location for discs 2,3, and 4 (all located on disc two of the two-disc version). I then re-loaded from my last save, and everything seemed to work fine for a short while. Then the old problem resumed, and everything seems the same, only now movies will not show (no error message; it just skips them and the game goes on).

Does anyone have any ideas on how to solve this? I really want to play this game, but I feel like I'm getting shafted with all of the bugs, and it's putting a bit of a damper on the experience.

EDIT: I should add that for some reason, I keep getting this message asking for CD2 in drive f:, when I don't have a drive f: (f: is the external hard drive that Planescape is installed on). So even though the disc is in my drive, it asks for it anyway and won't let me proceed. So I had to switch back to a normal install. I also tried clearing the "temp" and "cache" folders; it didn't seem to work. I'll keep trying to fix the problem, but any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

I´m not sure ´bout the saving-issue, but the other one regarding missing discs is correctable. Sort of. Now, you claim to have done something like that already, but I´ll list my settings and then you can tell me if I´m just repeating what you´ve already done.
Do a full install. Then open the Torment.ini in your Torment Folder. You´ll see these lines:

HD0:=CProgram Files\Black Isle\Torment
CD1:=Fcd1\
CD2:=Fcd2\
CD3:=Fcd3\
CD4:=Fcd4\
CD5:=Fcd5\
The text should look something like that.

Now you need to change paths, so Torment can find the path to your cd2, etc. I find that opening cd2 etc. and copying the entire folder called cd2 into your Torment main folder to be the easy way of doing it. If done so, the paths to the locations of the cd2, 3 and 4 in Torment.ini should look like this, assuming the cd2, 3 and 4 folders are placed in the Torment main folder:

HD0:=CProgram Files\Black Isle\Torment
CD1:=Fcd1\
CD2:=CProgram Files\Black Isle\Torment\cd2\
CD3:=CProgram Files\Black Isle\Torment\cd3\
CD4:=CProgram Files\Black Isle\Torment\cd4\
CD5:=CProgram Files\Black Isle\Torment\cd5\

I didn´t change the line for cd1 (and why is there a line for cd5?), since it never asks for it, but it works for me. But at one particular instance I did however find that it started to ask for disc 2 in the F-drive, long after I made the changes to the .ini file. I looked around and saw that I apparently had several external drives active, even though I didn´t have any USB devices plugged in. And no, I didn´t enable those drives by myself. They simply showed up after a restart, for some reason.
I did have my USB managing program running though, and I disabled it. After doing so, all those extra drives disappeared, and the game ran perfectly again. How in the world that program could influence the Planescape:Torment game, well, beats me, but apparently it did. There was 6 extra drives that showed up out of nowhere and they weren´t associated with any USB-device. Microsoft works in mysterious ways. Go figure.

The saving-issue I´m not so sure about. I use Platter as well, but I would imagine that you either have a corrupted install or your system is somehow incompatible with Planescape:Torment. Or maybe it´s very simple: Installing Planescape:Torment on and running it from an external harddrive, if I understand that part correctly, is messing with your gaming experience. Try installing it on your harddrive, which would be C: in most cases.

 

Thanks for your help Yulaw.

It seems as though everything that I did with the full install was the same as with yours (other than mine being the 2-disc version). Unfortunately, I'm unsure of what to do with the extra USB drives; will disabling the USB affect my USB mouse, external hard drive, printer, iPod, etc? If not, how do I disable all of the extra drives?

Also, I will try to re-install Planescape on the C: drive, and re-download the fixpack. Hopefully that will fix the problem, in the meantime, thanks for all of your help.

 

If you completely disable the program managing the USB devices in Windows, all USB devices should be shut off, if I remember correctly. So if your mouse is plugged into a USB port, that will also be shut off. The USB manager should be active in your notification area on your taskbar (next to the computer clock somewhere), if you have any devices plugged in. Click it, and you should see all active USB devices running. See if you have anything unwanted running and you should have the option to shut them off independently. So you won´t shut off your mouse, but instead, say, an iPod or a webcam, as an example. I´m not saying that this will help you any bit, but the USB program did interfere with my game once. I think it messed up the definitions about which drive was C:, and assigned the C: to one of the nonexisting drives... or something. Whatever it did, the game worked fine after I closed the program.

My bet would be that you installed it and try to run it from an external harddrive, and that´s what messes with your game, but my guess is as good as any. Conspiracy theories about Windows aside, theoretically there shouldn´t be a problem installing programs on and running them from said external harddrive, at least from what my limited knowledge tells me.

But then again, even though computers have what should be fully functional and somewhat quirck-free hardware and software, sometimes you get problems for no apparent reason. My old computer couldn´t play Baldur´s Gate with sound. My neighbor had exactly the same computer, same hardware, drivers, programs, the whole deal. We bought them from the same store. He was able to play the game with sound. All I got was an errormessage if my soundcard was enabled. Never did find out what was wrong.