[CaptBones]

I've run into a similar but even weirder problem. I'm still running Win 7 (64) - Home Premium on a six year old Alienware Area 51. I've allowed the "Fourth Reich" (Microsoft) to install most of their "Critical Updates", which many "experts" have claimed will convert Win 7 to an ersatz Win 10 without user knowledge or consent.

I have (should say "had"), three installations of SH3; Stock, LSH3 2015 and GWX3 with separate SH3 Commander. Everything has been working well for years; absolutely no problems.

But, a short time ago, all of the SH3 installations simply quit working, completely. When I double-click the desktop shortcut for Stock, LSH (inside the desktop folder), or GWX, I get my UAC warning and I select "yes"; the little blue "thingy" spins around for 5-10 seconds and then - nothing - no start screen, no music, not even a black screen. But, I open Task Manager and there is a "Process" running called sh3.exe; not a "Task", a "Process" - what?!?!. So, I close Task Manager, double click again on the shortcut and the game starts and runs normally.

Same thing, only different, with SH3 Commander (both the version included with LSH and the separate installation for GWX). Double click the shortcut and the start screen for SH3 CDR opens; but oddly, the UAC notice does not open first and ask me if I want to allow the program to make changes to the computer. So, I click the Launch SH3 check-mark and then the same thing happens - the CDR start screen closes, the little blue thingy spins and then nothing. I try again and this time I get a pop-up box that says something like "SH3 CDR has found another instance of SH3 running and cannot start SH3 - close the other program and try again". I open Task Manager and there again are no Tasks running, just a Process called sh3.exe.

I've completely uninstalled and reinstalled SH3 and SH3 Commander three times, including deleting the save game folder and complete cleaning of the Registry and disk cleaning/defragging, using not one or two but three different and highly recommended scanning/cleaning programs. All to no avail.

To be sure, absolutely no such problems with any other installed programs, including SH4 - also three installations - one each Stock, TMO and OM; no trouble there at all.

Anyone got any ideas about what could have caused this and how to fix it?

Just discovered another quirk that might be significant. The failures only occur when the computer is not connected to the Internet. A couple of months ago I started unplugging the LAN cable when I play games/sims on the computer (to keep automatic update software from interfering with the game operations). This afternoon I tried to run SH3 and did not unplug the cable...it started and ran perfectly well. I would still like to figure out why it doesn't work properly when the computer is unplugged from the Router though.