Sorry to report that my previously posted info no longer holds water: now I have a second commander's career crashing the same way:
"Windows has encountered a problem with SH3.." at the "Long time ago..." loading screen.
My SH3 installation on this PC (see previous post) has 4 different commanders on roster. Two have now become corrupt and unplayable resulting in wiping all saves and starting those careers over.
As my other two uncorrupted commanders seem to be working fine, so far, I fear their demise and conclude that this problem appears to be an SH3/WinXP error. All 4 of these commanders were in their career stages of early-to-middle 1942; the Beginning of The Hot Times. What to do?
My working solution at this point is to do a total reinstall of everything on this PC. Please pardon my ignorance and impatience but I DO KNOW how to do a total WINXP reinstall, been there done that 100 times over. But HOW do I specifically keep my as YET uncorrupted--- and very successful commanders career files intact--- to reinstall w/SH3 again?
Have searched "reinstall SH3" on the forum and everything looks good in that respect BUT--- maybe I'm missing the part where I may possibly reinstall my commander's SAVED CAREERS.
Any help?