I wonder if you came across the "save game" bug. If you overwrite saves too many times, the save files become corrupted. There are certain rules to assure a good save.
1. Save while in port with a name of your choosing. For instance, "fireftr."
2. While on patrol, save under a new file each time. For instance, "fireftr1." Some people use a date and time.
3.Try to save during the day, in clear weather, on the surface, with nothing in sensor range. Some people came up with this rule because they had problems. Not everyone had problems. The idea is simple, the more added to the environment, the more complicated the save files become.

yeah - I came across that advice and that's pretty much how I do it now - I think it's having lots of stuff in sensor range that has corrupted my saves so far.

About halfway through my last patrol, I lost all the crew pictures from the crew management screen - the empty places will still drag and drop, but my crew seem to have done a Marie Celeste on me.....

I hate to beat this horse again, but one more question if you don't mind.
I have started to load "the 4 gig patch for SH 4" but became very weak and shakey. If I load this thing and don't like it is there a way to delete it, or do I have to delete the whole game and start over?

Thanks...

Since it's a patch rather than a mod, I'd imagine if you want rid you'll have to reinstall the game.

I'm curious as to the difference between the Large Address Aware utility and the 4 gig patch - Is one preferable to the other, does anyone know?

I think you're right.

Last night I gave the save game issue a spin.

I saved the game near a convoy. I then decided to go on and play doing what I could in the convoy. I finished my objective and returned to base knowing I had that one saved game and after I got back to base and allowed the game to save itself I would run the save I added manually.

I even went so far as to enter a mission after the last auto save and then try to load the manually saved game and it wasn't there. Since it was the last saved game the auto save over wrote it so I am going to have to go and try again making sure I do not go to port after the manually saved game and instead simply load it at sea.

I've used this game memory increase method for past two years and rarely get a bad save, where without it I dreaded using saved game points. IIRC, LLA is utility you run and then select the executable, eg, SH4.exe, that you want to use up to 3gb of RAM instead of the default 2gb. The 4gig patch does the same thing but you manually change the .exe file and I think the boot.ini for non-64bit OS systems, like XP32. I've found this to very useful for XP, Win7, especially when using the 3000 yard compass MOD. Both methods are reversible, and just require re-starting the game rather than re-installing. This is what recollect!