thanks again Jim
now that we are back at sea, i suppose it would be helpful if people could report in as marco did and lets see if there a consensus around weather the save game crash is connected to a ship sinking, whatever the exact cause, i think this is a step that will be quite helpful. There are several on this forum whose understanding of the game is quite deep and perhaps in time this may become worthy of their notice.
This issue is such a show stopper for many that it deserves whatever attention can be leveled at it. Of course Ialso know this topic has been hashed out many times before.....
you cant imagine how excited I was when I got this to work, its nothing more than that
***as an aside to those interested, in case i wasn't as clear as i could have been:
the save game would crash 100% of the time once the ship in question has sunk. I repeated this many time with many different attempts to fix it (including re installs, mod removals, registry clean up), then I pointed my game to another install i have of J scones most excellent SH3 Commander (i cant imagine playing SH3 with out it) and then went back into the game from a good save, waited for the ship to sink and tried a save...this worked...then i dove to 45 meters and did a save...it worked...now the game seem stable again.....could it be a coincidence? yes it could, or it could be something else
that is all i have to report