It is not my system. The only time I have had a crash was with NYGM installed. Removed it and no more crashes. Installed again, crashes came back. Simple enough for me, so I removed it. That is when I tried GWX. Again, this is NOT my system. The install is barely two months old using an official Win7 Pro 64bit DVD, drivers installed manually without the bloatware. Again, nothing crashes except SH3 if NYGM is installed. If it is not installed, SH3 runs flawlessly. Also, SH3 without GWX runs correctly. The problems start when GWX or NYGM are installed (not at the same time, of course!) so my problems are almost guaranteed to be related to the mods.
As for the sound question, this is in single mission, academy, and campaign. The sound files are there and play correctly in Windows, just not in the game. I am 99.99% sure this is a GWX configuration issue somewhere. The sounds work fine without GWX. They work fine with or without the use of ALchemy. They work fine with or without hardware acceleration. Oh and my card does have RAM on it as well. It is the ZxR to be specific.
I have not tried XP compatibility mode because it runs flawlessly with a bone stock 1.4b install. Not as realistic, but it works fine. This again leads me to believe that the issue is NOT the executable code (SH3.exe) but a configuration file for the u-boats or something. I will try compatibility mode to rule it out, but I do not expect it to work personally.
Also, I turn off all of the effects unless I am using them for something specific. In fact, if you ask Creative, they will tell you to leave things like CMSS off while playing games. I found out the hard way when running with an X-Fi in XP SP3. I had a game that did not sound right and after conversing with Creative support, found out that CMSS was screwing me over. I let the game use EAX/OpenAL/DirectSound if it needs it. I guess it would help if playing a DOS game in DOSBox though...
My surround system options are off. The soundcard handles all of this. Using ALchemy allows the older games designed for XP and such to interface directly with the soundcard due to the new audio stack used in Vista/7/8. Using this allows games such as UT to have hardware access again. SH3 does not have EAX support so I have ALchemy disabled for it until this problem is sovled, but it DID improve the sound quality when enabled.
*UPDATE*
Alright, I enabled XP compatibility mode. No good. I disabled hardware acceleration while in XP mode. No good. I then turned off XP mode because, again, the game works flawlessly prior to GWX being installed. This must be a configuration file issue. I mean if it works until I install GWX, the problem cannot possibly be anything else. The thing is, I do not know what to look at to find sound specifications. Where are the sound files specified for the u-boats? If I could see that it points to the correct sound file I would have a starting point.
*UPDATE*
I have been reading the forums and I see multiple people complaining about diesel sounds after the installation of GWX. The one I just read is
located here. I also saw people talking about not installing to the default location. Being an IT administrator and having an AD domain in my home with about eighteen systems on my network, I do not do such a foolish thing. I create a directory called "Games" on the system drive. I then remove all permissions from it and grant "SYSTEM" and "Administrators" full access. I create an AD group called "Games". I give that group full access also, and put my AD user accounts into the games group. This way users that do not want or need to play games cannot even access the games directory due to not being in the group. Accounts that are in the group, such as mine, have full access.