Silent Hunter (Insert whatever number here): A waste of time?

[Stargazer]

Maybe I just have ridiculously high expectations. Maybe I'm too fussy when it comes to games. But somehow I can;t help but feel that Silent Hunter is pushing boundaries when it comes to being the biggest and most disappointing let down of them all.

I doscovered SH3 not too long ago. I didn;t have to pay anything for it which was nice and when I modded it, it was truly awesome. However, I've often felt that the load times, a well known and unfixable problem, were a little too extreme for me.

I went out and paid for SH4. I could have settled with a pirated copy, but I felt that it would be a good progression from 3 and that Ubisoft Romania would have learnt a thing or two in the process and as such deserved a seperation from my very short supply of money.

First impressions were great. It looked stunning, played well and sounded fab. Even in stock form because I had no idea how much better it could be? In my first few days of playing it, I had only two CTD's. I considered this an acceptable annoyance given how often 3 dies on me. Also, it only took five mins to get back into 4 instead of the twenty-five for 3.

However, patrol 3 is where the love story ends.

I thought initially that TMO had broken my game. Had it borked a bunch of files? Was it overloading part of my old PC with more than it can take?

I don't know.

What I do know is that regardless of what mods were activated and even returning it back to full stock/vanilla, it always crashes in the patrol. And it isn;t something terribly ambitious or unique either. it is to deliver an Intel-Bod to Honshu; almost a carbon copy of my very first mission, yet I now can't seem to get close.

Running the same mission seven times in a day and still not getting even half way through is the final insult as far as I'm concerned. Sadly, I'll have no luck getting my money back because no retailer will not accept, 'The software is broken and buggy and not worth any money at all' as a valid return reason.

But given how many people are in this community and seem to be running it and enjoying it? Where am I going wrong?

Do you run it and accept that sometimes you just have to chance the constant and seemingly random CTD's?

Do you have some magical fix that made the CTD's go away?

Do you just have exceedingly low expectations and thus SH4 doesn't bother you?

How can so many Silent Hunter followers all be wrong? I can only guess I'm doing something wrong. But what?

My PC, despite being old, meets the game requirements. I can run the game smoothly on lower setting and had done so for four glorious days. And then whammo... the thing unravels like a ball of string and now I'm at my wits end with it.

So I end with the big question: What havn't I done, or what havn't I got that you all do and allows all of you to enjoy SH4?

If it worked I'd love it.

And sicne it is going to be asked, here is my PC Specs:

AMD Athlon XP2600+ @ 2.4ghz
2GB RAM
NVidia GeForce 6800XT 512MB
Win XP SP3 (32bit)
SH4 + UBoat V1.5 in following configurations.
---Stock
---TMO 2 + TMO 2.1
---GFO

First four days (Patrols 1&2) [fully stock]: Total 2 CTD's
Today (Patrol3) [In various states listed above] Total 7 CTD's