Hedrack fight hangs, without special swords

I have a problem beating up on Hedrack. My fight hangs on my dwarf, using a +2 warhammer, not one of the buggy swords (nobody is, but they are in my chest.) I have played the combat out with several tries and various tactics, but always, on the dwarf's first swing at any opponent in the fight against Hedrack, the turn hangs. He attempts a swing, then nothing. Animations still run, but no keys work, I can't right-click, no escape key, no spacebar to end his turn. I left the combat open for 4 hours once so far, and his turn still would not end.
Read about the recommended settings, and trying to use potions (can't right click to try one either.) Wondering what to try next? Can't leave him out of the fight, he's doing most of the damage. Otherwise, having a blast with this game.

 

I hate to say it, but .... do you have a different save close enough to this encounter that you could attempt the fight from that save?

This would define whether or not that particular save is corrupted, or not.

 

I had this happen much later in the game during the War of the Golden Skull, but I was able to get around it by getting close to the encounter area and manually initalizing combat by pressing 'c' to move my group, albeit slowly, into position but the problem went away.

 

Combat sometimes hangs in the Lareth/moathouse encounter as well. (Sometimes I get an invisible guardsman in the initiative lineup ... really weird). Discovered that if I try to drag the picture/icon of the character in question, sometimes it will un-hang the combat.

 

I have two save games to try from. One from the hall right before Hedrack and a second from Shensock's room. Both net me the same result. I haven't tried a level 3 save game yet, before I fought anything on level 4.

 

If both saves give the same results than it's unlikely that the saves are the problem.

Hopefully Gaear or Sitra will comment on a work around when they have a moment, they're currently suffering under the lash of "The Shiney One" as he directs the push to get KotB ready for release.

 

I had a similar issue, it was my kids game. He killed tolub when he fought him, and after that, any time that characters turn came up in a fight, the game would crash. The only way I could fix it, was to write down all his stats, kill him out in the woods some where, and remove him from the party. Then go to the inn, and del the character from the roster, and make one exactly the same, name and all. Then I would re-add him to the party, and use the console to make him identical to the PC that had the issue.

 

I'd hate to try this option, but it's worth a shot.