So the lamentations continue....did a fresh install of game, patches, mod everything went well, ran game in default resolution as admin (windows vista) made party started game and all appeared good until I started noticing little things that seemed odd, like town quests not registering as complete (drinking contest for example, character with 18 con wins, Ostler says we have winner, drag him over here but quest still blue in logbook. I was like oh whatever just keep going. Played til level 3, then saved and quit. Went back few hours later to play, Front end loads, I click play, nothing. Black screen indefinitely, can't escape out, windows desktop key or cntrl alt del out of it, only manual reboot push n hold power button. Tried again, same result. Ran all my system maintenance crap and malware/virus scans and restarted. Tried again, same result, indefinite black screen. Wtf. So I uninstall EVERYTHING and go to download central to try the whole damn process over again but no, the bullish!t isn't over.....download modpack, when it's done I click on the .exe like I've done a dozen times before and yay, nothing happens. Nothing launches, no window opens, no error msg, nothing. At this point I'm so angry and frustrated. I've played thru this game literally a dozen or more times and have never gotten past 3rd level of Temple. I just don't know wtf else to do anymore. Each time I think I've solved crashing and corrupt save issues, a different issue punches me in the face.
This sounds like the antivirus on your system has quarantined/disabled files on your system - this happened a lot to me, until I told the antivirus to stay clear of the TOEE game folder (I have Trend Micro antivirus), as well as the Temple+ folder/s since I use that. After that I so far haven't had any such issues. For the issue about quests not appearing/updating as they should, as I understand it, the game requires that the leftmost character in the party must be player-made - i.e. not an NPC like Elmo or something. What you could do if the CO8 8.1.0 NC fails to work is try and completely uninstall everything, reboot and make sure there's no references in the Windows registry left, reinstall, and either go only for Temple+ (http://www.moddb.com/mods/temple1) or the CO8 standard edition (no new content) and Temple+. To be honest, Temple+ seems to help a great deal with stability issues, and I don't think I'll play this again without it. Good luck!
