Tips 1: Game Performance

    With that being said, please don't let it discourage you from sending me a message if you don't understand something that I suggest or if my suggestions don't fix your problem. Just keep in mind that there are occasions where the only way to solve a problem will be to contact the game manufacturers. The point of this page is to help keep you from having to do that, since the companies tend to be slow to respond and their responses can sometimes be rather useless.

Backing Up Your Saved Games:

1. Find the directory where Baldur's Gate was installed. The default directory for the game is C:\Program Files\Black Isle\Baldur's Gate, but if you changed it during install then it obviously will be somewhere else. Under that directory there will be a "save" directory for single player games, and an "MPsave" directory for multiplayer games.
2. If you have plenty of space you can simply copy those directories to another location on your computer (like a \BG_Backup directory), however, I suggest using a compression utility like WinZip to make your backup. It would be even better to put the backup on a ZIP Drive or other backup drive if you have one available, but this isn't absolutely necessary.

• Reboot. You'd be amazed at some of the things this simple action can fix ;-) Seriously though, as programs run on your computer, they use up memory and compete for resources. Some programs have what are called memory leaks, where they don't give back all the memory they use after they're done with it. Even the Windows OS has some problems with this, and if your computer seems to be sluggish or have programs 'crash' for no apparent reason, this is the first step to take.
• Delete the contents of your "/Baldur's Gate/cache/data" directory. This will force the game to reload the files from CD the next time you play and does not hurt your game at all. The reason for needing to do this is that on some occasions the data files can get corrupted when they are copied during game play. This shouldn't happen that often, but when your having a problem with Baldur's Gate this is one of the easiest and safest steps to take to try to eliminate the problem.
• If neither of the above tips help try uninstalling the game and reinstalling it. Check the tip below on making sure you have the correct patch.

•  Defrag your hard drive. If you have your OS on one drive and BG installed on another be sure to defrag BOTH. This helps keep your hard drive optimized so that it doesn't have to look all over the drive for the pieces of one file. It can just read them in a stream of data, which is faster. If you don't have a "third-party" defrag program (like Norton Speed Disk) then just use the one that comes with Windows (you may need to go into Add/Remove Programs and install it if it isn't installed already).
• Check to make sure there aren't any memory resident programs that are eating up all your memory and cpu, or writing to the Hard Drive a lot. Some virus detection programs are bad about this IF they are set to scan all files instead of just files that could be infected (which is limited to executable files, files containing macros (like doc and xls) and a few others. Most virus programs have a 'smart scan' that only scans the files that need to be). Unless you have a high end machine, running other programs like graphics editors, communication programs (like ICQ which I have seen take up 12meg of memory all by itself), and especially web browsers is not a good idea when it comes to game performance. 
• Consider uninstalling and reinstalling the game. Just back up your saved games and any custom files if you do this (see above for backing up your files).
• Make sure you have the proper patches for your install. There is a patch for plain BG and a different one for BG with the TOSC addon. The patch programs DO NOT check to make sure you don't put the wrong one on, I tested this by running the plain BG patch on my TOSC install, and it didn't give any errors or warnings, yet doing this destroyed my install.
• If you have a cdrom drive cleaner..use it :-) Check to see if your CDs have gotten real scratched up also. My CD#5 was very bad and took up to 10 minutes just to load when I got to Baldur's Gate city, and then wound up having errors on the maps. I had to get the CD replaced to fix this.