Topic: 7.55 startup hangs whole computer

[webwalker]

Upon installation and first startup, 7.55 always runs fine.

Sometimes as early as the second game startup, Windows hangs upon attempting to start D2/CE.  The cursor will move but no mouse-click response ever occurs.  I must reboot Windows, sometimes with <ctrl>+<alt>+ (the only keyboard action that gets any response) and sometimes with reset button.  

In response: I delete the entire "diablo II" directory, then copy "copy of diablo II" => "diablo II", then re-run the 7.55 install exe, and I'm back to being able to run once at least.

This suggests that the files in "diablo II" are altered by d2/ce in such a way that the game can't be started again.

Chaos: I'll happily run any scripts or tools you sugest and make note of results to track down this behavior.

This last time I copied, I made a copy of "diablo II with CE installed but not run", so I can replace files in "diablo II" with files from the saved copy.  Any suggestions which files to try replacing first to see if there is just one corrupted file?

Since I first posted on this hang-at-startup behavior, I tried making the files in DiabloII read-only, but this causes a crash in game.exe (invalid page fault).

I haven't found a set of files yet that restores play-ability in the corrupted directory.  Clues begged-for piteously.

Brian/Webwalker