I NEVER had a major problem with SOF2 until now.  I haven't changed anything in my hardware setup or windows setup.  Recently I'm encountering problems such as problems with loading save games and exiting the game.  It started to happen on the 'ship' mission.  While the screen freezes while I try to load the save game, the music still plays and I can hear my cursor going over the different menus, though I cant see it because of the frozen screen.  Same thing happens while I try to exit.  I did the reg fix and some other tweaks...none worked.  This problem has been occuring on 2 different machines, though it started to happen on a different mission.

Box 1 specs:
Soyo Dragon +
Athlon XP 1.6GHz
Gainward Ti4600 with 29.20 dets
512 DDR
Windows XP
C-media onboard sound (updated drivers bla bla bla)

Box 2 specs:
GigaByte GA-7VTXH+
Tbird 1.4GHz
512 DDR
Elsa Gladiac 511 MX2
Windows XP
SBlive (updated drivers bla bla bla)

None of those were overclocked.
Why was everything running without problems until now?
It just happened to freeze up on saveload and exit ;/
IT'S LAME I tell you that

I have the exact problem as you rooty.  The game worked fine until the ship level and now it freezes about 1 minute into the level every single time.  I have reinstalled my system from scratch and it still does it.

My specs are:

Athlon xp 1700
512mb ddr ram
geforce4 mx 440
win98se
detonator 28.32

What kind of sound are you guys using...EAX or Directsound?

I'm using eax.  Multiplayer works fine as does the random missions.

I'm using DS...i dont think C-media supports EAX.
Anyway, I searched the forum for solutions but it seems that not a lot of us are having that problem.  Any thoughts?

I'm having the same problems as you guys.  The other night I was wandering through the Hospital level, and was saving every few minutes.  Finally I went to restore a game just before getting killed, and I got half the menu showing up, and the image of my hand with the gun still showing there.

I had to use Windows Task Manager to close SOF2, and have been unable to load any saved game since.  I can reload from the beginning of the level, but that doesn't give me back my loadout of weapons and ammo that I had at the time.  I tried deleting a couple of save games from my save folder to see if it was an issue with a corrupt save game, but that didn't seem to help either.  Also, it doesn't seem to work in SAFE MODE either.  

Look forward to hearing about a resolution for this one...

Fazlazen

------------ My Rig -------------
P3 1gHz
Win XP Home
ATI Radeon 8500
512 MB RAM
Creative SBLive! running in DS

Yeah,  I'm experiencing the same problems.  As soon as I got to the Prison level, i wasn't able to load my saved games.  I also tried deleting my old save games, but that just caused the game to crash.  I hope Raven can get this fixed in the patch.

Box Specs:

Athlon 1.1 Ghz
GeForce 4 Ti4200
SoundBlaster Audigy
256 DDR Ram
Win 98SE
etc...