gta san andreas: how do I make it save?

[Joe Forster/STA]

Inspire's crash fix is actually also a relocation of the savegame dir. Originally, GTA:SA reads HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders\Profile from the registry and puts its savegames into the GTA San Andreas User Files subdirectory of the directory this registry entry points to. If this registry entry is missing or points to a non-existing directory (?) then, apparently, the game crashes. With Inspire's crash fix, the registry entry HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders\Gtasasav is used instead; the .reg file included in the package creates this registry entry. (Of course, if that directory doesn't exist - it's a common and, I think, very lame mistake to assume that everyone installs Windows onto drive C: - the game will continue to crash. )

On the other hand, my savegame dir patch relocates the savegame dir to the SAVEDATA subdirectory of the game's installation directory. Much simpler, period.

Conclusion: you don't need Inspire's fix, you need mine, and there's especially no point in trying to use both.