Hi
I'm new to this forum, but I've already visited it quite a few times and it helped me a lot with getting my SH2 to work.

But now, I've encountered a weird problem with SH3. I was able to run it on Win7 without any problems whatsoever, and I actually got pretty far in the game. I stopped playing it for some time and when I wanted to come back to it, it suddenly doesn't work. Instead of launching, the game shows me a message box like this:

sh3.exe - System error
It is impossible to launch the program because Windows wasn't able to find .DLL on this computer. Try to reinstall the program to fix the problem.

At first, I tried to find out what *.DLL file is missing, and-most importantly-why. But the message box shows only a "file" called ".DLL" with absolutely NO name at all as if it was BLANK_SPACE.dll So in other words it doesn't really kwow what's missing, and thus I cannot find a way to fix this. I tried reinstalling (while keeping my save file) but it didn't work. I also tried to find which *.DLL is causing problems with SH3 on the Internet but even when I tried to add the found *.DLL to the register the game still refused to work. I don't know what to do, and I don't know what happened. The game worked fine and suddenly it cannot even launch.

This might be of some importance:
during the break I took from playing SH3 I installed other games such as S.t.a.l.k.e.r., Metro 2033, Max Payne 3... I DON'T KNOW if it has anything to do with this strange case, but I'm ready to believe that one of these games altered some *.DLL file on my computer that was used by SH3 to work properly.

I would be grateful if someone could help me.

The only thing I can think of is an anti-virus/spyware program could be removing a file without your permission. I've had this happen on many occasions. My anti-virus hates Wolfenstein & Left 4 Dead. I had to disable the resident shield feature to make it stop. Try disabling those programs & reinstall the game. Run the game in XP compatibility & as an admin.

I don't see any reason for you to have this problem unless some program is interfering.

At one poin I thought that it's because I tried to use a PS3 controller and the controller driver program interfered with SH3. That is plausible, as SH4 has problems loading a saved game when the Sixaxis is connected, yet it sounds ridiculous.

EDIT: You know what? Your theory was correct! It works when I disable all the real-time shields in my anti-virus! Thanks a lot!