[Anomaly]

I just installed 3.67 version of FS2 Open (the official release, not the optimized one, which I tried first but gave up on).

Everything loads fine but when I am at the main screen, the second I hover my mouse cursor over any of the interactive "buttons," the game freezes and I have to alt-tab out and end task.

By the "buttons" I mean like the Campaign briefing one, where if you mouse over it, the screen lights up, or the Mission Briefing selection, where the door opens and the guard salutes you.

As soon as any type of animation starts to play, the game freezes.

What gives?

I have enabled all gfx options and stuff in the loader with the VP files in /Freespace2/mediavps and the mod correctly selected, though I haven't even gotten INTO the game yet so none of that should be a factor.

[karajorma]

That's a new one on me. You could try grabbing a build from the Recent Builds forum and seeing if it also displays the same behaviour.

[Anomaly]

Just any build??

What is a CVS build? Should I use one of those?

[karajorma]

CVS builds would probably be the best choice yes.

as for what they are.

Recent\CVS Builds
When one of the coders has a feature he wants tested he'll release a build of the game for people to play with and bug-test. These builds can be found in the recent builds forum on HLP.
In addition to this CVS builds are also posted there on a regular basis. The purpose of the CVS builds is to combine all the work that the coders have done and make sure that it all works well when put together.
In general CVS builds are very stable. Often more so than the official builds. The general response to someone posting a problem with an official build is to tell them to check the most recent CVS build to see if the problem goes away. However on occasion CVS builds can be very unstable if someone has just checked in a piece of code which is incompatible with something else in CVS. For this reason people new to the SCP are generally advised to try out an official build first and only move on to CVS if there is a problem or once they are a little more comfortable with the way the SCP works.
Other recent builds on the other hand make a very poor choice for your first build. This is hardly surprising as they generally released when a coder has a feature he has just finished writing. Often the feature just doesn't work plain and simple and crashes the game the first few tries. For this reason you should steer clear of these at first unless you actively want to help bug-test.

Debug vs Release builds
Whether you choose a recent build or an official one either way the package you download will probably contain two executable files (filenames ending in .exe). One of these will have "_dbg" or "_d" in the name. Use the other one (which will most likely have "_r" in the name). This is the release build and is the one you should use most of the time. If you encounter a problem you may be asked to use the debug build. That's when you use the other exe.

All builds should be extracted to your main FreeSpace 2 folder.

[castor]

, Anomaly

And, remember to try the OGL mode, if D3D is what you're using now.

[Anomaly]

Phreak's CVS 1/17 build works GREAT, no problems.

Weird.