Help debugging a freezing VN (newb)

Hello, /prog/riders. It's been a very long time since I came here. Now I know a lot of you hate "weeaboo shit", but I have nobody else to ask. Your help is greatly appreciated and will not be forgotten!

Long story short, I happened to install the Visual Novel "AIR", wanting to try it out (Never played VNs before), but it's always freezing when I start it and start a new game. It's always freezing in the same position: right after the intro, when the first text box appears below in the screen, it freezes before displaying any text or images.


Notes:
- When it freezes, a process explorer shows that it's still using CPU (about 40%) and I feel it gets stuck in an infinite loop.
- I tried it on different Windows installations, both XP and 7, and the same thing happened.
- I have applocale and I had no problem installing the VN and getting the Japanese characters display right in the dialogues and whatnot.
- The VN's music/SFX play fine and its main menu shows up and all.
- I googled all possible keywords and I don't see anyone talking about a similar error. I don't know what the fuck is wrong.

I figured out I better try to debug it. Anyone here with an experience with debugging VNs? I've done (a lot of) programming before, but never done any debugging and I feel completely clueless about it.
- Have you personally encountered a lot of persistent freezing in a VN? We all know Japanese VNs are very shittily programmed.
- What program should I use?
- How do you detect infinite loops and whatnot? How do you force them to stop?

http://www.ollydbg.de/download.htm

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/gg463009

>>1
We all know Japanese VNs are very shittily programmed.
Speak for yourself I've never been near this weeabo shit.

I've never been near this weeabo shit.

This is easy and just use >>2, but I'm not going to teach you x86 asm, the win32 api, NT OS internals, or how to efficiently use the tools at your disposal. Just get your own copy of the Intel CPU manuals, MSDN, and other documentation that comes with your software and start thinking and reading by yourself.

Press F12 (pause thread) in Olly, then trace a bit with f7/f8(step in/out), if you happen to be in the wrong thread, you need to go in the thread window and select the right one.

Obviously if you have no knowledge of the previous material, you won't have any idea how to fix your deadlock/loop anyway.

Also, for your VN, there's a toolkit by Haeleth for decompiling/assembling/packing/unpacking the scripts.

VN? there are better ways to waste your time, like inserting cactuses in you're rectum

>>7
VN? there are better ways to waste your time, like inserting cactuses in you're rectum
cactuses in you're rectum
you're rectum

I AM CACTUSES IN, THE ALMIGHTY RECTUM

Start by using Process Explorer to determine why it's hanging before you try to fix it.

[color=red]bloody rectum[/color]

DUBS, DUBS EVERYWHERE!