Why do codes crash the game?

[recentiy03]

And why does it crash every other turn or when I tab out or just randomly? I am running vista and the game literally crashes every 5 turns...usually it happens when I tab out and try to come back to the game except I won a heroic victory and before it ended the battle the game crashed with an .exe error...I am running vanilla and I don't think I have any patches...where can I DL patches or how do I fix this problem? Oh yeah, and because I won the battle fair and square I just want to cheat to get it over with and move on with the game but will that corrupt my save or something? When I type "elophaunt" into the command bar it crashes the game, too...what do I do?

------- double posts merged (Brusilov) - please use the edit button to provide further details

Well I'm not 100%, but I think the reason it was crashing was because I don't have any elephants? Anyway, I DLed patch 1.3 and used the "auto_win" code to reclaim the city that I already rightfully won....as for the freezing during tab outs, who knows.

[CoconutFred]

Reinstall, get patch 1.4 and 1.5, then check "options" to see if the console is enabled. Also, the cheat for the yubtsebs is oliphant, not elophaunt.

[recentiy03]

Thanks, should I also DL patch 1.1 or 1.2 if I haven't? You said get 1.4 and 1.5 so I'm guessing I need to get all 5 of them? Does the order I install them matter?

[YD23]

Moved to Technical Help.