Trying to kill the ice guardian. Have the part. We confront the monster, use the part and get a gold cross piece in the right corner of the screen and crash back to the desktop.
We are fully healthy when we confront the monster. But die each time with the crash. It appears one time we killed the monster but crashed as usual. Any ideas?

Also, have tried to get the patch for two weeks but can never establish a connection with the LucasArts server. What is the deal with that?

The patch is useless here. Save your game BEFORE you pick up the Urgon part. Grab the part & slide down the slope to confront the ice guardian. Fight him, but don't save your game at any time during the battle. A lot of people crash because of an apparent savegame bug when saving the game after picking up Urgon's part and before killing him.