I have no idea why my pc is actiing like crap. I have the original retail CD of the game and managed to install it just fine, and the game managed to run. I set the resolution to the top and then attempt a new game, but the visuals spazzed out and the menu froze the game once I hit escape. Now, the game will never get past the Intro cutscene, it just freezes as soon as it enters the menu with no buttons at all. I uninstalled, and bought the GOG version, exactly same issue. I have no idea what i've done, and now I feel I have wasted my money, what exactly is it that i've done to permanently break the game?

Which flavour of Windows? You might be SOL if you have Win7 (32 or 64-bit?) for the time being at least. Hopefully they are working on that.

Read the other threads in this forum, try the usual suspects: compatibility mode, install outside of "C:\Program Files", run as admin, turning off DEP.

You may also click the big support button on top of page and making an official inquiry. Their support team might have more answers.

I have DEP only set to Windows services so that shouldn't have been the problem. I set the sound to 0 in the flux.ini and now the game loads into the menu, which has really disappointed me since a game is no use without its sound. However, I loaded a game and the spastic gameplay stayed consistent, with only a few seconds of full speed gameplay.
Oh, and I have 32 bit Windows 7.

UPDATE: I rebooted my computer and the game seems to work fine in Instant Action. However, I cannot remove the "disable sound" flag in the flux.ini because when I set it back to 0, the game still has no sound. I will try reinstalling outside of Program Files and see what happens.

UPDATE 2: Reinstalled in my User folder. Game crashes once more without disable sound flag. Using the -xsound parameter does nothing in the execution of the game, but changing disable_sound to 1 makes an irreversible change to the ingame sound.

Oh well, that sucks. I'll have to hold off buying it until they get Win7 support. If anyone is even working on it. Sorry I have no other ideas for you - though I did Google.

- One guy, with Win7 and nVidia graphics, recommends turning off PhysX in the nVidia control panel. Another says not to use Hardware T&L in the game. Another says turn down the Shader settings. Yet another says it works fine after switching to an ATI card. (It seems to be a nVidia issue?)

- Here is an older GOG thread on the matter. Some had success running it at 16-bit color depth.

- Elsewhere, someone got it working (Win7 x64) by rolling back the nVidia drivers to version 196.21. In my experience, that may well do the trick. Often using drivers from closer to the same year the game was released works better than new drivers, as the games have certain expectations.

In any case, best of luck!

So I also have Win7-32 bit but I didn't encounter this so I'm afraid I can't be of much help other than saying it does affect all Win7-32 bit users. That's a really weird issue. I don't know what to make of that. Best of luck solving this! If after a few more days someone doesn't solve your problem in this thread, maybe try support? I know they don't officially support Win7 for this game yet, but they still might be able to help you.

Do you have any third party codec packs installed? If so, try uninstalling them. The game uses MP3 playback for its music, and some non-standard MP3 codecs might not work with the game. This was a known issue back when the game was first on sale.

Funny you said that, about an hour ago I updated DivX which includes updating the player and codec pack, and the game worked! I restart, the game freezes in the exact same place.
I installed it on my XP machine and it works fine, but its downstairs, and I like to keep my game-playing in one spot. As far as codecs, the only ones I can think of are the DivX codec pack and god knows what might happen if I uninstall it...