Bioshock Classic did lock up on the desktop launch screen for me and only worked with the -nosound command line.
Uninstalling the Raptured 3d Audio software solved the problem for me.
Seems like this is a problem caused by an early version of the software which gets installed with the game DIRT 2.

Also changing the resolution to 1920x1080 crashed the game for me.
Solution was to open the Default.ini file in the Bioshock/Builds/Release folder and
change the values from

FullscreenViewportX=(original resolution)
FullscreenViewportY=(orignal resolution)

to
FullscreenViewportX=1920
FullscreenViewportY=1080