During the loading for the first robot battle (tutorial) the game crashes to desktop. There is an error popup but I can't see it because the mouse is invisible and most of the screen is black. I do have the contents of exception.txt from the games installed directory.

"call stack:
[unavailable in release]
File=\work\eg\Src\Programm\MatrixGame\src\MatrixGame.cpp
Line=643
Text: Sorry, unable to set this params."

Any ideas?

I have not played Space Rangers 2, but I understand that the robot battles are in 3D while the rest of the game is 2D, is that correct? This makes me wonder whether you are having issues with your graphics card / drivers / directX or something. What graphics card do you have? It is always a good idea to make sure that you have the latest graphics drivers and the latest version of directX on your machine.

Also, DirectX 9 is different from DIrectX 10 and 11. If you have 10 and 11, you may ALSO need to install DirectX 9 alongside it. DX10 and 11 are for newer games but many older games use DX9, still, and if you don't have it installed, it won't work properly. Remember, this does NOT invalidate your DX10 or 11 install... you can have 9 installed at the same time as 10 or 11.

I am not sure if Space Rangers 2 needs DX9 but it wouldn't surprise me.

I'm playing this on a netbook with a max resolution of 1024x600 and got this same error.

I fixed it by changing the RobotResolution= in the config file to RobotResolution=800,600 which fixed it.

Between that and VideoMode=R1 the game works great for me now.

It does indeed need DX9 to run.