BananaJane: How do I fix this?
It's not the usual crash where the game shuts off either, it locks up the entire computer and you have to restart by control alt deleting
I don't know for sure, but aside problems with game itself, it can be also caused by your antivirus/firewall. Basically, I had some cases with older games which were launching and then "hard-locked" by comodo - entire keyboard and mouse were "sticked" to the game, but comodo stopped the game and showed the message... in the background, "behind" the black screen, so my computer got permanently stucked. If I remember correctly, helped me turning off one of the features of comode,was it HIPS or Viruscope? I don't remember, but for sure I've left two basic functions, firewall and antivirus.
Aside from that - maybe dgvoodoo would help?
http://dege.freeweb.hu/dgVoodoo2/dgVoodoo2_62_3.zip It's very simple to use, just launch it once, then close, and copy all files from MS folder to folder with the game. It can help in some cases.