Thank you MadMatt, I am sure that this thread will becomes useful.
I think that the game crashes on startup and the freezes when in-game are linked, and are due to the sound system.
I can add my own experimentation:
1. My full game, like so many others, crashes on startup after "graphics initialisation". This error is misleading, the crash is due to the sound initialising after the graphics have completed. Setting cfg.bat to no sound, no music, enables the game to start.
2. Turning off hardware acceleration in cfg.bat has no effect, game still crashes.
3. Turning down or off the hardware acceleration on dxdiag has no effect, game still crashes.
4. Turning off music acceleration in dxdiag has no effect, game still crashes.
Tested on:
CPU: AMD3200
Chipset: Nforce2
RAM: 1gb
Sound Card: Turtle Beach Santa Cruz
Video card: NVidia 68000 AGP
OS: Windows XP Pro.
Edit: I found the culprit that causes the game crashes on startup. I had a sound codec installed, MMswitch.ax. This is installed by many codec packs to enable multimedia extensions on media player etc. The game sound system is not compatable with this codec. Renaming this codec to MMswitch.ax.bak will enable the game to start. Now to experiment on the freezes....
[ August 25, 2005, 02:11 AM: Message edited by: Huntley Gordon ]