If you run dxdiag (click Start | Run, type in dxdiag and hit Enter), does it report any problems? There are a couple of tests under the Display tab.

Try setting the game resolution and your desktop resolution to be the same. A couple people have had problems with DirectX's resolution switching on game startup, which this avoided.

Do you have any video filters installed? At least the ReClock DirectShow Filter needs to be disabled to play the game videos.

In Windows Explorer, if you browse to the '..\Beyond Divinity\Static' folder, can you view the 'intro.mpg' video? You can rename this file to have the game skip it on startup, and see if that makes a difference.

Lady_Rain describes an MS patch for video related problems (included in SP2) in the topic CRASHING TO WINDOWS

See also;
yet another "Game simply won't start!"-thread and BattleFields N00b ?