Someone else reported that after a crash in Windows, 10 minutes after exiting the game, when they rebooted they discovered that all of the inv.b2 files had been deleted from their save game folders. Windows had apparently decided they were corrupt, and 'fixed' them; fortunately this is a zero byte file, so was easily replaced.
If you got an error about a version conflict, it could be that Windows rolled back changes made by the patch (assuming you have an early release of the game that wasn't already updated) in which case re-installing it may help, or there was a problem in the save folders preventing the game from reading the version info.
BTW resetting the configuration will only help if the problem that cause the crash was in the configuration files, or if there was a corrupt file in the dynamic folder (which the game uses as a cache, creating / copying files there from the save game folder when you load, and writing / copying from that folder when you save a game). I rarely reset after a crash, because it is usually caused by me hex editing something, etc.
