Having nothing better to do, I tried to figure out why it might be crashing at that point and came up with a workaround for myself:
I'd been playing @ 1920x1200 on 'Extreme', with shadows 'timesliced' to get the performance I wanted, though my monitor is 2560x1600.
I noticed lots of video card 're-inits' during the transition from old->new, (my monitor tells me it resynced with an icon of the port it synced with) and on a hunch, decided to try kicking back up to native resolution (2560x1600) so it wouldn't have to do as many re-inits. For the test, I kicked the graphics level down to the 'single core optimized' preset.
Restarted, and it played through to the start of 2nd segment w/no crashes. Was able to save at that point and reset graphics back to what I originally had (1920x1200 & Extreme + timesliced shadows) and tested the result -- works fine now.
Something about the rapid video mode switches at the transition seems like it is at the root of this problem -- nothing to do with the savegame file. So for me, at least, I'm off to playing again (after I rest from my hacking session...just try getting 'Procmon' to run with this game...stupid game DRM... Always presenting a pain to players who legally buy things!)
