I Just Got this game and had the same problems.
I tried everything on this forum.
It seems the game works fine without the Patch, but with the patch installed it will not load and crashes to desktop. I'm on an XP Athlon, Geforce 4 MX 420.
The patch installation process also gives me 1 error.(at work now so can't check it).
Any ideas?
Should I try an earlier patch. Can play without one I suppose.

Thanks in Advance.