Problems with starting the game

[von Brühl]

Originally Posted by Warhound

Your 9800GTX is almost certainly the problem (together with windows XP).
Even though it's a 32bit app this game has a strong preference for 64bit windows 7 and needs all the VRAM you can throw at it.
In all honesty your pc is borderline minimumspec on all fronts and will struggle to run the game decently.

I disagree with the assessment on the video card, I was able to run the game on older patches, before the graphics were dumbed down on that video card. I did have the 1MB version, so if his is the 512k, maybe, but I think the problem is driver/software/RAM related. That video card can start the game, on medium settings, and fly, albeit at a low framerate.