Guess what...
Actually that crashing (i had) was a problem with a graphic card: ATI Radeon x1300, It didn`t support D3D (in DXdiag).

So I had to install a patch (after a little search on forums).
Some people used Omega drivers rather than original ATI drivers to solve this problem.
Seems like many people with this and similar graphic cards had a same crash when starting some 3D games (in my case 3DGS engine).

So, maybe (just maybe) your problem is similar.

Regards.