Yes, crashes often occur when you try to draw something that cannot be drawn I've had issues with BMAPS, but I never tried using bad images in levels.
Make sure all your textures are of the supported formats, a power of two and your video device supports the resolution of the images.

Other than that, if youre sure the functions are not the problem, your only option is to start decomposing the level piece by piece to see where it stops crashing...

Make a backup of the original and start removing models/ textures until it stops crashing.

An easy test is to assign the default texture to every block in your level... Shouldn't take long...