Well, i switched to using alexander's .exe with EB 1.2 and the problem disappeared. Now the game loads like a charm.

Heh, now that i think of it: maybe my RTW CD was the cause of the original problem (however, no message about a CD not being in the bay/being unreadable appeared). Alexander's .exe does not need any CD to run.

Anyway, with alex.exe the game starts up fine. The erratic problem was specific to RTW.exe.