Hate to say that I do not like the game!

[Veresov]

And what is your rig? Does it need replacing? Is the OS clean? there are hundreds of reasons for all sorts of problems. Let me ask another question. You are sat there, in front of your computer, and the bulb over your head blows. Do you blame the electric company? Now, I am not saying that there aren't issues with the game at all BUT!! (There always is) blaming them for everything is a little harsh. Like I have said before, I have an old rig and it works perfectly fine on mine and as an engineer who has spent many years problem solving, jumping to a conclusion like you have is not beneficial at all. I mean, I could sit and complain that this game doesn't work on my second gaming rig. It won't even read the disks.. but the crucial missing piece of information is that my second gaming rig is a PS3. Any wonder it doesn't work?

I have a dual core extreme, nvidia 8800GTX's (768) in SLI, 4 gig ram, raptor disk as 'c', 2 x 1.5TB Sata Hard drives, all driven by a silverstone 1200W power supply. It is a Cool-master case with 6 cooling fans and the system is watercooled to boot. Each graphics card has a zalman waterblock. I have temperature monitors visible at the desk level. OS = Windows XP - all updated. Drivers all current. System defragged once a week, anti-virus, malware, and antispyware programs running and updated. System scans once a week.

The OS was just reinstalled thanks to Empire's lockups. FDisk'd and reformatted last week.

I am an IT professional with over 20 years experience and this instability is due to poor software coding. I even tried installing it on a new i7 desktop system I got from Alienware week before last and it still crashes on it. I await your thoughts on what is wrong with my hardware since you are convinced thats the root cause...

[Gargravarr]

I have a dual core extreme, nvidia 8800GTX's (768) in SLI, 4 gig ram, raptor disk as 'c', 2 x 1.5TB Sata Hard drives, all driven by a silverstone 1200W power supply. It is a Cool-master case with 6 cooling fans and the system is watercooled to boot. Each graphics card has a zalman waterblock. I have temperature monitors visible at the desk level. OS = Windows XP - all updated. Drivers all current. System defragged once a week, anti-virus, malware, and antispyware programs running and updated. System scans once a week.

The OS was just reinstalled thanks to Empire's lockups. FDisk'd and reformatted last week.

I am an IT professional with over 20 years experience and this instability is due to poor software coding. I even tried installing it on a new i7 desktop system I got from Alienware week before last and it still crashes on it. I await your thoughts on what is wrong with my hardware since you are convinced thats the root cause...

OK as an IT specialist in both hardware and software with 30+ years experience there are several things I notice. With all that watercooling are you overclocking the PC??? Otherwise you are wasting a lot of money on a waste of time there. Running 8800's in SLI has always been unreliable due to the internal coding conflicting when running two cards in parallel, especially the early 8800's like you have there. The new ones have 512 or 1gb mem, the early ones had 340 odd and 768 meg mem). You make no mention of the make of your motherboard (rather a fundamental error for an IT specialist) Are the 2 SATA disks in a raid array (another basic thing that is relevant.) If you are such a specialist you will be aware that one of the common things we both have in common (I run an AMD system, Spec Below) is the software. Mine runs OK, your's doesn't ergo, it is likely to be the system. Simple. Pure logic. (Probably wrong but good first point)

(AMD Athlon64 5600+
3Gb Corsair800 memory(2x1gb matched, 2x512mb matched)
Asus Motherboard
Earthwatts 550W PSU
BFG Geforce 9800GT(512Mb) Graphics Card
2x500Gb Sata HDD non raid,
1x250Gb Sata HDD
1x160Gb Pata HDD
1x80Gb PATA HDD(OS Drive split 30/50)
Air cooled and stock speeds (OC Starts next week)

On a final note you are rude! Truly rude. I had no idea of your background, offered freely advice and assistance to you based on my experience and you turn round and shove that back in my face. Next time I won't bother!

Oh and I only suggested it MIGHT be a hardware issue not that it WAS there is a damn big difference there. I do find it odd though that the majority of those having issues are using Intel with XP now, call me odd but that looks like a link right there