Help! Cannot get Medieval _TW.exe to load!!

[Shadow Warrior]

Please help. Today I installed Medieval Total War on my system for the first time in years. I'm playing Viking Invasion version 2.01.

My system specs are:

Graphics card: ATI Radeon HD 4800 512 MB
System: Windows XP Media Center Edition for HP
Processor: Pentium D CPU 2.80
Memory: 3 gig RAM
Monitor: Viewsonic VA191wb (widescreen)

Complete Description of the problem: I installed Medieval Total War I using the two discs and the Viking Invasion companion disc. I then tried to load the game, making sure I disc 1 in the DVD player on my computer. I click on the icon to start the game, I get the Medieval Total War box (the small one) and then the screen goes to black (preparing to load the game). It hangs there, black screen, and then the DVD player stops trying to load the game. When I press CTL-ALT-DEL, Windows Task Manager states the game is "Not Responding".

Here's what I've tried:

I have tried every feasible and possible screen resolution setting.

I have turned off everything I think of including Anti-Aliasing, Adaptive Anti-Aliasing, Anisotropic Filtering, everything.

I updated my video drivers.

For the life of me, I cannot understand why this game won't start. It doesn't crash; it just locks up, not responding.

If there's a better place to ask this questions, please tell me. This is frustrating.

[Brusilov]

Have you read through this stickied thread: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=43348