I just got Medieval II: Total War on Steam, down loaded and installed Stainless Steel 4.0 into the same folder as the game (in the Steam folder) and then installed the Stainless Steel 4.1 patch.
But when I try to run the game, both by the Steam program or by desktop/folder icons, a window pops up saying it's loading, and then it disappears.
I have a friend who said he had the same problem but somehow fixed it when he first got the game. He tried changing the Steam launch option to @Stainless_Steel_mod.cfg as well as about a dozen variations. We put the [io] file_first = true thing into the CFG file and all that, but we still cant get it to work.

Does anyone know what's wrong? It works beautifully on his account on his computer, but mine refuses.

Your help will be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time in reading this.