Freeze on opening Screen (pre-opening Cinematic)

[Junius]

I was able to play the game for a while, advancing well into a Prussian campaigns, with no problems prior to my first CTD. After a battle with the United Provinces, I tried to combine some of my depleted Line Infantry. That was when I got my first CTD. I reboot, but when I tried to start Empires up again, it froze on the opening screen, with the legal and logo information. I reinstalled it, deleting local game information from my Steam panel, and reinstalling it from the disc. I thought this would help, but sadly it hasn't.

My System Specs

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Acer Aspire 8930, Vista 32-bit, 4gb Ram, Intel Core 2 Duo Processor P7350 (2GHz), GeForce 9600m GT (512mb)
This was able to play the game at High graphical settings, and everything was running fine before the CTD.

[snelson]

I've got the same problem, any known fix?