Napoleon Total War won't load

Hi Technical friends,
I'm asking this question for a friend since that person doesn't really surf the internet.

When my friend tries to load the game, it never loads. But on the Steam site, it says they've played the game for 8 minutes.

The individual just installed a Radeon HD 4650 1GB graphics card.

Other specs to their computer:

Operating system: Windows XP
Processor: AMD Athlon XP2200 + MMX, 3D now, ~1.8HGz
Memory: 7``MB used, 1829 MB available

On a slightly-related note, Empire Total War is also giving my friend the same exact problem. Let me know if you need any more info.

P.S.
I saw similar threads, but I wasn't sure if they were facing the same technical issue. Many apologies if the solution to this problem is the same as the others.

Can he log into Steam?

yes, but the problems occur after they try to start the game up. They've tried installing/uninstalling/re-installing

UPDATE:
Steam works fine. When my friend clicks on the game, a box appears saying "preparing to launch Napoleon Total War," and then an hourglass appears...and then nothing.

What happens if he clicks on the Steam icon? Does he have all icons set to "Run as Administraor"? Is he logged in as Administrator?

Steam loads when they click the icon, and it lists Napoleon Total War as one of the games. They're not sure (neither am I) how to check if they're the administrator or not.

Right-click the icon, click preferences, click the security tab.

When he right-clicks the Steam icon, there is no "preference" option.

They only see:
Napoleon total war
store
community
library
servers
screenshots
news
settings
friends
exit

They tried "settings," but cannot find anything related to 'preferences' or 'security tab.'

The taskbar icon? What about the desktop icon?