I have the same problem as you do, but sadly no solution. It is the best (not that there's many of them) snowboarding game for the PC. I just installed the game and got that message once, but afterwards it worked for me. I have Win XP Pro, so that might make a difference. Sorry, you can't get it to work, but I can't get my USB gamepad to work with it... EA just needs to release a new, great snowboarding game for the PC...