first of all: patch to version 1.2, will stop most of the drop out of game action.
i tried to run the game on almost any computer i got hold of in the past years and i think it all depends on the graphic card.
i had it running on my old 700mhz win2ksp2 comp for years, had basically the same components in another computer with win2ksp4 and it didn't even show the start screen.
two weeks ago i used my /gf computer, 1.6ghz with xp/home an it ran perfectly.
and what happend? now i am sitting here at 2:30am trying to get to run it on win2k / xp computers, installing my whole collection of old graphic cards one after antoher... just keep trying, some day you'll succeed<g>