I downloaded the demo and installed it. The demo ran fine until the scene where the Donau gets blown up. Everytime it reached that point, the game would crash with a Blue Screen of Death. I tried varying the graphics levels and made sure I didn't have any other tasks running in the background. No help. I next reinstalled DirectX9 and made sure all my video and sound drivers were up to date. Still no help.

I did find that I could restart the game from the last save point which picks up from after the donau explosion. I was able to play thru the demo to its "finish". But then when I tried to lift off from Pittsburgh, it would again get a BSoD. I was extremely frustrated by this. I liked what I had seen of the game, but there was no way I was going to buy something this buggy.

I checked the Microsoft site and found this page: http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... -us;303032

I attempted each of the things listed, and finally reached the part about reducing the DirectX Sound Acceleration. Here is the text of that:

Method 5: Lower Sound Acceleration

1.Click Start, and then click Run.
2.In the Open box, type DXDIAG, and then click OK.
3.On the Sound tab, in the DirectX Features section, change the Hardware Sound Acceleration Level to Basic acceleration.
4.Click Exit.

This solved my BSoD's completely. I went back and re-enabled the higher graphics modes I'd disabled, and it still ran smooth. So something in the DirectX sound acceleration was the guilty party here. If you are hitting crashes like this, your problem may be similar.

For sake of reference, this is what I'm running with:
Win98SE w/ all updates applied
Athlon 1800XP+
Soltek SL75DRV MB
256 Megs PC2700 Kingston Memory
Leadtek Ti4200 GeForce 4 Video Card w/ 128 Megs
Turtle Beach Montego II Quadzilla
Western Digital 80 Gig Drive
ASUS 50x CD
Logitech Wheelmouse
Display at 1024x768 - will likely return to a higher display setting eventually.