[Saber Cherry]

Scandisk, defrag, disable sound acceleration in Windows, set sound to "waveout" in the game preferences, run in windowed mode, turn of ALL BACKGROUND SERVICES...

Run msconfig and just start disabling everything in "startup" that looks suspicious. You can normally disable everything in that window without causing any problems.

Then go to "Services" and disable some of those too. I disabled all the dumb-looking ones, like "Messenger", "Netmeeting", "Smartcard", "Task Scheduler", "Windows Time", "Wireless Zero", Uninterruptible Power Supply". Of course you may not be able to do this without XP Pro.

Then, press ctrl-alt-delete and end everything under "Processes" that is not listed as "System" "Network Service" or "Local Service", except "Explorer" and "taskmngr".

It's probably some badly programmed 3rd-party trash causing crashes. Do you use a virus scanner? Also Creative has a huge amount of BS loading on startup; disable all of their trashy driver stuff and toolbars.

Once you disable all the extra crap running, it should work fine.