I'm running an older laptop (relative to computer terms), which is below minimum specs. At one point, I was able to run the game, but it, for no reason I know of, stopped working after I had copied a mod into the SoaSE mods folder. Deleting the mod, reinstalling the game (including clearing out the local settings -> application data -> ironclad games), nothing fixed it. It seems to me like the hardware isn't keeping up, but I'm not sure. I have the game installed on my other computer, which it runs fine, leading me to believe the cd has no corruption. I've gone into the settings area, and turned off the intro movies, changed video settings to the minimum, turned off all the effects, etc - with no change.

For what actually happens - I start the game up, the screen goes black, and on the 1.0 patch - absolutely nothing happened. Screen was black. I found out with ctrl-alt-del that the mouse cursor would appear, and that it affected what the desktop currently would be - I was able to end the process of sins, or right click on the task bar, by approximating where it was I needed to click. Ending it closed it out, and brought me out of the black screen and to the desktop. On the 1.05 patch, the same thing happened, except it included a mini-dump. Now, on the beta patch - I got farther. I ended up getting the sins cursor to replace the default windows one, and then having the mini-dump occur - however - the game closes due to an error, so the black screen doesn't stay up for me.

I have sent off the mini-dump files from the first 1.05 patch version - that was where I got the advice to get the beta, as it includes an engine update to assist lower end systems. I also went from custom modded graphics drivers made for gaming, to the newest stock drivers, in hopes that would assist. Nothing here, however.

So, I'm going to be sending off my latest mini-dump files, and as much info as I can - however, I wanted to put it out so I could get community input and advice. I'm running on a laptop, mind - so no computer upgrades - and a new laptop is out of reach for the moment. I can use my desktop, but it's rare and infrequent that I can, so I don't play more than a half hour, maybe an hour, a week.

System Specs - relevant sections of a dxdiag.

General:
Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.070227-2254)
System Manufacturer: TOSHIBA
System Model: Satellite A105
Processor: Intel(R) Celeron(R) M processor 1.70GHz
Memory: 446MB RAM
Page File: 366MB used, 3279MB available
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)

Display:
Card name: ATI RADEON XPRESS 200M Series <-- The information isn't fully listed, but this is an integrated card with 64mb of memory.
Driver Version: 6.14.0010.6833 (English)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Date: 7/3/2008 22:23:45

Sound:
Description: Realtek HD Audio output
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Date: 8/6/2008 17:12:10

Disk:
Free Space: 19.7 GB
Total Space: 95.1 GB
File System: NTFS

In addition, my entire HD is fully defragged under diskkeeper, and defrags again every night, to keep a clean fast hard drive. I also have my registry cleared and defragged, and memory optimized as much as possible, combined with my large paging file.

Any advice would be helpful

And as noted earlier - the game HAS been proved to work on the computer.  So, if this is something unrelated to the power of my computer, help would most definitely be appreciated.  I would still take any advice on making the game run smoother, however.