Black Screen on Load Up then Disconnect

Well as of right now, the game is totally unplayable for me. After two clean installs, one with and one without the patch I still get the same thing. As soon as I launch the game it switches over to a black screen then drops back into windows desktop within 4 or 5 seconds.

I have tried the launcher from the startup menu as well as the ones located in the Stardock folder to no avail.

My current system specs seem to match the minimum requirements and have updated catalyst and sound blaster drivers for my video and sound card.

I am running
3Ghz Single core Pentium
1Ghz DDR ram
80 Gig HD
Radeon 9800 Vid Card
Soundblaster Audigy 2 Sound Card
Windows XP Pro as OS

HD was recently Cleaned and Defragged, all Anti Spyware and Virus programs shut off as well as running minimal Windows Services on startup. It's an older system, but I do take care of it and is home built. This is the first program I've run that I've encountered any problems with.

Hope a hotfix or any suggestions from the powers that be can help. Currently extremely disappointed as I've heard that Stardock is a reputable company that takes care of their customers.

Waiting in limbo for the moment, Tasantherus...