OK i have a series of issues / questions (i will post separately as i go):

IF i don't have the disk in the drive when i start the game all i get is a blank screen and a lot of hard drive activity. But after 3-5 minutes i still have nothing on my screen. When i Alt+Tab out, and go back i get an error from a Visual C++ Runtime, telling me that the Runtime requested the program terminate in an unusual way. I don't seem to have any ability to interact with the full screen game, other than press enter and the whole thing terminates.

IF i insert the dvd and use the autorun feature (instead of the shortcut from the games menu in the startup menu) it takes about 40 seconds (again a lot of disk activity) but the game starts.

There is a difference (besides the nothing happening) when starting from the shortcut on my desktop, with OR without disk in drive: i hear some sound which sounds to me like an error message (it's a windows sound)

My system is:

Core2Duo 2.4 GHz; 4GB RAM; sufficient HDD space, Pioneer DVD drive, running Vista Home Premium 64bit with all the latest updates (though not the service pack? AFAIK... i never got an option to install it), Nvidia 9600GT with the latest driver (174.74)

I'm rather new to Vista, i rarely use Windows, i'm a Mac / Linux weenie, this is running on a desktop system, not a mac (just in case).