No Sound, Freezes

[Huevos]

    So, I just got the game and I am really enjoying it.  Although I don't seem to be able to listen to the sound at all and the game freezes (requiring reboot) at times.  I looked through posts on a couple of boards and haven't found similar problems (especially with the sound).  The crashes occur after I leave the control page (save, load, game options, quit, etc) and also after I hit ctrl-alt-M to make the mouse stop blinking.  After avoiding doing these things for a few hours the game just started crashing within minutes (like a built in nagging mommy telling me I've been playing too long).  
    So the crashes are annoying, and I would like them to stop if someone knows a way.  But then there is the sound trouble.  When I start up the game by letting the CD's auto run take over the sound starts up and runs until the first image comes on the screen.  Then there is no sound, music, effects, nada.  What's up and how do I fix?  The sound played before I installed the patch, but without the patch the game crashes early.  
    The stuff in my box is an AMD Althon 1.1 Ghz, 240 MB RAM, 32X CD ROM, Savage 3 w/ 15.5 MB RAM, VIA PCI Sound, DirectX 8.1.  And I've installed patch 1.2.  

Any suggestions?

[Charlemagne]

No immediate suggestions, no. I have not heard of anyone else with sound problems like you describe. Is there anyhting unusual about your system at all? Any other programs running?

[Huevos]

There aren't any non-system programs running.  And besides having my audio card on my mother board there isn't really anything unusual about my system.  I do however run a linux operating system on a second physical harddrive.  I also have a second CD-R/RW drive that I am not using with the game.

[Huevos]

   So, I've tried to play the game a little bit more and the game freezes incessantly @ 5-10 minutes after the game begins on the island.  When the game freezes, the cursor will still move around the screen, but I can't get to the program manager in windows, or do anything but reset my computer.  Since reinstalling the game a few times, and upgrading to directx 9.0b the game freezes aren't tied to anything in particular; cursor change, menus, etc.  
   The sound/music still won't play during the game.  Occasionally sound and/or music will play during the intro movie.  
    The sound and freezing might be related, but I don't really know - the freezing problem sounds very similar to a post by someone named Lolly on the gathering forum, and this was only resolved by purchasing a new computer - a mildly drastic option in my opinion.  
    Anyway, let me know if there's anything you can do to help - or if I can give you more helpful information about my problem.  I'd like to play more than just the first 4 episodes of the campaign.  

[Huevos]

Update.  Using the safe mode I can get the game to work.  Its a little bit iffy, but with persistence I can get the game running.  Although it still freezes up on me occasionally.  I think that my hardware just doesn't jive too well with something - Its probably due to the fact that everything is run from chipsets on the motherboard and the way your process syncronization is done.  Of course I'm just making a wild guess.  But the game is great - as soon as I finish the next campaign I'm going to look in the phone book for a video game addicts anonymous.  

[Charlemagne]

I am really glad you got it to work (even if only in safe mode). As I said earlier, I have no idea what could be causing these problems---which are unusual or unique. WE do have an issue (on few machines) where players report not being able to start the game at all. However, your sound and game lock problems must be something else.