Gyrene,
Yes I disabled them months ago when I was experiencing a stutter problem. Since the fresh install, I have tried with both allowing them to be running and to disable them. The current boot up is in as close to XP as possible (all aero, themes, classic view, etc) as Skuzzy posted in the Vista tips thread.
What is confusing is that the game ran fine prior to the update/patch. It is not now.
The game is very playable and enjoyable when it is running, but I am the type of person that wants to know why the program would crash as it does. What is also confusing is that it works for some folks and not for others.
I figured, doing the wipe of the HDD and the new install of the OS would bring me to a point that crashing would no longer be an issue.
Quite puzzling and would love to figure it out!
BTW.....I am NOT a fan of Vista....but when I built the PC, windows 7 was not out and XP was rumored to be losing "support".....had I been able to see a few months into the future back then I would have stayed with XP and went to Windows 7 when XP was no longer supported.
Thanks for the suggestions on the processes thing.....I am sure there are others that have not tried this.
For those looking for Skuzzy's tips and haven't seen them they are located here:
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,200949.0.html