[Dan Theman]

I'm not sure any of this would help, but here's what I would do to troubleshoot the issue:

More than likely, there's some program running in the background that's interfering with it. Some XP-based programs dealt with system resources in a somewhat different way than some Vista programs. While they're often individually fine, when combined together you can have a conflict. If it consistently happens at the same time, every time, then you may have a corrupted save. I'm not quite sure if you tried this from how you wrote that, but I would suggest trying to create a new league and seeing if that clears up the issue. As an aside, ALWAYS make a backup of your league as there is always the chance that something could go awry in a save file that can grow to as large as 5+ GB.

If that's not the case or if that fix doesn't work, then I would try to modify your services and startup routine as a troubleshooting method:

Open up your start menu (hit the Windows symbol on the bottom left), and type "msconfig" (without the quotes) in your search tab. When that program comes up, double-click on it and then hit continue when the permission pop-up occurs.

Next, you'll see five tabs at the top of your new window. Go to "services," and check "Hide all Microsoft Services." From this filtered list, click "disable all," but then go back and click on the entry for "LicCtrl Service" and put a check mark next to it to enable it (you need that for OOTP to realize you've got a licensed copy installed).

After that, head over to the "Startup" tab. Disable anything that's not essential on this tab (likely everything but Microsoft entries and your display adapter).

Go ahead and restart your PC after following these procedures, and try OOTP from there and see if it runs okay. If so then start adding in the services one-by-one each time you start up again until you run into a conflict. That will be your culprit, at which time you'll want to find an update/replacement for it.