Gears of War PC crashes at splash screen

[Lugo Solo]

recently purchased Gears of War and a few other games, Crysis, Helgate
London, Orange Box etc..
All of the other games runs fine on my PC, but Gears of War crashes at the
start up splash screen after you click on the play button

The error message is "Gears of War has stopped working" then it collects
info to call home to Microsoft
I have not had the game successfully start up at all.
I reinstalled it to no avail
I downloaded the GOW updates but that does not resolve the issue at all
I cannot get past the splash screen...
I tried to us Microosft support but they are asking for a PID, and I cannot
get the PID because I cannot get into the game at all, and I will not pay
the
cost of the game for support
I get the same crash message when I both windows without loading any of the
non essential services and no startup programs so it's not an antivirus
issue

This is the info from Vista Problem Reports and Solutions

Problem
Stopped Working

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: wargame-g4wlive.exe
Application Version: 1.0.3339.131 --> Alo have reports with app Version
1.0.3340.131 and 1.0.3329.131
Application Timestamp: 472f77b3
Fault Module Name: kernel32.dll
Fault Module Version: 6.0.6001.18000
Fault Module Timestamp: 4791a81d
Exception Code: e06d7363
Exception Offset: 0002f35f
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: 541c
Additional Information 2: fea38bb7112247ac4fb62d4f4cf85987
Additional Information 3: 2206
Additional Information 4: a7c5d438f4cbc5ba45f9aa4eb66f39


This is my computer specification
Dell XPS 730
Nvidia 9800gx2 with the latest graphics drivers
Latest Nforce drivers for the mother board
Latest bios update
Windowx Vista Ultimate 64bit
Creative X-FI xtremeGamer Soundcard
Intel Q9550 2.8x Ghz processor
4 GB 1333 Mhz Ram
WD 160 GB Raptor 10,000 RPM main HD
WD Cavier Black 1TB HD for data

Any suggestions is appreciated

 

[Carl]

Have you patched the game up to the most recent, and I found that I had to
go hunting on MS site for games for windows live redistributable, after I
installed that, it ran fine. Smashing game, by the way.

 

[Nih]

I was searching for the way to run Gears in windowed mode because sometimes
when running in a window you will see error messages that you don't normally
see when the game is full screen, during my search i came upon this

vista ultimate 32 bit. hope this helps others.
goto your Gears of War folder
doubleclick binaries and scroll down the page till you find ' Startup '
send Startup to desktop
doubleclick it and when the game loads goto the Live account setup or login
to your Live account and when your in install the Live update, as you would
have found before you didnt have time to install the update.
run the install and then start the game using the Startup icon you created
on your decktop, the game will start to load in a window but when it gets
going just alt/enter to maximise screen.
thats the way i sorted the problem and the game runs brilliant. maybe the
post has been shown before or something similar but i hope this helps.


Give it a shot and see if it helps

 

[Lugo Solo]

I previously did everything suggested. I patched the game up and I installed
g4wlive redistributable. I also used the startup up shortcut