My Machine:
I have a winodws 2000, pentium 4, 1.6 ghz, I installed the patch, I have service pack 4, a geforce 2 GTS graphics card, and direct x 9

My problem: after the opening cutscenes, the game just freezes when it starts playing, it occasionally playes the music, then stoppes abruptly, I don't even have a chance to move in the game. can anyone tell me how I can prevent this from happening?

try downgrading to direct x 6.1 if u can, and running it in 16bit color mode