I just got and installed the game. When I launch it, I get just a black screen (acutally it shuts the monitor down into power save mode)
I assume its using some refresh rate not compatible with my monitor, but there doesnt seem to be any way to configure the game to use any particular res/rate outside of the game.

I'm using an nvidia geforce 6800 card, latest video bios, latest nvidia driver, all windows update is up to date, windows sp2 etc etc.l

Game should load at 1024x768 by default I don't know why that would cause your monitor to turn off. I have had something like this happen when I installed Starsky and Hutch once. Give a reinstall a go, other than that if you have everything up to date it should be golden.

Do you have your PC language set to English? I've read that it must be on English for the game to work or you will get a black screen. I'm not sure how to do it, I'm sure it's probably in the control panel of your PC.