"Desktop Enhancement" ie: stylexp,visual styler 2 or any program that changes the look of your desktop taskbar and icons.

I too was having the demo freeze on the main menu or freezing on a map to the point i couldn't even shrink to the taskbar with ctrl-alt-del or alt-tab i was always having to reset the pc. I'd updated all my drivers for my ati 9800 pro,even going backwards with drivers but still the game would lock up. Then i remembered having a similar problem with another game a while ago and remembered that i had to go back to the windows xp default visual style (blue,silver or green) and reset my icons to there default settings to. So i tried this with EAW and touch wood it hasn't frozen once since i did this. It makes my desktop and icons look rather boring lol but at least i can now enjoy this excellent game without having to reboot my pc every 5 minutes.

Hope this helps some of you :)