game crashes while loading

[unmerged(99246)]

i bought and played eu-rome vv last night it played for 8 hours but crashed once or twice during loadup this morning i go to play and now it is crashing everytime at loadup i have the 2.1 patch
any ideas please help
it craches right at the creating checksum screen while loading

 

[AndrewT]

Try deleting the contents of the /map/cache directoty. If that doesn't help:

Please run DXDIAG, Save All Info, and post dxdiag.txt here (first delete everything after the Sound Devices section so it will fit). Also post your Rome/settings.txt and Rome/logs/system.log files. Note that if you use Vista and have installed the game in the suggested folder c:\Program Files\Paradox Interactive\Rome\, the active versions of these last two files will have been redirected by Vista to a non-system directory, like c:\users\[name]\appdata\local\virtualstore\Program Files\Paradox Interactive\Rome\. You may have to search your C: drive for them.