Hey, i already made a post about my problems earlier in the "known issues sticky".
However i wanted to add something. I play now the unpatched unregistered version again. And it works perfectly. However if i patch to any given patch that has come out, i get the same old "freezes after 5 seconds problem".
Any idea what could cause this problem due to a "fix" in the current patches given example 1.1 to 1.4??
Maybe this will help you guys a bit