But no sound effects (except the gate opening at the beginning, but that's it)

Was having the problem with the game crashing to desktop due to sound configuration or whatever, so done the fix as advised so now it starts.... but I can only hear character's voices and the background music...

This was in Windows 7 64-bit, but appears to be exactly the same in Windows XP without having made any changes to sound configuration (and same thing after trying some different sound options for that matter)

BUMP

try with low graphics settings... i know its a shame, some of us with very good GC can't run it on ultra (mine is GTX580 3Go)

there are two main problems in general

Crash on main menu > sound options
Crash/freeze on Save loading > try lower graphics settings