I am at my wits end, I have spent 10 hours trying to get this game to run.

I can start the game, it offers me the choices of options, tech support exit and play game, I click on play game and nothing,

There is some hd activity but nothing loads, I don't even get a loading screen.

I have updated the drivers, made sure that directX is as updated as possible. I can't do the sound fix as I am on a XP and my sound options don't allow for it.

I turned off AA and FXAA reduced every option to the lowest ability

I have uninstalled and re-installed the game a couple of times.

My machine meets the requirements to run the game. I just don't know what else to do. does anyone have any suggestions?

Basic Hardware Specification Chart (Empty so far)

Processor Manufacturer: AMD / Intel
Processor Name / Type: Athlon X2 / Pentium D / C2D / dual core / quad, etc.
Processor Speed: ?.? Ghz
Operating System / Service Pack: WindowsXP with SP #?, Win7, Vista ?
System RAM: ? ? GBs (MBs, if less than 1024 ? )
Video (GPU) Manufacturer: ATI / Nvidia (only those two are supported, PERIOD, so please answer which of them you have)
Video Card Model: (examples) Radeon HD 6670 / Geforce GTS 450
Video Card Driver Version: Catalyst ?.? / Nforce ??.??
. . (please use the numbers, and dates, *not* the word "latest")
Video Card onboard RAM: ? ? ? MBs
Sound Card Manufacturer:
Sound Card Driver IDs:
Sound Card Model:

(And this is only for the raw hardware & driver variations. Potential software conflicts are far more likely to be game play problems, and developers cannot test for all possible program loads.)

P. S. Please use every day business style paragraph breaks, punctuation, and spelling.

------------------
System Information
------------------
Time of this report: 11/13/2011, 02:45:06
Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3 (2600.xpsp_sp3_gdr.101209-1647)
Processor: Intel® Core™2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz (4 CPUs)
Memory: 2048MB RAM
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
---------------
Display Devices
---------------
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GT 220
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce GT 220
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0A20&SUBSYS_830F1043&REV_A2
Display Memory: 1024.0 MB
Driver Name: nv4_disp.dll
Driver Version: 6.14.0012.8558 (English)
DDI Version: 9 (or higher)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
-------------
Sound Devices
-------------
Description: Realtek HD Audio output
Default Sound Playback: Yes
Default Voice Playback: Yes
Hardware ID: HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0883&SUBSYS_1043829F&REV_1000
Manufacturer ID: 1
Product ID: 100
Type: WDM
Driver Name: RtkHDAud.sys
Driver Version: 5.10.0000.6449 (English)

Is there any way to contact tech support directly? I see there is an option for it on the initial screen but surprisingly, when I select it nothing happens.

I realize that my system is just the minimal required to run this game, and yes I expected some issues, lagging, some graphics issues but to have it not run at all, with no errors that I can find is frustrating.

Official Support has its own separate web site.

http://support.gamesas.com/eng/platformlist.asp

http://support.gamesas.com/eng/email.asp

Well, I figured out how to get the game to work, turn off stream (make sure its not on in the task manager) and then run the game from the TESV.exe program.

Now why it works this way is something I don't know but it works and everything is working great so far.

I am having the exact same issue, however I tried closing steam and opening the tesv.exe and get the "this application has failed to start because X3DAudio1_7.dll was not found." error still.

Computer specs:
Windows XP Professional
Pentium Dual-Core E5330 @ 2.60GHz
2GB RAM
DirectX 9.0C (4.09.000.0904)
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I also downloaded the game directly from Stream, you might want to do that to get the missing dll.