Sorry for the delay in responding, I was in class at college.
I started by doing a fresh install of the game from steam since I had been mucking around with files. You may already know this (haven't gone through the forum) but it when run it says that MSVCR100.dll, MSVCP100.dll, and XINPUT1_3.dll are all invalid Windows dlls. This happens with both the patch and the current Steam version. Removing those files and letting it use my system version works fine. The current Steam patch fixed the crash I was having and I saw no immediate issues.
The patch linked above ran after removing the bad dlls, but has a new issue on my computer. It does not crash on startup, but when you get to the menu there is no sound and when you exit the menu the game hangs on a black screen and I have to end the process manually.
Here is the HPL.log. Here is main_settings.cfg.
EDIT: It may be worth mentioning that I also ran the current Steam version after replacing the SDL2.dll, and it still started fine, had sound, and exited properly.
EDIT2: Forgot to mention that I'm running 32-bit Windows XP atm.