Black Plague - Crash at new game

[LucasG]

First off I will say that I have the steam version of Penumbra (all of the games.)

I just finished Overature (with slight issues near the end) and Was about to start Black Plague however I cant even start a new game in it. I can start up the game, get the main menu, and play the tutorial in black plague without any problems. When I go to start a new game it reads the story to me about what had happened in Overature and then afterwards gives me a screen that says loading... After a second the game crashes to the desktop and the black box.

The blackbox error is:
penumbra.exe cause an EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION in module penumbra.exe at 001B:004D4EE4

Stack Trace:
001B:004D4EE4 Penumbra.exe

My general system specs are:

Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7 CPU 965 @ 3.20GHz
Memory: 2296MB RAM
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c
Video Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295
Driver Version: 6.14.0011.9745

After my problems with Overature all of my stuff had been updated in an attempt to fix that. I proceeded to try it with SLI disabled, Lowest graphics settings, Ran it in windowed mode, Ran it with and without hardware sound, deleted everything in the redist/core/cache folder and reinstalled the game once. None of these attempts changed the outcome.

So now I am stumped as to what the issue could be. Overature worked right off the bat for me and I never had any issues until the Crowbar door. It seems odd to me that Black plague doesnt work at all seeing as how i had very minute issues with Overature.

Any Ideas would be greatly Appreciated, Thanks.