Posting this hoping it might help someone...

After much discussion with Ubi tech support I've finally got my copy working.

The fix was (in my case) to go *back* to the nVidia 71.89 drivers. Previously I had updated to the 78.02 drivers in an attempt to fix the BSOD I got a few seconds into the game.

I also turned off Norton Protect on all the hard drives but I don't know whether that was the real problem or not but at least I can play the game.

This was on a system that met the minimum requirements - P3 800Mhz / 512mb ram / Leadtek A310TD / Win 2k Service Pack 4

Glad you were able to find a solution to your problem. I too had trouble with Nvidia's latest certified driver.

Nvidia has released a beta driver, version 8x.xx, but I'm not sure if it works well. I don't trust beta drivers.

I'm using the 77.77 driver version and have experienced no problems. It is good to see the 71.xx version works as well.

That's good to know about the 77.77. I might try upgrading to that now. I should add that I had an earlier driver *before* I updated to 78.02. A case of several steps forward then several steps back again ;-)
I'll also try turning on Norton Protect again to see if that had anything to do with it.

Update: All the 71.89 drivers have done is allow me to play the game for a bit longer before the inevitable BSOD kills it.

:-(