I'm having the same problem, except my game crashes at "initializing sound" instead of freezing. At first I thought it was just some missing or faulty files - I've been doing a lot of modding and it wouldn't surprise me if I accidently damaged my vanilla backup - but after doing a fresh reinstall the problem remains. This has never happened to me in the hundreds of times I've booted the game on different systems and with different versions.
Removing the biks and using compatibility settings hasn't worked, unfortunately
UPDATE: I managed to fix the problem by renaming the game's music directory. However, since my symptom was a crash instead of a freeze, the cause might be different than the OP's. If renaming the music directory doesn't work, one might also try doing the same to the sfx directory (which I tried first to no effect) since people are freezing during sound initialization. In either case, it means sacrificing the music or sound, but part of a game is better than no game.
Removing the biks and using compatibility settings hasn't worked, unfortunately
UPDATE: I managed to fix the problem by renaming the game's music directory. However, since my symptom was a crash instead of a freeze, the cause might be different than the OP's. If renaming the music directory doesn't work, one might also try doing the same to the sfx directory (which I tried first to no effect) since people are freezing during sound initialization. In either case, it means sacrificing the music or sound, but part of a game is better than no game.
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