HOI2 Complete (steam) always crashes

[unmerged(79105)]

Hey all, I bought the HOI2 Steam bundle on Steam, and have been unable to launch any game whatsoever. It crashes consistently at the loading screen (after selecting a campaign/country and pressing launch). I know there was some trouble with patches, but I have just bought this and it appears auto-updated (v 1.3a). The same crash happens when I attempt to open Doomsday (v 1.2). It sucks not to be able to play this game at all after just purchasing it! and there doesn't appear to be any help on the steam forums.

VVVVV This is the error that appears VVVVV

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: hoi2.exe
Application Version: 1.0.0.1
Application Timestamp: 437b00a6
Fault Module Name: StackHash_cf6c
Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 00000000
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 3031d0b5
OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: cf6c
Additional Information 2: 3c4092c2ffbc2d1ea62a746e2a734b7b
Additional Information 3: 8d36
Additional Information 4: 8007c12b5c0ff8c2b431244e136eebc6

 

[sbr]

I know of one fix for this problem but as I have no idea how Steam works I don't know if it would work with the Steam version.

If you have the actual game files on your PC somewhere rename the avi folder, it doesn't matter what you rename it to, you just want the program to not be able to find the opening movie (deleting is also a more drastic, permanent solution).