Been playing PS for over a year, but haven't had trouble till lately, since april 2nd I can't run the game. It doesn't seem to matter which character I use, the loading happends normally but instead of the game starting I get EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION at 0060F01C. I already tried a bunch of things: messing with the setup (setting vortext buffer on/off, sound on/off, changing to 16 and 15bit, playing in both fullscreen and windowed mode, changing skins...), I also tried doing an integrity check (the game downloaded a bunch of files, but nothing changed except got access to the 'new' server now) I also tried running the updater, but that didn't help. Afterwards uninstalled and reinstalled the game and didn't help (and went through all the previous options again). I haven't found anything relevant to this issue yet neither on the forums, nor bugtracker, so... if there's something I missed I'll ask kindly for the helpful people to post me a link.
As for me, I have:
Windows XP
Celeron 2.93 Ghz and 512 RAM
Nvidia Geforce 6200SE
I've saved the error log for a single crash, it goes something like this:
Wed Apr 08 19:42:37 2009, <..\..\src\client\sound\pssoundmngr.cpp:219 psSoundManager::Setup SEVERE>
Wed Apr 08 19:42:37 2009, Couldn't find iSoundRender!
Wed Apr 08 19:42:49 2009, Couldn't create Resource 'sound.standardButtonClick'
Wed Apr 08 19:42:49 2009, Couldn't create Resource 'gui.toolbar'
Wed Apr 08 19:42:49 2009, Couldn't create Resource 'gui.cancel'
Wed Apr 08 19:42:49 2009, Couldn't create Resource 'gui.ok'
Wed Apr 08 19:42:49 2009, Couldn't create Resource 'gui.scrolldown'
Wed Apr 08 19:42:49 2009, Couldn't create Resource 'gui.scrollup'
Wed Apr 08 19:42:49 2009, Couldn't create Resource 'gui.shortcut'
Wed Apr 08 19:42:49 2009, Couldn't create Resource 'gui.quit'
Wed Apr 08 19:43:24 2009, Couldn't create Resource 'amb.day2'
Wed Apr 08 19:43:24 2009, <..\..\src\client\sound\pssoundmngr.cpp:973 psMapSoundSystem::Initialize SEVERE>
Wed Apr 08 19:43:24 2009, Failed to load Sound Handle: amb.day2
Wed Apr 08 19:43:24 2009, Couldn't create Resource 'amb.weather.rain.light'
Wed Apr 08 19:43:24 2009, <..\..\src\client\sound\pssoundmngr.cpp:973 psMapSoundSystem::Initialize SEVERE>
Wed Apr 08 19:43:24 2009, Failed to load Sound Handle: amb.weather.rain.light
Wed Apr 08 19:43:24 2009, Couldn't create Resource 'amb.weather.rain.heavy'
Wed Apr 08 19:43:24 2009, <..\..\src\client\sound\pssoundmngr.cpp:973 psMapSoundSystem::Initialize SEVERE>
Wed Apr 08 19:43:24 2009, Failed to load Sound Handle: amb.weather.rain.heavy
Wed Apr 08 19:43:24 2009, Couldn't create Resource 'env.insects2'
Wed Apr 08 19:43:24 2009, <..\..\src\client\sound\pssoundmngr.cpp:1012 psMapSoundSystem::Initialize SEVERE>
Wed Apr 08 19:43:24 2009, Failed to load Sound: env.insects2
Wed Apr 08 19:43:24 2009, Couldn't create Resource 'connect'
Wed Apr 08 19:43:24 2009, <..\..\src\client\sound\pssoundmngr.cpp:1067 psMapSoundSystem::Initialize SEVERE>
Wed Apr 08 19:43:24 2009, Failed to load Sound: connect
Wed Apr 08 19:43:24 2009, Couldn't create Resource 'amb.day3'
...and goes on like this, all of the failures at this point are related to sound issues. I've saved a diagnostic file as well if it can be of any use.
EDIT: Now I recall that when I last quit the game, I had to reset the computer while PS was quiting and since then, the setup settings have been reset as well