I had the same thing happen to me, using the nvidia fix and whatever didnt work.
Only way to make the game run was to use Software renderer, I think it's because of the latest Nvidia drivers, because I played the game months ago, and another time a year ago before that, and at those times I never had that problem.
I would use hardware and either TNT or Riva and it would work, but now if I use those, I get the mosaic effect with the grid lines being green/something like that, using software rendering everything works perfectly fine.
Something else : Can't run the High-Res patch because of this, using the High-Res patch with this bug actually makes the game crash when a fight occur.