Hmm...
I've known about randomly crashing just before you get to a battle (scene pauses, new music starts, battle swirl appears.. all within a second), and at one of those points, everything freezes up.. but usually i can get out of there and back to windows.
Your crash seems different in that it hangs up your whole system, and doesn't neccisarily[sp?] happen durring a battle, so, i'm stumped. If this were like 10 years ago, i'd say ff7 was straining your video card... but, uhm, no, lol.
However, try turning off some background processes. Something may be taking just enough memory to make unning ff7 a mild pain for your comp.
So, yeah, like jedimark said, 1.02 and compatability mode..