rofl that happened to me too. there was several things i did but i don't remember which fixed it.
1: if you press menu and then exit out of it (this would be the page up button on the keypad) you should be able to play. if you do this and the battle crashes it could be the official patch that did it.
2: at one point i had to set the game to run for my specific system aka: run as win 95 or something, you could try different ones and see if any of them help.
3:this actually somehow helped, i ran fculda (or however u say it) and when it started the game i could actually play it...weird
but alot of people have had this problem so you could do some searching and find the answer, in fact i might go look and see if i find something.
edit: btw if you installed the high res patch that could also be the problem.
Also check that you have 640x480 & TNT selected in the FFVII Config, by this i mean, click on the little chocobo icon that says config in the squaresoft file and make it run on 640X480 and that may help you