Prior to installing Mok's new CDSHOCK.EXE for 2K/XP I was able to run the System Shock intro and main menu, but starting a new game would crash with the 3007 memory error we all know and love. I could get General Midi music, and full speech in the intro via VDMSound.

After installing the new CDSHOCK.EXE, I could now start a new game. The help screen would come up, in all its frightening verbosity. The cheery level-1 music was like a sensuous massage for my ears.
And then the moment I press the spacebar key to clear the help screen and start playing, the game would quit straight to desktop without a single word.

I then tried running it via a fullscreen command-prompt rather than a shortcut: the game appears to freeze at the same place, but when I ALT-TAB off the window and then back it shows an active command-prompt instead, so it seems like it's crashing to DOS and just not refreshing the screen. I can then run Shock again, but the digital sound is gone (as if the crash screwed VDMSound) and it will still crash.

I've tried running CDSHOCK.EXE through newer versions of DOS4GW (1.97 and 2.01a I believe), and tried the game or without sound. No dice. All settings on the memory page of the CDSHOCK.EXE and DOS4GW.EXE properties are set to Auto, except for DPMI which is set to 16384.

And here's the kicker: when I tried running System Shock 6 months ago using a DOS bootdisk, it did exactly the same thing: but in DOS 7.0 and 6.22, not in XP. This suggests to me a hardware conflict, but I tried pulling out every card I could and nothing worked. Is there some BIOS setting I should be trying?

My specs are as follows:
P3/733 on an Gigabyte GA-6VXE+ motherboard
384MB RAM (also tried with 128, 6 months ago)
TNT2 16MB video card
SBLive Value sound-card (using VDMSound 2.04 patched, and using Win98 SB emulation drivers in pure DOS)

Any advice, guys?