TR2 is the single TRx game that gave me the least trouble under WinXP, even without any compatibility trick, and no compatibility patches were ever needed by me, so the only thing I can think of is :
how many cdrom(dvd) drives have you got ?
if they're > 1, virtual equipment included, be sure to (pretend to) use the one with the lowest letter, so it's the first one after the HD, or TR2 won't let you hear the cd tracks.

At any rate, that has always been the most likely cause to it that I can recall.
Has this helped ?

Thank you for you reply, but I know about that... and that wasn't the problem I had described. I said I'm having problems with the FMV's - the movies.

Otherwise, the game runs perfectly... graphics, sound, music, cutscenes.

I do need the compatibility enabled, otherwise the game crashes when the second level loads (gives an error about not finding the boat object from Venice, or something to that extend.)

This may sound stupid... but it *is* a proper version of the game, yes? Some 'rips' remove the movies (Or make them one second blank ones) to save on file their file size.

I'd be rather upset if it were a rip, since I bought it from Eidos' Online Store... 😀

I know it works. I've played it often enough on my previous machine (WinME). This seems to be a specifically XP (or maybe too-new hardware) issue.

Ok, so I decided today to try and play The Golden Mask (TR2Gold). Imagine my surprise when the Eidos logo played perfectly... I immediately went out of the game and investigated the cd, and the installation directory and noticed that in the directory on the harddrive were several dll files that the original TR2 doesn't have. TR3 has them as well, and so does the RPL Player I had downloaded several years ago to play the TR FMV's.

In all three cases the RPL FMV's work perfectly, while they don't in TR2. I remember from hacking tutorials for several other games that some games put files into a single data file... if you put those same files in the root directory (or relevant subdirectories) they overwrite the files in the data file - this is how some mods are created. So I figured, what the hell, and copied the dll's into the TR2 root on c:, went into the game - and it works!

I'm guessing the dll's are new versions from the ones that TR2 presumably has somewhere.

Excellent job. I've been searching for a solution to this for a LONG time. I copied TR3 .dll files into TR2 root and the intro works a lot better...it still hangs towards the end, though. It could be a scratch on the CD or something. Thanks for a good tip.