Well, both issues you reported (sprite not displaying, and now C2 crashing on new/open) were already reported before and so far always have been resolved by the installation of the correct/newest drivers.
Apparently, so far you dld/installed drivers and it weren't the correct ones (or they are just badly programmed).
Try to uninstall them all and proceed to install (again) the newest drivers available.
You can also try a full reinstall of your OS (from scratch with a format) or even updating to a newer OS (win 7 if possible).
From there, apart from having a direct access to your computer to be able to see directly "on site" what's going wrong, there's not much more that can be done support-wise.
Once again I refer to Ashley's last blog article, you might be stuck with a computer whose manufacturer doesn't support on the drivers/compatibility level.
Would you have access to another computer and try installing C2 on it ?