I'm not sure what your problem is then. It works fine for me.
I did, however, install Anti-Blaxx (mentioned in this
thread ) last night and messed around with that for a bit (using the hide option, not the delete option) before disabling it. It may have made some permanant change to my system that I'm not aware of that is allowing the game to run in coordination with the above steps, but I don't think that's the case.
Post Edit: Btw, make sure you don't have the Winter Assault CD/DVD in your CD/DVD drive. =P