Weird, I re-checked all patches and they all look fine to me.
I have noticed the game tries to open DARKSTONE.INI in your Windows folder. Maybe some traces to your CD drive in there? Just guessing.
Or perhaps ProcessMonitor can help? But you say you can not do anything as soon as the game crashes. Then you should use DxWnd to force window mode, so you can 'escape' this... hmm this is getting tricky
More suggestions by other people here are always welcome, too.