Galactic Civ II Dread Lords Won't start

I did raise this issue a while back (Only about 3 to 4 weeks), But couldn't seem to get any help ! I really would like to play this game first as I have ToA & DA but they work fine ! Somebody once said to me last time I raised this issue to edit the pref.ini file to match my screen resolution, trouble is there is no pref.ini or config.ini file or anything that resembles that. I have updated my BIOS to the latest and installed latest INF drivers and graphics drivers for my 8800GTX (Also updated the audio drivers and the LAN drivers) And got the November 2008 release of DirectX 9 (I am running XP Home). I also remember reading that when the game is first launched it creates some sort of file, I do remember checking for this file and it dosn't exist ! So I guess the game hasn't even started enough to create that file. ***** The problem I am having that once I launch it from the little launch box I just get a black box in the top left (Which just happens to be 1024x768 in size ... Suspicious) I have re-downloaded the game after un-installing about 4 times now so that is getting tiresome and dosn't make any difference, the Strangest part is that the two expansion packs start up no problems. I tried updating the Bink DLL driver to one from The Witcher which is a newer game and works fine, but still makes no difference. Is there something else I should be trying ? Also if there should be a pref.ini or config.ini file does it reside in the main directory ??? It must be something simple as I own 320 games and have only ever had trouble with about 3 of them (Aveyond ... which is now fixed ... and a certain pack from the sims that kept telling me that I didn't have DirectX 9.0c installed, but I did so I edited the config.ini file and changed the parameters of the directX check and now that works fine, also I had some problem with Knights & Merchants, but I can't remember if I fixed that and also can't remember the exact problem right now !) But I would really love to play Dread Lords.... It did work okay when I first got it from stardock but I only played for 5 or so hours. Any help would be great !