What's wrong with my Dominions?

[LuckyRaccoon]

I'm having problems running Dominions 3 on my new laptop and i'm not sure if it's a computer deficiency or a vista error. At startup it only half loads the menu while the 'please wait' remains, the sound plays but the animated hills and trees background is just black. The amount of menu loaded seems random as it's been different every time i attempt to play the game. Yes, i've tried compatibility mode and i can't find the settings file so i'm not sure if the disparity between the games starting resolution and my own [1280x800] could be causing the crash. Is this just vista or my computer, how the hell do i fix this?

system specs
Intel� Centrino� Duo 1.86GHz
1GB RAM
Hard Drive Size 160GB
graphics Intel� Graphics Media Accelerator 950

I searched the first few live pages about vista errors but i didn't find any, if there's a specific support forum i couldn't find it either.