Gears of War PC wont launch

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Hello

I have installed GoW on pc XP Professional SP3 and have downloaded GoW Patch
3. THe game tries to start but crashes at the Microsoft animated logo. A
message is displayed "To play gears of war, please double click startup.exe."
Have installed windows live, and all patches and bug fixes that I can find.
PC is very new and high end.

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Stevo
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