Hello deadeye,
                I won't be of much use to you but I am in the same situation. My game dropped out at the "Free Flight-Missions etc." screen as I selected one of them.
I loaded a number of fresh games on my HD to try to pinpoint the problem, changing my original folders one by one to them to see when the failure happened.
It seemed to foul up around the Scenery or Scenedb folders, as they input to the main folder, I believe.
I did a clean re-install of the various Country screens, do you have those by chance? After reloading those and faffing around blindly for the last six weeks, on and off, I now have a playable game but it will still drop out if I try to access the Settings page. The whole thing has me beaten. If I come up with any more I'll let you know. Good luck mate. Graham. GB.

Hello deadeye,
       I have sorted my dropout. I had two different installs of the same scenery area. Cherbourg cfs2 and GZR_Cherbourg.
I also had your dropout at start last week. I don't have the vid playing as my setup has the patch that does away with the need to us the CD to load. But I did change the scr_splash screen in the Uries folder for a photo to reflect a European feel. The setup didn't like it for some reason and bombed me out at start. Changing the photo for another was acceptable but I have no idea why. Have you done this by any chance?
If your game is as installed, with no changes, try reloading or install the 'No CD' patch to see what happens. Worth a try.
Be like me. I'm always in it, only the depth varies...
Graham. 

Thanks Hagar, going to Martin's site now. Graham.