Dark Messiah update...
I finally found out what was causing Dark Messiah to either not start up or crap out shortly after starting to play. It seems that it doesn't like my software audio (hardware accelerated audio rarely comes equipped on motherboards). Lowering the acceleration utilization, via DXDiag, enabled me to play the game again. Good thing as I'm near the end of it.
You kids today and your fancy accelerated audio and your whatnots and whosits!
Actually, that was pretty smart figuring out the problem.