(EDIT: THIS PROBLEM HAS BEEN SOLVED. See last post.)

When hitting ESC to bring up the menu while in-game, it takes 15-20 seconds for the Main Menu to appear! There is a shorter delay (5-10 seconds) when selecting "Options" and any sub-menu from there (e.g. video & audio; I haven't tested delay on any other Main Menu buttons yet). This seems REALLY weird--when's the last time you played a game with such incredible delay on the in-game menus? I installed the latest NVIDIA drivers and the behavior did not change.

In addition, I have to set the graphics on 800x600x16 to avoid frame rate hits during mission briefing and from a single unit moving.

This is a 1GHz machine, so it doesn't seem like I should be seeing this much delay and slowdown. Anyone having any similar problems or have a solution?

DXDIAG follows, thanks for any help in advance:

(EDIT: DXDIAG deleted to make this thread legible)

it is seems that game started on your build-in video card .
Could you sent ma.log file (from the root folder of the game) to us at support@massiveassault.com

I should note that this is a two-monitor setup (there is no on-board video). The second card is 2D, a Matrox Mystique. However, the game is running on the primary NVIDIA card.

Thanks for checking this out!

The ma.log file has been emailed.

I deserve to be flogged.

The problem was a McAfee virus scanner running in the background. With the virus protection disabled, all the 2D menus operated quickly and normally. I am a retard for not checking this, but I haven't had a virus-protection-related game problem in so long I forgot I had it running.

Kudos to Massive Assault support for emailing me and helping me figure out this problem in such a short timespan! THANKS GUYS!

Of course, I don't deserve this great treatment since I broke a cardinal rule in game troubleshooting, but... live and learn.