Kraken,
I too have been plagued with the FS2002 system hang. I'm looking into it at the moment and when I find the cause, I will post it on this BB.
I know it's not related to latest driver/DirectX version, but these are good to keep up to date anyway.
FYI, my system is:
1.2GHz Athlon, 256MB RAM, 103GB HD space, DirectX 8.1, 64Mb Geforce2 MX400, Windows 2000.