If you have SS2008 & Avast antivirus software installed on your computer you might well find that the game will not open.
You might get this message on screen. (See below) Avast has decided that one file, "TrackIR.dll", which is part of the game, is a threat. It then deletes the file and your game is gone.
I have solved the problem by stopping the part called "File System Shield". This is merely what I have done, and not necessarily the right thing to do. I have Windows Defender working as well so I hope that is OK. I had to re-install SS2008 from scratch because of this fault. Two people, including me, have reported this to Avast so hopefully something will be done about this. I have been playing the game ever since it first came out and also had Avast installed and it has never caused a problem before, so I suspect this is a mistake or an accident.
I have scanned my whole computer with Avast and it finds just this one file to be dangerous out of thousands on the hard disc.
If you try to uninstall and reload the game it will stop loading for about a minute when it shows "TrackIR.dll....100%" The basic game does not include this file but "New Horizons", the Collectors Edition and the updates from basic to version 1.4.2. do have it. The second picture below shows where the problem stops correct loading.
Regards,
Angus.