I installed and started Empires 1.08 RC7 first time today, joined the official server and the first thing I see is this oversized team selection screen(it extended over screen borders) with scrambled button images. I selected Brenodi Empire and the attached picture tells the rest. I searched the Empires folder for memory dumps, but there weren't any.
For some reason, that crash tends to happen in the beginning of playing 1.08. Also, restart Empires after changing resolution to avoid the oversized screens.
I didn't change resolution, but you were right; the second time I ran Empires 1.08 RC7 it worked fine. :confused: And no new memory dumps anywhere(latest is dated somewhere around last summer). Checked the whole HD. :D