I downloaded this title from Steam a few nights ago and have been struggling with frustrating system lock-up problems ever since. I went through the usual suspects: the game and its patches, video card drivers, sound drivers, GPU temperature, CPU temperature (usually causes a reboot when the core temperature goes too high, but I investigated just to be sure). My machine was having the following symptoms:

1. The game would freeze in seemingly random locations - a reboot was required to fix it
2.  Eventually my desktop froze as well at one point, which seemed to indicate it wasn't the game
3. I tried three different video card driver versions: AMD Catalyst 10.6, 10.5, 104
4. I tried a brand new video card, using a different chip set (nVidia), then subsequently returned it to the store
5. I tried posting to the Bionic Command message board with a DirectX dump (useless, apparently the game is too old)
6. I made sure my fans were running at peak efficiency
7. I cried (only a little)

Until it occurred to me, that it could be Steam causing the crash. So, I took Steam off-line, as it is not possible to play Bionic Commando without it (when purchased through the Steam network). Low and behold, it was a miracle. No freezes. For your reference, here are a few of my vital stats in case someone from Steam wonders by:

Windows 7 64-bit Professional
Intel Core2 Quad CPU with 4 GB of RAM
ATI Radeon 3850 with 500 MB of VRAM
Steam API v009; built June 30, 2010 14:43:46

Here's the system information Steam gathered.

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