I have just noticed that if I am currently in a game, exit to the main menu, and try to start another game, I get a purple screen at the race selection screen.  Once I select "New Game" it goes to the galaxy size and when I hit the next button is when this happens.  The screen is purple with a couple of the race prtraits.  The screen will tick evey couple of seconds like it is trying to reload but it never makes it past this.  I can back up to the main screen but I can't restart another game until I shut it down and reload it. 

I'm running Windows Vista 32bit on a E8400 Core Duo, an MSI 750I Platinum mainboard, (2) 8800GTS 512's in SLI, and 4GB of ram. All drivers are current.