Dungeon keeper 2 just shuts down after 10-30 minutes of gameplay.
I'm on windows XP. How do I keep that from happening?
This game is barely playable because of this.

Maybe it's a multi-core issue. Alt-Tab out of the game and open the task manager (Ctrl + Alt + Del). Go to Processes, right-click the Dungeon Keeper executable and set CPU affinity so, that only one CPU is used. Unfortunately, this can't be saved, so in case it works, you have to repeat it every time you start the game (unless you write a start script/batch file).

You could also try running the game in compatibility mode for Windows 2000 (right-click the game's start icon => Preferences => Compatibility).

There are also some in-game video settings that might help:
Water Translucency: off
Environment Mapping: off
Shadow Detail Level: 0
(If the game runs stable, you can try turning some of them back on, to narrow the problem down)

In the coming days contact Support. Also remember there's a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Do you run the game in compatibility mode at all? My advice would be to use the Win98/ME mode, as it works best with my system.

Thanks for the replies!

I am running in win2000 compatibility mode with all graphics settings disabled and that seems to make things "better" -which is hard to tell due to the probability based nature of this- but won't completely get rid of random shutdowns.
Sometimes I can play for hours with no problems, other times it'll drop me after half an hour and sometimes it'll just straight up kick me out after 5 minutes.

Another curious thing was that it arbitrarily decides it doesn't want to play certain maps at all.
I want to start a 1v1 multiplayer game vs the cpu on the map "small" and it crashes immediately upon loading the game.
Trying again and again and again will yield the exact same result. I try another map, the game loads just fine and I can play.
Today I tried playing the same 1v1 game on small and the game loads with no problems.
I can't reliably reproduce the issue so I never know if the thing I tried has fixed it or not which is very frustrating.

It's like someone randomly slapping your neck, I can't really play a relaxing game with the constant probability of that happening dangling over my head.
You know, I am the imps!

Yes, these are the worst kind of problems.

You should also check if the random crashes could by system related:
- Close all other software, especially anit-virus and sexurity sofrware (go offline before, if you feel unsafe)
- Don't use overclocking of any kind (not for CPU nor GPU)
- Check your harddrive for errors (Scandisk), a faulty sector at the wrong spot can cause some troubles
- Keep an eye on temperature (CPU and GPU), e.g. with Speccy or within your graphic card's control panel. (Try activating Vertical Synchronization (V-Sync) and/or underclocking if your graphic card gets hot)

The crashes could also still be driver related, sound as well as graphics.