I get the about heading as a warning and the game does not run, any ideas how to fix? thx

I just ran into the same problem on my netbook. Apparently the game needs Hardware Transform & Lighting, which the cheaper/older netbook chipsets don't support.

When I run the game through 3d Analyzer (a free software that emulates Hardware T&L), I can see the intro movies, but the game then crashes my graphics driver immediately after profile creation. But whether the game would be playable with emulated T&L is questionable anyway - usually handling the game and the emulation is a bit much for the CPUs that ship with those chipsets.