Have tried to install a few times now, when I load the game, it works fine, however, when I am in the Hanger on the first mission, my keyboard won't work, none of the number keys work, nor the space bar to launch, nor the cursor keys.

I am running on Windows XP laptop and have Direct 9 installed....

Before the hanger, the spacebar works fine to skip intro stuff, definitely not sure what I am doing wrong. Any thoughts?

Could be an issue with the laptop keyboard, you have to select "launch" and press Enter if I remember correctly.
If you have a normal keyboard you could plug into your laptop might just solve it.