This may be due to my onboard graphics card (I have a refurbished Win XP system because many of my older games won't run well in newer systems) but after the introductory video and menu screen and clicking the 'Start (new) game" thing the screen goes black and locks up. I cannot ctrl+alt+delete out of this and must intead manually hit the power button to shut my PC down.
I do have new graphics cards but unfortunately I need one of those 'pass through cables' that plugs into the onboard card and connects with the new plugged in graphics card and I cannot find these anymore in any online store or ebay. Whenever I do a search I get a ton of other types of cables and such but not the cable I need.

But the reason I bought this game was that I took a look at the system requirements and age of the game and thought it should work on my PC (my PC runs Heroes of M&M 5 for example). How old is this game?

I have many older games with display problems that are resolved after changing the game settings (in the game program). Usually changing to "hardware mouse cursor" or "Windows style cursor" is enough.