I've downloaded the free trial and have had some pretty consistent problems. Occasionally after the patcher comes up, I'll get no sound from then on so I usually just exit at the character selection screen. I've been able to work around this (I think) by clicking on the main Ryzom window when the auto-patcher pops up, keeping the auto-patcher in the background. This seems to work. However, the more serious problem is that the game launcher will hang on the last bar in the loading screen (the triangle) about 3/4 of the times I try to launch it. I've ended pretty much every process/program I can think of to no avail. I've got every single option in the game maxed, and thought for a while that it was the fact I was using the 128mb textures in the Configuration options that was doing it. That doesn't seem to be the case, as it does it with 64mb as well.
* I am running Avast antivirus, but turned it off - still no go. I will try killing all of the Avast processes to see if that helps.
* I have Logitech drivers installed, about the only process non-OS related still running.
* I am using an AMD x2 4200+ with an nForce4 m/b with 2gb of RAM and an eVga 7900GTO w/512MB RAM.
* Windows XP Home SP2 w/ports for the game opened.
* nVidia drivers 91.47, will update these to 93.71 if still nothing helps. I'd been avoiding the 93.71s as they supposedly have some issues with some games. All other drivers on my system are up to date.
Thanks for any suggestions; I realize this has been posted more than once, but I wanted the devs to know it is not an isolated incident.
Btw, this looks like a fantastic community - and when the game runs, it blows me away as to how good it looks and plays. Hope to see you in Arispotle... they call me Sprokket.

Oliver