A few things to suggest:
-Get the Latest Video Drivers from ATI
-Put the game in 98/Me Compatibility mode and disable Visual Themes and Desktop Composition.
-Radeon 9800 is pretty Ancient as far as Video Cards go, you might want to consider upgrading. (Either Vid Card or the Whole System. Though System upgrade would definitely get you more mileage, I also realize it may not be feasible depending on your situation.)
Btw, I think your graphics card ought to handle this game 'cos I looked up the system reqs for Idol Galore and they read:
"System Requirements: P/200, Win 95/98/2000/ME. 64mb Ram "
Some questions:
Do you have problems running other games: those which run on directx and non-directx?
Perhaps you could also try copying everything from your cd to your hdd. And installing again.
Hmmm… if you can’t resolve that, maybe you should take a look at Event Viewer:
Start —> Control Panel ----> Administrative Tools ----> Event Viewer
Try looking at Applications and System to see if there’re any errors. Graphics card, hdd or something else.
What install size did you use?
Only other thing I can think of is to check the Registry to make sure the location you’re instaslling to matches the location the Registry is looking for the game. Warning !!! Messing with the registry is NOT recommended for inexperienced users.
A few other things to try:
Running in 16-bit color
Check another system to see if the CD is the problem
Update codec files (could be the movie that is causing the problem)
Update sound drivers (yes…these need to be updated too, just like video drivers)
Ultimately it may require a reformat.