First of all, make sure your graphics and sound card drivers are updated.
Otherwise, try method 1 (or any of the others) from here:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/812759Some people are also saying it's an issue caused by the antivirus software "AVG". So if you have that running, you might want to try turning it off while launching the game (or uninstalling and installing a different antivirus software).