I installed KOTOR (another Lucasarts game ...) and this actually ran. Occasionally. I exited out to do some stuff on the net and when I went to go back in, the same stuff happened. A few more attempts, and it went back in.
Strange thing I noticed though- when it *was* going to work, the mouse cursor turned into a little CD icon, i.e. loading.
Today, KOTOR wouldn't run at all. So I experimented and cracked the .exe (patched, 1.03).
Voila, it worked.
This doesn't happen on Prey, Hitman: Blood Money, or FEAR.
It may have happened on Chronicles of Riddick, but I wouldn't know to check again, since I uninstalled it after inadvertently patching it and discovering the patch refuses to run the game without Service Pack 1

The common denominator here is that KOTOR, Battlefront, and CoR are CD games, while the others are DVDs.
Thoughts?
(btw, I finished Prey. Man, that was awesome!)