Colin and the team are wracking their brain(s) out on this one. I am experiencing this too, except that it doesn't lock up but the boards and characters wont show up(they're opened because the background music still plays, and the warps also work just fine).
do you have the thing that if you load up the internal menu, and press a button it does it twice?
I think it may be a driver problem.
One major thing: uncheck the 'enable joystick' checkbox. it'll make things go faster.