Had similar issue. When I tried to load a game from the start menu the load screen would come up but then nothing else would happen. If it didn't freeze completely, I would have to alt-tab out and end the process in the task manager. I finally figured out that changing my uGridsToLoad from 7 back to 5 stopped this from happening. In game I can use the console to change uGridsToLoad to 3 or to 5, but as soon as I change it to 7, crash to desktop. From what I can tell the new update won't allow me to set this ini value greater than 5.
