sins gives me a black screen and a minidmp at load

i updated the game and then proceded to play for several hours with the only problem being the severe 5 fps slowdown  when ocasionaly zoomed way in to watch the battle. i shut the game down when my wife  complained about not being able to go to bed. no problem  shur saved my game and went to bed ..... AT NO POINT DID I SHUT MY PC DOWN . got up this fine saterday morning  and lo and behold ... this sucker crashes  repeatedly  and left me a couple of unreadable ( to me anyway) .dmp files  wich i had to find myself. not to mention i was already miffed at having to install impulse to get any updates .

HELP!

specs include

amd 2.7 dual core  black edition

4 gig ram (gskill 1060)

nvidia 9800 gt

windows xp pro sp3