CPUID's PC Wizard 2008 does not work - crashes+bugchecks

currently, CPUID's PC WIzard 2008 application (a System Info utility) doesn't install correctly or run correctly. when it is run from unzipped files, instead of running normally, doing an action in the window spawns command shells that never quit. runs great on XP SP2 & SP3.

I believe there is a way in the win32 API to do a console process without causing a cmd shell to be started, I have seen this, but I don't remember what it was. there are only a few of the system and exec calls available I remember.