Can you start your Carbon at all?
Apparently, Carbon do have problem with Vista which none of those in-game videos (including the opening EA video) are compatible with Vista. Some codec problem if I'm not mistaken. There are two solution as far as I can remember:

1 - Rename the movie folder. But then you will not have any in-game video at all.
2 - Install Carbon's final patch...i forgot what version, 1.3 or 1.4. The last patch was supposed to cure the video incompatibility.

gengstapo: Carbon are known to crash all the time. Try install the final or 2nd last patch.

Hope this helps, guys.