(I'm not sure if this is the right forum to post this, please feel free to move or delete if it's not.)
I recently bought Sim City 4 on steam and I'm trying to run it on windows 7. The game is crashing on the EA Games logo as the game starts up. I've tried all the fixes I could find online such as setting the game to run with one CPU with steam and with the task manager, running the game in compatibility mode for windows XP and running the game as an administrator.
I'm wondering what else I could try to get my game to start succesfully and I'll post my system specs if anyone thinks that it will be relevant.
I had this exact same problem with the CD version of SC4 once. The game always does this for me if I try to start it up without speakers or headphones connected to my computer, like if I'm using my headphones for something else and forget to connect them back for SC4. Does your computer have speakers connected to it?
Try adding -audio:off to the startup line as well, as metarvo said it might be an issue with sound drivers. If it fires up correctly with -audio:off, it's definitely a sound driver issue. Try installing the newest version (it could be that the Windows 8 upgrade assistant couldn't find the correct drivers for your computer automatically)