DEP CTD when starting a Most Wanted Run

I have a reproducable bug in NFS: Most Wanted where starting a 'Most Wanted' run will freeze my game, and I have to task manager out, at which point I get a DEP warning. It's always roughly the same point in the movie that plays during this time, the stylized bit loads fine, then as soon as it transitions into the real world it freezes.

I am using Vista 32bit, 4gb ram, AMD 6770.

Things I have tried:

- Add to DEP exceptions: The .exe does not allow this, giving an error

- Run in admin mode: No effect

- Run in compability mode: Game will not start

- Reboot: No effect

I would rather not turn off DEP totally on the machine especially because it's supposed to protect your machine. I have only had one other runin that I can remember with a DEP exception, but that was not a reproducable crash like this, that also blocks progress.