After spending ages trying to install W2 I finally get it installed (gog downloader wouldn't download and then manually downloading gave up lots of errors) but it keeps crashing to desktop after a few seconds of play. I've tried lowering all the settings. I have a fairly powerful ATI card 270X 8 gig mem and i3 cpu.

Are there any fixes for this since the game is so old now? I've been searching online but nothing seems to work.

I've heard that a lot of the crashing has to do with overheating. Not sure how accurate that is, but you might try limiting your CPU a bit to see if that helps at all. I'm attaching a picture to show where you do that in Windows in case you don't already know.

Outside of that possibility, however, I'm not sure that the crashing issue has ever been resolved satisfactorily for those experiencing it (some have no issues with crashing for whatever reason).

There's no overheating going on here. This would be my second play through, the first time I played it half on a laptop 280m (which was no where near man enough for the job!) then upgraded my desktop to my trusty HD6870. Now I have the 270X, which should run everything on very high.
Sadly its unplayable, with desktop crash outs every 20 seconds or so.

Guess I could try to reinstall it again.

I've got it working now. A reinstall seems to have worked. Everything on ultra a part from ubersampling, which ill have a play with (disabled it as a precaution). No crashes so far and I'm about and hour in.