Happening to me also. Started for me around 5PM after winning a battle (93% to nothin’!) then CTD.
Nothing else changed on my system.
ASUS A8N-SLI, AMD 3800+X2 dual core, GeForce BFG 7900 GTX OC, Windows XP Pro SP2.
Changing the time back to noon today DID fix it. How curious!
Same with me, changing the time doesn’t fix it though. It appears to be tied to minimizing/alt tabbing, perhaps?
EDIT - I take that back… I changed the time, again, back 3 hours and it works again. Strange.
Fix worked. Odd. Very odd…
rofl y2k all over again
Applied fix. (Edit: Applied to several points of the day which I played it, EST. No change in result.)
Now it just freezes before hitting splash.
Sigh, whatever. I’ll just wait for cliff to fix it tomorrow and play EVE in the meantime.
My clock is set to Central Standard Time if I run the game 6:59:59 PM or before it runs fine, running the game at 7:00:00 PM will reproduce the Error 41, this will occur all the way to 11:59:59 PM.
Odd thing is if I go to tomorrows date it starts failing at 12:00:00PM
Edit: I take this back, I cant seem to get the game to work on any future date.
Very interesting, I’m in the US EST so set my date back one day to 8/30/09 same time and it worked. And it did crash right around 8PM local. If 8PM EST is midnight in the UK where cliffski is located then for some reason GSB really doesn’t like September for some reason. lol
I was playing at 1am BST and exactly midnight GMT and looking at the error.txt that’s when it threw the first error.
1/9/2009 - 0::0 - Error 41. Please contact tech Support:…\src\GUI_ButtonBase.cpp 110 (original crash)
1/9/2009 - 0::1 - Error 41. Please contact tech Support:…\src\Game.cpp 242 (when I first tried to restart it)
I’ve been messing about with a few different times and dates settings and it seems to only work for me during August 2009, any other date and you get either Error 41 or Error 36. Seems to adjust for the time zone you have your system set to so that whatever time you have your system clock and time zone set to it works out if that is in August 2009 according to UTC/GMT and crashes or not accordingly.
Alright I think I know what its doing.
I am on Central Standard Time, I set my clock to 6:59:45
I loaded GSB, let the game sit on the main menu for 30 seconds. Click a menu item and it crashed. The error code was different from before but the error log shows something interesting. It jumped ahead several hours when it reported the error message, was expecting to see a time stamp around 7 o’clock PM not midnight. The game seems to have its own internal clock system or something cause the times don’t match at all and this might be causing the game to crash when its trying to write data past that that particular moment in time.
31/8/2009 - 12::5 - D3DERR_DEVICELOST
31/8/2009 - 12::5 - Flip
1/9/2009 - 0::0 - Error 41. Please contact tech Support:…\src\GUI_ButtonBase.cpp 110
That’s quite possibly the last error I was ever expecting to see. Date back 3 days or so and it works again.
Just remind me not to do any work (website designer) or my time stamps will be messed up. Wait… game works, can’t do any work… awesome! 
I’ve been playing the game, getting a bit tired (sleepy) but I was like “well it is only 7pm so that’s good”
meanwhile I set the clock back so it is actually 11pm
oops 
i’m on an active directory domain. the game has just reminded me (in it’s own unique way) that AD computers automatically sync their clocks
dammit 
Kudos for finding this little fix. I was having Error 41 tears until I read this, and setting my clock back allowed me to play the game. Thanks!
Yup, it’s definitely time related. Ran the game fine this afternoon (or rather, it didn’t crash in this specific way then), but when I got home tonight at 10:49 it began doing the crash on startup. I changed the clock to 12:49, and now it booted up fine.
Guys, I apologise massively. This is all my fault. I’m patching the game now and it (and a whole bunch of other things) will be fixed automatically in a minute. The game should autopatch.
Unfortunately, it can only auto-patch if it can start up to past the initial title screen … where it pointedly does not for me, sadly. Sigh. But, good on ya for trying, mate.
not necessarily… it connects to a server before the crash quite definately.
as to what that’s doing though, i haven’t investigated.
Actually, cunningly it should if it all works manage to autopatch before then. You will find out in about half an hour.
If not, you will be able to redownload the whole (ready-patched) game anyway. This was is just quicker.
Checked just now; it updates properly for me, before the error has even a chance to strike.
Game works, however there was a minor issue with the installer wanting to install it to C:\Program Files, while I got it on D:. Nothing major, but still. 
Mine is not auto updating; I get the error 41 as soon as I launch the game.