Xenogears problem on XP

Hi everyone, i've been working with emulation for some time now for previous systems that I own, like NES, and have found them to be enjoyable and fairly easy to manage on PC. This is my first attempt at emulating one of my PSone games on my PC. Xenogears is one of my favorite games, and getting a chance to get it up and running on my PC would be great. As suggested by a few people i've talked to, I used Alcohol 120% to make the backup and to burn the CD-R's. I used the recommended settings for a typical Playstation game. I downloaded the current release of ePSXe and followed their guide for getting plug-ins and configuring it. I'm using a USA BIOS for the emulator, and to my knowledge the game is a USA game(non-import) My system is running Windows XP Pro Service Pack 1a, with the current release of Direct X 9, Internet Explorer, and Windows Media Player 10 installed. I have also installed all updates from Microsoft Windows update except Service Pack 2(after hearing horror stories from some people, i've decided to skip that one for the time being). My system is an AMD Athlon XP 2400+ with 1024MB of DDR333 RAM and running an 80GB 7200rpm ata 100 Hard drive with a Geforce FX 5200 128MB 8X AGP DDR graphics card. The video settings i'm currently attempting, pasted from the emulator are as follows;

Plugin: Pete's OpenGL Driver 1.1.75
Author: Pete Bernert
Card vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
GFX card: GeForce FX 5200/AGP/SSE/3DNOW!

Resolution/Color:
- 640x480 Window mode
[16 Bit]- Keep psx aspect ratio: off

Textures:
- Default
- Filtering: 3
- Hi-Res textures: 0
- VRam size: 0 MBytes

Framerate:
- FPS limitation: on
- Frame skipping: on
- FPS limit: Auto

Compatibility:
- Offscreen drawing: 2
- Framebuffer texture: 0
- Framebuffer access: 0
- Alpha multipass: on
- Mask bit: on
- Advanced blending: on

Misc:
- Scanlines: off
- Line mode: off
- Unfiltered FB: on
- 15 bit FB: off
- Dithering: on
- Screen smoothing: off
- Screen cushion: off
- Game fixes: off [00000000]


I am not having any sound problems, that is working fine. The BIOS also loads as a test and goes to the default PSone screen to choose between the memory card or CD. However, when going to load the game, it starts....the sound cues in, and the initial graphic for the game loads, then it just totally stops. Nothing I do with my gamepad or my keyboard seems to make any different, it just freezes and it won't progress any further no matter what I can think of to do.

I've tried running the emulator with no other programs running, with the taskbar not set to locked or keep on top of other windows, with the graphics set to 16-bit 1024x786 for the desktop. Those settings seem to work find for emulating other systems. I realize the PSone is a lot more advanced than and NES, but i'm stumped. So any advice or assistance with solving this problem would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!