In the bug reports forum there were some good advises from Delusianne, and one of them completely solved the crash/freeze issue I had since the new patch
a, reinstall microsof visual c++ (did not work for me but for several others yes)
b, if you have ati card, and you do not have the "load textures on demand" ticked in the config menu when you launch cprg, tick it. For me this worked, maybe the people who have issue since the patch can try......