Black screen / Computer freeze on ga ...

Hello,
I received OMD2 as a gift through steam. After I downloaded the game and went to play, my screen would just go black and I'd be forced to restart my computer in order to do anything.. it would lock up completely.
 
I have an Alienware M18x and saw that some people were having issues because of AlienFX. I thought this might be my issue so I did the following:
 
Created a user.cfg file with the linke NoAlienFX
Turned AlienFX on dark mode.
 
Also, I ran both of these installers as recommended by steam:
 
...\steamapps\common\Orcs Must Die 2\installer\DXSETUP.exe
...\steamapps\common\Orcs Must Die 2\installer\vcredist_x86.exe
 
If anyone can give me some help, I'd really appreciate it. I got this as a gift from a friend and am starting to feel really bad that he wasted his money on something that won't even work for me.
 
Thank you.