First the game ran fine and now it's not. And the way that it stopped working is peculiar; I don't recall anyone else having similar problems. This isn't a problem with the game; there's something going wrong with your system.Did you install anything just before the problem showed up? Probably not; I think you would have mentioned it. How about changing any Windows settings? Windows Firewall does not play nicely with many programs.
Have you scanned for viruses, trojans, worms, etc? Spyware wouldn't cause this -- except that sometimes spyware causes the above to be loaded as well.
You might need to re-install the game. The uninstall process should let you preserve your Saves and Minisaves, but you might want to make backup copies just to be extra safe. After you uninstall, use Regedit to make sure all the keys have been removed. Go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\New World Computing\Might and Magic IX\1.0
There's a problem with the 1.2 patch and Windows Firewall. If you use WF, disable it when you apply the 1.2 patch. TELP's 1.3 patches don't have this problem.