Gah, all this confusion. I'm moved to throw my two cents in.
You should all know about the base placement glitch. It happens whenever you try to use the DOS version of the game under Windows 2000/XP, and has done ever since those OS's first existed. The error message varies, but the basic effects do not. I've yet to see a fix for it other then DosBox. Hence why I recommend the CE version of the game whenever I can.
The GeoScape is supposed to set that error level to 2 when you try to start a Tactical map. In this case, the GeoScape crashes, so that doesn't happen. Hence the game simply ends (much the same as if you'd quit).
Concerning hardware resource info, you can also use the Device Manager, via the Computer Management panel. Right click your taskbar, hit Properties. Select the Start Menu tab, then the Customise button. You'll see a checkbox stating "Display Administrative Tools", check that, then hit Ok to everything.
On your Start Menu you'll now find the new folder. There's a variety of handy stuff in here (such as the Event Viewer, which shows logs of what your system has been up to lately), but more importantly there's the Computer Management panel (which happens to include the aforementioned Event Viewer). I recommend copying this to your Quick Launch bar, as I use it all the time. You can then remove the admin tools from your Start Menu if you feel they're in the way.
Opening Computer Management shows you the guts of your computer at a glance: It's easy enough to find your sound card under the Device Manager. Double click the entry, then select the Resources tab. IRQ, DMA, and port are all listed (if not: Then they don't exist for that device. Things have changed a bit since the SB16 was mainstream).
All this stuff aside, the "safest" configuration method is to just disable sound, because the chances of UFO supporting your modern sound card are slim and Windows tends to spit out errors if you try it (depending on how many patches you've installed on your OS - Would you believe they've actually messed with the DOS VM over the years?! Service Pack 2 actually fixes some games which are unrunnable under earlier versions of XP, though later patches seem to cause sound related issues).
Installing VDMSound is the best alternative as you can set that with whatever card settings you like, then just configure UFO to match. Easy. Not that anything you do will stop the base bug from crashing your game, mind, so it doesn't matter in the slightest what settings your sound card is using: You
have to use DosBox under 2000/XP.
So! Here's my recommendations:
You don't have to do anything fancy to install this game, just copy it somewhere on your drive. Your current install should be fine. Run "setup.exe" to mess with your sound configuration, and tell it you've got a Sound Blaster 16. IRQ is 7, DMA is 1, port is 220, and you're using 8 channels. For the music settings, again, tell it you've got a Sound Blaster of some sort.
These settings are to match the DosBox defaults. With that done, start the VM, and give "ufo.bat" another shot.
Note that DosBox
is a VM, that is, a Virtual Machine. Your computers setup shouldn't affect DosBox in the slightest, because it attempts to emulate another computer. If DosBox works for one person, it should work for everyone.
PAL and NTSC are signal types used by TVs. The closest computers have to such things are different character sets (such as ASCII and Unicode), but these more often produce cosmetic glitches then serious crashes (and even then, only due to sloppy programming). That is to say, region encoding doesn't really exist in the programming world.
If DosBox still gives you glitches, give more detail on the error message, and make sure you're using an up to date version (though I reckon it'd be hard to find one so old as it couldn't run UFO).