I had the opposite problem. The demo wouldn't start up at all for me. Yet the game works. However, I haven't been free of problems (you can see the thread I created here for the issues I had).
That being said, you may can try this...
I've been messing around with my config file since I can't access the option menus ingame. Under the "video settings" in the config file there is a line dealing with "r_shadermodel".
By default it was set to 1 for me. I wanted to have high quality settings, tho, so I changed it to 4. This made the game not even start up for me. If I change it back to 1 it runs perfectly fine tho.
So maybe you can open up your config file in your Cryostasis folder and change the number for your "r_shadermodel" and see if that does anything. I guess it has something to do with my video card? I'm not sure, I know little about computers tbh but just trying to help ya
my vid card is Nvidia GeForce 8800 btw. Another guy with this same card had the exact same problems as me on another forum.