The only reference I can find to that problem in the past was fixed by restarting the game... duh I'll do a deeper search of the interwebs.
It might be an intermittent problem. Try exiting the game, copying the folder, then restarting and generating a new game, if the problem suddenly doesn't happen then you've found a bug steve might want to have a look at. Keep the save and upload it?
It's been suggested to me that that error could occur if theres files missing from the installation, perhaps the race pictures or something, Check that all the folders are there, Alphabetically you should have these folders: Flags, Medals, Planetjpeg, Races, Ships, , then the following files Aurora.cab, Aurora.exe Down3D.bmp DownArrow/bmp, left3d.bmp, magnify.bmp, right3d.bmp, rightarrow.bmp, shipnames.txt, stevefire.ldb, stevefire.mdb, up3dbmp, uparrow.bmp, zoomin.bmp, and zoomout.bmp.
Flags should have about 392 flags in it named from  flag0000.JPG upto flag0391.jpg, medals should have M001.jpg to M066.jpg, planet jpeg should have 83 pictures in it (84 files if theres a thumbs.db) , races should have either from race001.bmp to race261.bmp or race 001.bmp to race270.bmp if you're using treebiters race pack, and ships should have 121 gifs.

Edit: ooooh, I found someone on the bay12 forums who had an error 424, a week later he got the MSSTDFMT.DLL error, they might be connected.