I am guessing the software has changed a bit since 2006, both crossover and Party Poker..
I think I have tried all bottle types, with all possible combo's (I think) of ie/activeX/ etc, on two different machines. Varying levels of success. Some combo's demand activex be installed and does so. The install routine tries to summon a web page (IIRC xxxxx.com/xxxx/installstart.html), but it hangs there... later, when you abort the process, it summons another page, which DOES load!
Best result so far, to my mind bizarrely, is in a win98 bottle, with ie6, this installs, and tries to connect, but crashes there.
It seems to keep trying, and spawning instances of itself, until you can find the processs to "killall"
The specs of my machine are available on my profile page.
Thank you, xxx!