Ah well I now have a stock+1.4 vanilla install, with an install of SH3 Commander set up to run it from (because why not), plus a brand new SH3+1.4+GWX3 install with another install of Commander to run that from. Plus JSGME for the GWX versions of SH3 and Commander. And MultiSH3 to keep my save folders nice and tidy for the latter.
Plus if I want to try out the other supermods eventually, I'm covered as far as having a stock+1.4 game folder to copy and work from.
So far everything works. Now if I can just get my Gramophone situation straightened out, I'll be good to go. On a brand new career. Maybe there's another Witte brother floating around who I can send out for a patrol and a half before I find another reason to reinstall everything again.
This reminds me of when I decided to pull out my old Discworld game and try to make it run on XP. I had so much fun finding out about DOS emulators and installing one and setting it all up to run the game from the HD and creating a custom cfg file for it and a shortcut so I just had to click once to make it all load seamlessly... I never did get around to playing the game, lol.