Eh... well it's me again guys

Glad to report that I gave this a final shot before splitting the DVD in 2 and actually got it working by using a certain publicly available tool. All I can say is thanks TDW, I owe you one!
But there's still one minor snag. I tried to save my settings, but the game doesn't accept them now and resets to defaults instead at exit. Where does SH5 keep its configuration, so I can check for broken file/directory permissions etcetera? Thanks again!
EDIT:
Except that it now crashes every time I try to play a mission. OK, my patience's gone, canning this POS forever & will split the DVD too and I'll see you when I see you. Sad to see UBI is still full of it!
PS. Not particularly furious about the €6.99 going down the drain since that's peanuts. It's just that I'm upset how some entities are seemingly still allowed to continue with their extremely dubious if not criminal business practices. I mean, WTF?