For what it's worth, I have a Win 7 pc and an old copy of Silent Hunter III that I
think doesn't have Starforce, and I could install it but not get it to run.
I ended up buying the game again off of Steam ($9.99 I think?) which doesn't have Starforce and it doesn't run right off the bat in Win 7 because of the graphics error notification, but the simple screen resolution fix makes it work just fine.