It sounds like you've have properly executed the instructions... however, there is the problem of your computer versus the graphics card versus the OS veruss the game versus the display. Refer to the "Silent Hunter 4 & Windows 10" thread stickied to the top of the page. Similar applies to even Windows Vista, all the way through Windows 11, and it has gotten stranger with the larger 4k and larger displays. Windows tries to "help" in its feeble way to do your desktop the way it thinks it should, but since SH4 is an old WinXP DirectXv9 game, the newer OSes do it incorrectly. You will have to intervene, and most likely perform some experiments on your own to find the right combination of settings, but in
Post #204 of that Win10 thread is an example with an image of:
That is a Win10 grab, and the Win11 screen is very similar, but the windows would have rounded corners. Windows 7 and earlier have similar windows, but are missing some of the High DPI options. You get to that "Properties" window by right-clicking on the SH4.exe file in your game folder, and then choosing "Properties" at the bottom of the context menu. The smaller top window is from clicking on the "Change high DPI settings" button on the middle window. The lower window is the Game folder on my hard drive.
You are almost certainly going to have to tick the "Disable fullscreen optimizations" button, and dependent upon the security settings on your computer, you might have to tick the "Run the program as an administrator". You might also have to use the top section of "Run the program in compatibility mode for:" and then choose anything from Windows XP SP2 through Windows 7, dependent again upon your computer. You most likely will have to use the "Change high DPI settings" button, and then set the bottom tick mark and set the drop-down to "Application". In some circumstances, you might have to use the "Program DPI" section at the top, if you have a higher resolution screen and run the game at a lower resolution to increase the screen elements. If you do have to do that (as an example, a 4K display, but running the game at 1920x1080), you would tick the "Use this setting to fix scaling problems...", and then set that drop-down box to "I open this program". Hopefully, it will be fine with just a couple of boxes ticked. Do one box at a time and then test your game start. If it fails, add another, etc. etc. etc. If that still does not help, check that LAA or the 4Gig Patch properly set the SH4.exe file. Realistically though, you should be able to start most of the SingleMissions, since those are generally not too full of game traffic.
