OK - I'm completely at a loss now - I swapped out my DVD drive, uninstalled and reinstalled SH3 again - NO LUCK
One odd thing I've noticed - on my last two, supposedly fresh installs, it has not asked me for my CD key for some reason. It's as if it didn't competely uninstall, despite the fact that the uninstall process seemed to go fine and I deleted the SilentHunterIII folder and there is no SH3 folder in my documents.
Anybody know where else I might need to look to get rid of all traces of my old Sh3 install so I can try this again? I'm suffering from some real SH3 withdrawal here - please help