To update may tale of woe: I can now tell you that the glitch that I'm suffering from must be because of the driver I'm using (ATI 8.1 for a Radeon HD 2600 Pro AGP card), which driver I was advised to download by Game Shadow. (I was, in fact, advised of this possibility several days ago by donw.)
I've at last managed to check out my bought in England and already updated to 1.4b stock SH3 on another PC and it runs fine: it doesn't run correctly on this PC that I'm now using (illegible grid numbers and vessel markers on the chart), but it did before I downloaded and installed the above mentioned driver. Previously I used a Radeon 9550 card and an ATI 7.1 driver: the game ran, though somewhat jerkily at times, because I then had only 512Mb RAM. I now have 1.5Gb RAM and I changed the video card and then the driver, which, hopefully, through a process of elimination, sems to be the culprit of my present extreme withdrawal symptons that I have been suffering from as a result of the present non-accessability of my favourite relaxation activity: GWX cold turkey I'm talking about, and it's hell!
In addition to the glitch as regards the grid numbers, the intro film is now a garish blue and green and red impressionist work of art, though the graphics for the game proper are fine, apart, that is, from the grid numbers.
I'm going to change to the 7.1 driver and see what happens.
I will keep you posted about developments so that my present unfortunate condition, should it occur with other shipmates, be quickly remedied by the cure that I have been seeking for almost a fortnight now, which cure, I shall, hopefully, soon inform you of.
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