game pause/graphics issue on Win 8

[seehorse]

Hi there good folks. I'm new to this forum. Trying to run SH3 on my laptop. I have Windows 8. I've installed to a different folder (not default) and I'm running as an administrator in compatibility mode.
The game starts fine but when I try to play an actual scenario, that's where the issue occurs. The Game starts PAUSED and I can't take it off Paused. I also can't hear any sounds at that point and the main body of the screen is dark. I can see the icons at the bottom and sides but nothing happens if I click the icons. Tried every key stroke imaginable!
Can't figure out if this is a graphics issue or a windows 8 issue or what. I saw someone else post with the exact same issue but they fixed it by upgrading to SH5!
I have the download version of the game rather than the DVD version and it's on the latest patch.
I've tried running on 1024/768 resolution
I've tried uninstall and reinstall of the game
I've tried running as administrator
I've tried compatibility mode as WinXP SP3

The reason I went with SH3 was it was cheap and I figured it would run on my old laptop which isn't all that modern - Graphics card is NVIDIA 9400M (256MB). I really wanted to find a sim game that my laptop could handle!

would appreciate some advice on this