CTD hitting "P" key and reaching around 21 feet. Solution?

[Tempest555]

I narrowed down an issue that is keeping me from playing Silent Hunter IV Gold (patched to 1.5) on my HP new computer. It's the only game on their now.
I hit the "P" Key and when I get to around 21 ft-I get a CTD.
Only mod is the 4 gig patch I got here (it CTD before I installed that.)
All my drivers are up to date. And I installed the game per instructions on the strings and cleaned my registry manually of Ubi SHIV entries when uninstall

I had SHIV on an XP machine before in the past and no problems with this command. But it wasn't patched to 1.5 like the disc.
CTD happens with and without disc in CD/DVD tray.

System specs.
HP p6-2120tIntel(R) Pentium(R) CPU G630 @ 2.70GHz
4 Gigs of RAM
Win 7 64 bit
AMD Radeon HD 7450

It's not a gaming rig but perfectly adequate for this game.
Any suggestions on fixing the "P" key issue?
Like I said -I did not see this issue come up in a past post-but no solution was offered.
It certainly didn't happen when I played it on XP years ago.