Schrullenhaft, thanks for hanging in with this. No, I have only the one copy of CM installed and have omitted the shortcut. My video card is Nvidia riva tnt 16mb with the original drivers. (I should update: are some driver sources better than others?) Despite 3 reinstalls, there is no "prefs" file in the C/Programs/CMBO folder. Bmp., PEM, WAV, Scenarios, etc.-- but no prefs. On every reinstall I am given a choice of just 2 screen res.
No sky is the only graphics problem I've found.
Damn...this may force me to become more computer literate-- and I do hear laughter out there!
Thanks.