I've really screwed it up now!

[Major Disappointment]

OK...started to have some issues with my CMBO game (B2B was working fine after some fixes suggested here) and suddenly I'm having problems with weird transparencies with icons and barbed wire, etc.

Long story short, something ended up majorly screwed up, I deleted the prefs for both editions, monkeyed around with my graphics settings and now when I start up either game, it asks for me to skip or accept the lowest setting (640 x 800 I think). Since I know this setting is very clunky, I say "skip" which then exits me to the desktop and says "cannot initialize 3d" or something to that effect.

I've updated my drivers to the latest, much newer versions and am going to try DirectX 9 (8 was my last version).

What do I need to do?

[Schrullenhaft]

Apparently you 'monkied' around with too many of your video card settings. You may have disabled some of your 3D capabilities so that CM only recognizes your card as being capable of software rendering at 640x480. There is no lower resolution that that in CM and when you tell it to 'skip' it, then the resolution selection process ends - generating a DirectX error (this is completely normal for CM - it isn't a true indication of a DirectX problem). A reinstallation or upgrade of DirectX really isn't necessary here (though you may want to upgrade to the latest DirectX version if you're using some of the newer video drivers from some manufacturers).

Something must have happened for your textures to start 'tweaking'. A video driver update, change in resolution/color depth, a new mod or most commonly a change in your video card's settings for DirectX. I'm not sure exactly what you saw, but it may be attributable to the drivers behaving strangely, etc.