I\'ve had almost the same problem.  I have a perfect looking menu save for the fact that there are no words on it.  I used a different computer that worked to see what buttons I needed to push to start the game on my computer.  The game will run, but no words are present there either.

Averatec laptop
Model #AV5500
AMD Mobile Sempron 2600
Windows XP
Graphics card is a SiS integrated ultra 256 with 128 meg shared video ram.
768 meg ram (minus video ram)