Slow ships

[Slick]

Here are my specs:
win xp. keep smiling.
P4 2.4something
512 mb ram
geforce 4 ti 4600 w/128 mb
se4 gold, no mods, updated to v1.78 (or whatever latest is)

as expected, everything runs smoking fast except ships in the system window. Much slower than previous computer. fast combat is fast. everything is fast except ships moving in the system window. when i turn off fast combat, the speed of ships in the combat window is the same slow speed.

I have tried:
complete reinstall
killing off all other programs except systray and explorer(with task manager)
lowering video resolution
turning off all sound and cd music
editing settings.txt to make cd music false
having the original se4g cd in and out of drive

all these have had no effect on the problem or anything else.

everything else in the game really runs fine but i really hate turning off the ship animation since it helps me keep track of what is going on, but waiting for all the ships to move is making me want to quit playing.

is the game sensitive to installing using a specifically designated cd rom designation? mine is E:\ vice D:\ as is more common.

I remember having this problem on old computer (P2, win98) and somehow fixing it soon after initial install. and I somehow remember it had something to do with sound/music but for the life of me, I can't remember or reproduce the fix.