Missing Hull Colours

I've just downloaded and installed Dark Avatar version 1.8. Seems to run okay, but all the ships seem to be missing the hull colours and appear as white cut outs. This is the same in the new game options, the game screen, and the ship builder. I'm playing on a compaq presario notebook that I thought more than met the minimum requirements. I was unable to find a thead that mentioned this, so hopefully someone will either have an answer or know of a thread that discusses this problem. Thanks.