Thanks HAARP. I should have thought of asking for that before, it was good to compare profiles. Without going into more detail than I have to, I essentially matched my settings with yours (As well as the order), started the game and it worked! After quite a bit more testing with the preferences (this is most of the details I won't go into) I found that the 'fidelity' setting (which you actually have set to '2') is what is causing me grief. I think this is something I accidentally changed initially (lucky me!) because the game works for me when this setting is changed to '0' (zero). In game, the only thing I see different with this setting "off" is that damage to the terrain is disabled. There are some more details as to the gameplay and functionality, etc..., but I'll post that as updated data (along with this) in appdb. Thank you EVERYONE for the suggestions and help!
