No blue buttons - text only

Ok so I installed this game last week and played it once, but got stuck on my first event - there are 3 alignment icons, and I assumed they were clickable, but nothing happened when I clicked them, and I couldn't get out of the screen.

Today I watched all the tutorials and noticed that there are blue backgrounds on all the buttons in the game (ex. Build Ship) but not when I play..it's just the white text. On the research screen, just to the left of the Turn button, I can see little hide/show popup messages if I hold my mouse there, but it's just black.

I read through every button thread, and did the following:
- Upgraded to the latest version via the "Upgrade Game" button = no fix
- Rebooted = no fix
- Uninstalled/Reinstalled Multimedia folder via Stardock = no fix
- Uninstalled/Reinstalled the Movie folder and Tutorials folder (just cuz) = no fix (obviously)
- Confirmed the game screen size matches my resolution of 1280 x 800 (laptop widescreen) = no fix
- Installed latest directX version = no fix


So yea this is frustrating. Especially since I can't find any other people on the forum with this issue. Any ideas? I have a Toshiba Satellite with an Intel Duo Centrino 1.73Ghz, with 1.49Gb DDR2 RAM, and a Mobile Intel 945GM Express Chipset (integrated graphics card). The game handles all the space and battle scenes just fine, so I don't think it's the video card, but I really have no way to tell.

Thanks for any help~