Yep that was it, took off those stars and all is wonderful.
Ended up going back to scratch, started from the 1946 disc (407) added all the updates and everything looked fine on each Quick Mission Bldr we ran between updates. When we put in the HSFX Updater the white shorelines reappeared, but this time they were black. I'd dl a file from some forum, atigo.dll or something like that. Added it for the heck of it, Presto, no black shoreline, all is functioning as should be. I think its a file that is needed with his 6950 GPU.
The screen doesn't fill to the edges when the game starts up. Mine has the black border edges during set up, but when the game starts there gone and the sim is at full screen. His won't stretch to the sides, any ideas here....?