Many thanks for all of the responses! Okay, so it seems it must have been something with that particular installation of 7.5.5. I installed 7.6 over it and made sure to install the whole boatload of 'features' 7.6 forces down your throat. As a result, all of the GUI elements are back to normal. I added about 1.25MB to my memory footprint and am now sitting at a System usage of just over 4MB. At 20MB of RAM plus virtual memory accessed off the 10k RPM drive, it should be fine. Not ideal, which is why 7.5.5 was the more attractive option, but never mind.