Christ, D.T.
First and foremost, I hope you aren't on some rediculous setting like "16 colors". I've found EHPC will even start up in Windowed mode on 256 colors, though, albeit uglified.
You DID try all color depths available from the droplist?
Here's something else to try:
Start->Run
and type "dxdiag".
If you don't HAVE "dxdiag", you're DirectX isn't even remotely new enough (most likely). That would be the first problem.
But then secondly, if it DOES load up, check the line towards the bottom of the first panel to make sure where it says "DirectX Version:" It's 8.0a or higher.
Passing that, hit the Display tab, and then hit the button labeled "Test DirectDraw".
If you note ANY problems dxdiag reports along the way, let me know...
EHPC uses about the
least amount of DirectX functionality there is, pretty much.
P.S. What OS do you run, and what's your locale? (USA, Germany, etc?) I have no idea if locale could effect this, but you never know...
Oh, and in my experience, you'd be surprised just how much different "up to date" video drivers can and will make... sometimes THE difference... on that note, what IS your video card?