Odd problems with American McGee's Alice

[melatonin]

hello.
i did the forum search but couldn't find any solution to my problem.

i recently bought American McGee's Alice, and i love it. i have odd problems though. when i play the game, there should be two meters on left and right side of the screen: red and blue. my problem is that i have only the blue meter on the right, and it's empty no matter what i try. i can't even pick up the blue objects to fill the meter. and i have no red meter at all. i had the smae problem with Alice demo, but i thought it was just because it's a demo and not full game. now i can play the game all right but it's really annoying when i can't know am i going to die or not. plus i can't see what weapon am i using, since there should be the weapon list in the red meter.

and when i save, in the L/S/D mode you should see a picture of your game, in my game there is a black space where the picture should be. the backgrounds of the game blink a lot, but i guess it's because of my video card or something.

i have Win XP, i have heard the game runs badly in XP. i really can't imagine a reason for these problems. it's just so odd. i have tried stretching the screen, but the red meter just isn't there. i have tried no cd fixes, but they don't work. i guess they're wrong version or something.

then i have a really newbie question: how can i find out what sort of video card i am using? i don't want to open up my computer, so is there any place where i could just click into and see the name of my video card and who has made it? i can find that information of my sound card, but the video card stuff is nowhere. do i even HAVE a video card? so many questions! i'd REALLY appreciate any sort of advise.

-Melatonin