Hi stoogeriffic,
You couldn't be a noob for you already tried the "known solutions".
So I'm sure you did the "obvious thing" (installing and starting as administrator) as well.
There is one thing left but that usually has nothing to do with the graphic test (prevents problems when the game starts), so I do not expect that it helps. On the other hand: we never know...
You may try to install the game not on drive "C" but on a partition (e.g. "D" or "E").
Btw, wich version do you use?
Problems also occur when the gold version is installed and a patch afterwards (which is not needed in that case). But again this do not cause problems during the graphic test.
Regards,
Cete