Alright. I'm back on my home PC now anyway, so I should be able to play it.
I think you're right though. It seems the shell wasn't compiling the game, however, I think the problem may lay in the fact that I had to wipe the OS and reinstall due to my aunt deleting the entire system 32 folder. Its possible shell32.dll simply is of an earlier version than need be. This was a clean 9e First edition install, not second edition, so the dll could be outdated.