I realize there's been considerable discussion of this game and display problems, but this seems a little different.

Trying to run Patrician 3 on my wife's new laptop has revealed a problem (something similar happens with at least one old arcade style game, too): It will load, show the initial video, then I get a lot of graphic flickering, and the window minimizes; looking at the Win7 preview shows it as a black screen (though the sound is playing).

Her system is an HP dv7 series, with an AMD Phenom II P960 Quad Core, 17.6" screen and an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 6370 chip.

Any idea what can be done about it? I pointer to another thread is fine if I've just missed one.

Edit: Oh, and to make it clear, I've fiddled a bit with compatibility mode, but not much there seems to make any difference.

As it turns out (as I discovered by trial and error fiddling with Compatibility mode some more this morning) this is another case where disabling display scaling dealt with the problem. If I can figure out how, I'll mark this Solved.

There is a file called dxcfg.exe in the installation folder which gives a few options to tinker with screen settings.
After running into the "black screen"-problem I tried to change the settings (without using compability-mode/scaling options in Windows). And these settings worked out for me on my (3440x1440-screen) :
Display mode 2560x1440
Aspect ratio correction: Enabled
Vertical sync: Set by application
Anisotropic filtering: Disabled
Presentation: Windowed
Scaling method: Screen fit
Gamma correction: 1.0
Antialising: Disabled

Seems like the windowed option did the trick, although scrolling in-game can be somwhat tricky with the windows bar visible on the bottom of the screen. Even if hided you might want scroll with the arrow-keys instead, which works out just fine.