Crashes, Black Fuzzy Lines, and a Disappointing Start. HALLP!!!

[P-47Thunderbolt]

So, hoping for a break from War Thunder, I picked up IL-2 on sale recently, but have not had much luck playing it.

Me: "I'm frustrated with War Thunder, so I'll try a nice relaxing game of IL-2 Sturmovik."

IL-2 Sturmovik: "That's what you think."

 

At first, I was getting DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_REMOVED errors constantly. Via some online advice, I modified Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers to add a thing that fixed that particular problem. All good.

 

Then I was getting a fuzzy black bar down the center of the screen. More online advice suggested that I change my resolution from 1366x768 to 1280x720, and that fixed it.

 

However, things haven't improved much for me.

 

Now I'm getting a black bar along the bottom-right quarter of the screen, I'm having frequent crashes and freezes, and Fullscreen is... baffling. HAALLP!

• Fuzzy black bar. No idea how to fix it.
• Crashes/Freezes: Every so often (as in, within fifteen minutes of my starting the game), the game will just freeze. I can't Alt+Tab, I can't Ctrl+Alt+Delete, I can't do anything to change the screen. I can still pause and unpause the game (I can tell from the audio), but the screen remains frozen. And so, I have to restart my computer.
• Fullscreen: Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. If I turn it off, it still isn't windowed (although the size of the "window" is smaller than my screen and partially hidden behind the taskbar) and I can't move my mouse out of the IL-2 Sturmovik "window," although I can click on the taskbar. I also can't move the "window" on my screen.
  Fullscreen works consistently if I'm in 1366x768, but then I have a big black bar down the center of my screen.

 

I'm not very tech-savvy, so I'm afraid I'll need some hand-holding, but any help would be greatly appreciated. I'd really like to enjoy this game, but at the moment I haven't really gotten to play it.

 

Only thing I can think of is maybe the game is incompatible with sentient fighter planes?