Alright well I installed the latest version of Warband and played with that a bit, which didn't have any issues. I had updated all the drivers etc. prior to this.
So I copy/pasted the 268 folder over, which seemed to resolve some of the issues, such as artifacting on the world map, and transparent textures. Though I still am having issues with text in battle not showing up, i.e. casualties exp, as well there is still no checkbox for the option in menu.
This I would suspect to be a text or font, or perhaps alpha issue with the custom interfaces, however its confounded by the fact that the text does show up in certain instances. There is also a random game freeze after a victory, which does not make sense either.
At this point my guess is that maybe something happened to the files when transferring to old comp to external HD to new comp possibly. Seems with every step foward, it's two steps back at this point.