I am currently experiencing issues when using "Sidney" in Gabriel Knight 3. First off, the bits and pieces of the laptop casing are not aligned with the screen of said laptop. The laptop screen is in one piece. All menus other than "E-mail" seem to work fine, but when I choose e-mail, the window containing the e-mail itself is displayed below the screen.
Typically the game is at 1920x1080 resolution with all graphics options set to maximum. The in-game laptop displays properly on my screen when using 640x480, 800x600 or 1024x768 in both software and hardware accelerated modes. However, the e-mail window never displays on-screen, unless I am in 1920x1080 and then, it's not possible to click on it, or see the entire thing. Occasionally, the e-mail window will display below the in-game laptop screen at 1024x768 (simular to 1920x1080), when switching between resolutions, but the result is the same. To summarize, 1920x1080 and sometimes 1024x768 are partially displaying the e-mail window in the in-game laptop, but it is not entirely visible and cannot be manipulated. 640x480 and 800x600 do not display the e-mail window at all, yet the laptop screen looks fine otherwise.
I have tried adjusting the Windows compatibility options for the game's shortcut. (Admin, various Windows compatibility modes, "Disabled visual themes, etc...) In addition, I have attempted various in-game detail levels/settings. "Disable Catalyst AI" has been tried in the ATI Catalyst Control Center. I have also tried ending the ATI "CCC.exe" and "MOM.exe" processes that belong to ATI, but to no avail.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
System: Windows 7 64-bit with an ATI Radeon 4890 card. Windows is fully up to date, DirectX 9.0c has been installed and the graphics card is using the 10.3 catalyst driver package.
(Edited for clarification regarding lower resolution results.)

I am having exactly this same issue. I really hope there is an answer and I have been trying many of the same fixes to no avail. For what it is worth I have a NVidia card so that is not the problem.

Thanks for trying EndlessKnight... I am still hoping for a resolution myself.

Yep, i'm getting it too. the laptop is completely broken for me @ 1920x1200.
I haven't tried changing resolutions yet, i'll give that a go.
Edit:
Just tried 640x480 and while the laptop displays ok, i can't read the emails, the email window displays off screen at the bottom

I too can confirm this problem. It makes the game unplayable.. And you cant get past Day 3 12PM with it.

Still no response from support regarding this. I've sent another support request in on July 24th, in case the original was bugged. If you're having this issue, please send a description of the issue in with a link to this thread and a dxdiag.txt file report. (The support page will tell you how.)
Thanks all.

I'm actually using the Retail Copy. But I found out the GOG game has the same issue. It seems to happen on NVIDIA and ATI cards.. I tried it on my laptop which is an intel card same issue. Tried all resolutions etc. I know the game didnt have this problem in the old days. So its gotta be an issue with something on modern computers. (I'm dion250 btw.. not sure why I didnt login to post :P )

Just encountered this problem in my ongoing walkthrough. I even tried it out on my older computer, but the e-mail screen still won't display properly.
Does anyone happen to have a save file from Day 3 12PM with the unreadable message read? Since you only need to use e-mail once in the game (right?), that would bypass the problem without sacrificing much content at all.
I just *really* want to play this game...

Try looking here

Anyone got a fix for this? Perhaps GoG?

I've had Paul's save game sitting around for some time, but hadn't had the chance to test it due to vacation. Initially it did not work for me. The laptop screen would look different when I loaded my game after Paul's, but it still didn't work. Then I decided to try another save. This particular save, was not saved during regular gameplay, but was saved at the beginning of a segment of a day, having an image, the day, time, and so forth displayed. (As with Paul's save.) Loading this save after Paul's game DID work.
I was running in a 1024x768 window, 16-bit graphics. In Windows 7 you can accomplish this by right-clicking your desktop, choosing "Screen Resolution", click "Advanced settings", and clicking the "List All Modes" button under "Adapter". 16-bit modes should be available there. Window mode can be entered by using the Resolution Utility located on "The Sierra Help Pages". (Under extras)
Thank you so much Allukka! You are my hero. ^_^ Thanks also to Namur for linking those saves earlier to help others bypass the issue, which helped Allukka find a solution!

Glad to hear it helped! I love the Gabriel Knight series to bits and was pretty upset about not being able to play through GK3 on a modern system. Luckily, this was not the case. :)
Now if only I could find more games with the same quality of writing as the GK series...

Hmmm his save email does work. I didn't fix my own tho. Very odd. Don't know if I would consider this a solution.