PS: anyway to get enemy drop all back?

I'm having a problem with the 8633 SCI build and Flugente's package of his Additional Mercs including Lara, Sara, Scott, Max, and Shepard. It may be my fault somewhere, as I had to hand create via copy and delete a combined set of MercProfile.xml , MercOpinions.xml , and Backgrounds.xml .

The result of this problem is that for each of the Flugente Mercs, named earlier, I have corrupted Descriptions. They show a varying series of Capital letters, which change as you move the mouse, usually about 10-20 characters long, mostly made up of multiple capital A's.

I've looked thru all of these files and more, but cannot yet find a clear issue. I did notice one or two inconsistencies though. These were in the Backgrounds.xml file, but I can't really see how they would cause the issue. Before I mention these inconsistencies (or things I don't quite get, but may be fine), I'd note that what I basically did was remove the empty placeholder areas for each Background and just added in the necessary portion for that Merc or Id number in the file. I tried to be careful to keep syntax correct, it all seems correct. So I have entries for all the Flugente Mercs and chaotic Buns as well as kept the original Buns one, so that should not be an issue, except at the boundaries of each Merc's section. I would not expect a boundary mistake to cause simply a mistaken description though.

INCONSISTENCIES NOTED that bother me:

1) For Shepard, which is <uiIndex>254 there are two possible entries. One is a Renegade version, followed afterwards with a Paragon version. Perhaps I need to delete entirely the Paragon version (or one or the other) in order for the file to be read correctly.

2) For the Paragon version of Shepard, there is a syntax error in the portion I copied from and thus in my file:

<<
<!-- Shepard's alternate background, replace background 254 with this if you want a paragon Shepard
<BACKGROUND>
>>

The error is that the commented first line is normally supposed to be followed by a single space after the last word Shepard and then --> . I believe this is simply to delineate the end of the comments section. However, adding the space--> did not cure the problem.

YET TO BE TRIED AS A SOLUTION: So I'm not sure what the problem is, however I'm going to try deleting the entire Paragon entry to see if this fixes the issue.

The descriptions themselves are not at the boundaries of each Merc Entry, so I do not think those should be corrupted via cut and paste. Stats and Traits seem correct, as does the various possible Merc Starting Gear for all of the Flugente Mercs. I cannot test to see if chaotic_Buns comes up correctly since I am starting a brand new campaign.

-----

If anyone knows a common cause of some Merc Descriptions having Descriptions that are corrupted with mostly AAAAAAAAA, or something similar, please advise. Thanks much in advance.

Two more issues:
My desktop flickers through heavily. At first I could fix this by enabling vsync and installing the compatibility patch, but after a few restarts of the computer, it feels like it´s getting worse.

Multiple options in the ini editor do not work. For example the "enemies drop all gear on death". Editing the corresponding .xml file directly is not taking effect.