I'm not entirely sure what you mean and the issue might be compacted by the fact that I it was some time since I last played the Httt version of the game. The terminology might be a bit different compared to the later expansions. Nontheless:
When counting colonial range for the purpose of colonization, you're dealing with two numbers. Firstly, there is colonial range, which denotes the distance you can send colonists from any unblocked core coastal province. Secondly, there is effective distance which is the actual distance between your unblocked port and the uncolonized province in question. If you are land-locked or only have an uncored coastal province (i.e. no coastal province from which effective distance can be counted), the effective distance should be 99999.0. This means that it is impossible to send colonists, since your fixed colonial range (which depends on tech etc.) cannot exceed that number. On the other hand, if your colonial range is higher than your effective distance, then you should be able to send colonists.
From your description, do you mean that your effective distance for all provinces are counted as 0, thereby making it possible to send colonists to all corners of all the world, regardless of distance? If so, I have no clear explanations. It is possible that a currupted file isn't being deleted during the reinstall, meaning that you're reinstalling over the same currupted file, causing the problem to repeat itself. This can be fixed by checking the eu3 folder after the uninstallation and manually deleting the left-over file. Howver, since you described the problem as persistent on different laptops, it doesn't sound like a file problem.
Could you provide a screen shot or expain what your trying to do and what the 'glitch' enables or prevents with what country?
