For my part, I couldn't really think of anything to suggest I'm afraid.
I suppose the one thing worth suggesting (except that you did say you'd tried the menu functions already) might be to try the three functions on the View menu labelled "Show No Overlays", "Show Minimal Overlays", and "Show All Overlays". These are bound to the 0, 9, and 8 keys and they control how much detail is shown in the scale and other labels on the main view.