Thanks for the prompt reply.
Having so confidently stated I had the most upto date drivers, I must eat my words, as I found a more upto date patch, for a whole list of Nvidia cards, from 2005. I thought I had reformatted recently, but upon reflection, this might have been 3-4 years ago. Time flies...
So I have solved this with the obvious, and am posting more to say thanks and to provide an answer to the problem, which seems similar to the one described in this
link.
Unfortunately the update patch has left me with another, non-critical error - "NvCPL.dll cant load due to missing libraries". Didnt know I was missing it before, and not loading it doesnt seem to have any effect on my PC. A warning just pops up stating it has not loaded, click OK, and carry on as before. Irritating, but not the end of the world.
I have tried reinstalling the original drivers to get rid of it, without success. It appears to be a Nvidia console, presumably for adjusting the display properties, which is still possible through the Control Panel. I guess I need to find out where is loads in the boot process and delete it, but I cant seem to find it.
Not quite the right place to be asking for help, but you never know...
Anyway, game plays very well thank you.
I played through the first two action scenes (getting 5 soldiers killed in the process) before the
Aircraft Production Bug caused me to stop for the night - should have been saving more regularly
And I have a painfully slow mouse, but I see a solution a couple of posts below me, so will have to have a look tonight if that works. Or if its just a lack of RAM.