Thank you evryone for responding.

I'm currently running Vista SP2 and it automatically did an update and re-booted itself (whilst I was in the middle of something, which is classic M$ rudeness - wanna slap whoever thought that was a good idea) and I've updated the driver of the NVidia card (chipset) a week ago to the latest one in hopes of avoiding having to do SReed instead of OpenGL. Which is working, or so it seems: thanks Magnus.

Oh well. I least I can sort-of work. If I render, does OpenGL still get invoked or Sreed? Or is that just for preview mode?

Soon as I get my desktop back, this lappie's going back to the preferred OS I have running on it dual-boot: Ubuntu 10.04. At least it's polite and not ... Vista.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks