Well - after deleting the drivers for the tablet, but not being able to find any other trace of it on the system but with Poser still crashing, in desperation I ran Task Manager'  Lurking in there was a process called "ATWUSB.EXE", which appears to monitor when the tablet is connected.  I disabled this and Lo! and indeed Behold! Poser launched first time and every time since.  I managed to work out how to prevent ATWUSB.EXE from being loaded at startup, but can't find any way of actually uninstalling it, as apart from it running as a process, there appears to be no trace of it anywhere on my system.  I had a previous tablet from the same manufacturer which used to sit happily alongside Poser for years, so I'm going to install the drivers that came with that (I never throw any CDs away!) and hope that they work with the new tablet.  If all elase fails I'll re-install the new drivers and just hope that I can switch off ATWUSB.EXE whenever I need to launch Poser.  It's got me exhausted - thanks for all the advice and tips folks. 

My self-build system - Vista 64 on a Kingston 240GB SSD, Asus P5Q Pro MB, Quad 6600 CPU, 8 Gb Geil Black Dragon Ram, CoolerMaster HAF932 full tower chassis, EVGA Geforce GTX 750Ti Superclocked 2 Gb, Coolermaster V8 CPU aircooler, Enermax 600W Modular PSU, 240Gb SSD, 2Tb HDD storage, 28" LCD monitor, and more red LEDs than a grown man really needs.....I built it in 2008 and can't afford a new one, yet.....!

My Software - Poser Pro 2012, Photoshop, Bryce 6 and Borderlands......"Catch a  r--i---d-----e-----!"