Hi, a bit of an update.

I have NVIDIA cards in Windows XP Home, Pro, 2000Pro and Windows 8 32-bit machines...... no problems there. This is a new card running Win 8 64bit, and the only one I have from ASUS with an NVIDIA chipset.

The MS update was 295.73, whilst the NVIDIA one was 296.10.

I uninstalled the Asus SmartDoctor and Gamer's OSD software as it seemed to be conflicting at boot and shutdown. That seemed to fix most of the problems apart from the fact that I still couldn't get any sound.

Silly boys NVIDIA.............. you spotted the exact model of LG 22" monitor I was using............... so why did you try to use your HDMI sound system when the damn thing doesn't have any speakers?

I just set it back to the VIA HD Audio chipset on the MoBo and all is now well.

Like I said, this is a 32bit Vista Home premium box, and it scores the card 5.7 out of 5.9 for Aero and 5.2 for gaming ( a GeForce 210 for gaming????????????) I suspect it might be interacting with the onboard NVIDIA video?