All working now - at least so far. By the way, on first inspection, Microsoft FS seems S**t compared to Xplane - in case anyone wanted to know that!
Also, it's almost worth using Vista for a while just to experience the pleasure of going back into OSX - what were Microsoft thinking!! Can you imagine the sort of people that you would least want to sort out the color scheme of your house, cross them with the people you would least trust running the economy, ask them to design an operating system and I reckon it wouldn't be far off something like Vista!