Hi Pete,
hmmmm... maybe the informations may help you to find the reason for the problems.
Vista 32 (was it yesterday or last week, we had two versions of Windows with 16 and 32 bit?)
DirectX 10.0
Driver Name nvd3dum.dll
Driver Description NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS
Driver Version 7.15.11.8048 <---- see below
Vendor ID 10de 4318
Device ID 0193 403
Subsystem ID 042010de 69210334
Revision a2 162
WHQL Level 1 1
GUID D7B71E3E-42D3-11CF-6E7320240DC2CD35
Driversetup is 180.48 and was released on November 19, 2008. Installed yesterday, after reading your post. Previous Driver was 175.16, sometime summer 2008.
Yesterday testet a little bit on FS2004, no blue screens and no hanging black screen (could close it easyly with ). Switching windowed mode to fullscreen and back - no problems, except the black screen on fullscreen, when opening FSUIPC.
For me it's ok with the workaround to switching the screen-modes if I have to make some settings in FSUIPC.
And please stop driving up the wall, that may hurt you seriously ;-)
Regards
Franco
aka CobraDueCento