I have good news! I just got it working this morning (working from home is great!). Or at least, I no longer have the issues covered in this thread - I've not had chance to try and play the game yet to make sure there are no other issues but it looks to be right.

These are the steps I took and I think I've identified where my problem was (Point 1 below - no idea what caused it though).

1. I re-downloaded the TWoS installer and noticed there was a 1K size difference between this copy and the one downloaded on the 19th. I assumed this would just be file allocation differences, but to be sure I generated a checksum of both files and guess what.. they were different!

2. I performed a clean install with the new installer - this did not fix anything, BUT, I noticed new menu items on the SH5 main menu. Progress.

3. I uninstalled SH5 & UPlay and ran every file cleanup / registry cleanup tool that I have.

4. Added & formatted a spare physical hdd.

5. Clean install of SH5 & clean install of TWoS to the new drive, but this time I added RealNavigaton, Enigma and other optional mods (Auto-ident and Contact Report).

5. Sacrificed a goat to the greater glory of our Dark Lord and Master.

6. Completed install as per usual.

7. Loaded the game, and VICTORY! I'm still using latest nVidia drivers and I don't need to use compatibility mode or anything like that.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread, really fantastic support from the community here. I'm now going to go upgrade my SubSim subscription :subsim:

Cheers,
Cavey

I sometimes update main installer with latest update or add some minor change log /files tweaks. I don't think this can be the cause for your problems...

As always, this is the key step! :D:up: