Well I got tired of not playing after a wonderfully timed power failure left Windows unable to detect either of my nVidia graphics cards. Just because I had this elaborate software system all assembled, the backup was creamed by the power failure and I was looking at a total system rebuild from a blank HD, I just limped along for a couple of months.
This morning I received the last serial number I needed for installed software, booted up the old Ubuntu 10.04 Live CD, fired up Gparted and wiped my C: drive clean, then formatted it NTFS. Been recreating the wheel ever since. Damn, it's as bad as I was afraid of....
But I'm looking at 1600x900 graphics for the first time in two months and at the end of the process I get to play SH4 again!
And I have a cute little EVGA GTS 250 sitting on my bookshelf just waiting to be tortured to within an inch of its life.