twiggs - you are a star!! Perfect, thankyou.
On the previous issue - Reinstalling Vista Ultimate from the original disc.
It churned away for almost three hours and then reported "Upgrade failed: Reverting to a previous version of Windows".
That would suggest to my uneducated brain, that the problem is written onto this disc(as it's the only common denominator).
I'm transferring corrupt files from the DVD to my hard drive and OS.
I didn't *overly* care until I opened Office to check my e-mails. Office 2007 has been affected, files will no longer open, Outlook cannot send/receive. Excel comes up with "stdole32.tlb" error codes.
Logged back into "chat with service technician" (Mumbai) and, whilst waiting for my estimated 28 minutes (number 8 in the queue) they telephoned me to say "We see you waiting to talk - is everything alright now?".
They promise to call back with a level 2 technician at 9am Eastern Standard Time in the morning.
They don't want me to try "system restore" as they want to see exactly what it's doing in the morning.
Thanks again, twiggs.