OK, firstly, thanks for the advice. (I had seen some say that older drivers might be better, but was unsure)
Now, what happened....
I dl'd the specific drivers you mentioned, and tried them, but there was no change. (I even deleted the original driver files out of the system32 folder first)
I then went back to the
ftp, and noticed that version 21.81 had a winxp exe, so I tried that, but it still isn't working, although that time around it did ask if I wanted to replace some files that didn't start with "nv", and I said yes. (Forget which)
There's a gap between 12.41 to 21.81 in that folder, so I'm unsure if there were other older versions that might work, and have been removed. (Are there?)
Dunno what I should try now, but any further advice is appreciated.