For all who nicely welcomed me and offered help - many many thanks. Following instructions given restored some faith that it *would* work, and wonder of wonders, I did get through today to a most helpful bloke at NTL tech support. Seemed the trick was to tell my computer to "resintall" which I would not have guessed as I had never seemed to get as far as "installing" in the first place.
For
IanW - much sympathy. I'd be pretty alarmed and sad too if, on getting through to tech help, they said "ooh serious problem".
I hope it can be resolved for you.