solved somehow, just played around with settings for ages and something worked (no idea what unfortunately as was getting bored and changing everything at once Just installed the game and then then used the open installer
freespace2 std (from the install works fine)
soon as I try to use one of the launchers (or run the open builds direct) everything goes very slow (1 frame per 5 seconds (or similar it seems, you can see the screen refresh, gets onto the pilot select and mouse takes ages to register movement (possibly just screen refreshing)
tried with as many different settings in the launcher as I can see, tried multiple builds, mods on and off, sound on and off etc
have tried it windowed and same problem (only in game window works fine when you move the cursor onto the desktop and such.
thanks for any help
Bleak