Hi -
You are quite welcome, but you did all of the work! That's a great work-around you found!
For future info, if you need to disable a driver, you may want to use SysInternals AutoRuns from Microsoft TechNet -
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902
Un-checking the box next to the driver name ("drivers" tab) will disable it - same as changing startup in Regedit to a 3.
Thank you very much for posting back with the outcome - greatly appreciated.
Regards. . .
John
EDIT: Apologies for repeating myself about AutoRuns. I just noticed that I posted about it earlier in the thread.
JC