as much as windows is a pain in the ass, its been running on Win 10 since the free 7 upgrade which is at least 5 years!
so no idea what update has caused this, but i can open files by double clicking them and use the cutter still... so although not ideal i have managed to work with it today... need to find the original install file and the Liyu files that are needed to be copied over to make it work though