Thanks Mark. However I did right click Arduino and the IDE icons in Device Manager, click properties > drivers > uninstall. And it uninstalled both (i didn't yet try a restart at this point)
When I try the next time, I completely remove the FTDI folder from the arduino directories, just to make sure windows doesn't pick from that sub dir. I point to the /drivers dir and still no luck!!!
I have had this for over a month and still have not been able to load a sketch ;-<