Will do - if I was convinced it wasn't a hardware issue I might have kept going, but I'm not and the window of time in which a hassle free return/exchange is possible was approaching its end. 5-7 days before they have a chance to diagnose, at which point I'll be able to advise further.
Well I thought that was the case but this machine I bought wouldn't download anything NVidia even though I searched for the GTX 860M anyway hopefully the seller can put things right/:)
I have now heard from the repairmen at the store, and they are claiming that it is a hardware problem, though interestingly not a problem with either the motherboard or graphics card. There's an old (several years at least) card I had which had 2 extra IDE connections (once upon a time I had a large number of IDE drives) and they are saying that this is what is causing the problem (I got this second hand through the customer service rep so it's not clear whether the card itself is fundamentally incompatible or whether it just isn't working properly after all this time) - they suggest removing the card and doing a clean reinstall (I guess in case there are drivers or registry keys that are confused) - I am by now heartily sick of the windows installation screens so I'm letting them do it (if only because if it doesn't fix the problem I want them to continue working on it without my having to drop to the back of the line). I will be interested to see if this does correct the problems and will advise further when I get my computer back.
And an additional phone call has come in indicating that the video card itself was also defective. No doubt in a couple of days they'll call again and say the motherboard is too...
Final update - a new graphics card was installed, but the errors persisted. They tested the old graphics card in a different machine and there was no problem. They replaced the processor in my machine, and all errors disappeared. This was a pure hardware issue, it appears.
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