Mark, themensch,
Thanks for your help with this!
I upgraded VMware workstation to 12.5.8 (latest in the 12.5 Pro series) and also upgraded to the latest nVideo drivers... and this made no difference whatsoever. The problem still existed (as it seems to with v14 also based on comments elsewhere).
I then tried Tynam's/themensch's command line option of -force-opengl and: PROBLEM SOLVED... or at least avoided.
Thanks again to all for the help!
Gary