So I'm writing back with good news, changing the Windows Version from 7 to 95 seemed to do the trick. No updates of any kind were necessary. I didn't want to speak too soon in case I just got lucky but I've been playing for the past week now with no crashes whatsoever. Happily leveling away
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Anyway that's the solution that worked for me, hope this can help someone down the line if they run into similar issues.