Solved … so it was indeed the fact that vRay was not installed as right click ‘run as administrator’.
This points me to the crux of so many issues that users have ‘getting on’ with Sketchup not working as it ‘should’ …can Sketchup/Trimble devs change the installer(s) to only work with admin rights? I’m guessing that might be problematic for users who don’t have admin rights…
… or at least a warning saying when installing that ‘only administrator installed Sketchup related/linked software/plugins will work as intended’ Sounds ridiculous to me… but it should be put in red capital letters somewhere. It feels that important.