Didn't work, but it was worth a go so thanks for that. I settled on the simpler solution of minimising the game until it's loaded.

The corners and edges of the RoP loading screen are overlaid with text, including game version number, "Windows 7" and some other things. One of them is the PC's User folder ("User: [name]"), towards the top right corner. Is there any way of making the loading screen not display this text? The game ...