Neither the hardware renderer nor the 'high quality rendering' in the viewport ( displaying spec, bump etc ). I posted this a couple of days ago on cgtalk with no response: "So, it seems my hardware renderer no longer functions correctly. ( and I really need it to render wireframes ). Whatever I do, it only renders objects…
That reevaluating baked textures junk is displayed every time so just ignore that. Both high quality rendering and hardware render use your video card to draw the scene so like jeffro said it is probably your new video drivers that are not compatible with maya.
Have you tried deleting your 6.0/prefs folder? Backup the directory, then delete it and let maya go back to default settings. If that fixes it you can copy things like your shelves from the backup into the new prefs folder. You can also do wireframes using the vector renderer. In the render properties set it to Fill…
Deleting prefs didn't fix it pyro, but damn, I'd always shy'd away from using the vector render before because I had it in my head that it could only render tris. Doh, that is an awesome solution, thankyou sir. ( although still keen to fix my hardware issue if it does ring any bells with anyone! )