Ok, the struggle continues - now faced with a full sized generic cover, no white banner at foot, instead white box central giving the title and Author info. The book opens and functions - though I haven't checked the bookmark.

To get here I did the following - so Please if you see an error/omission point it out - or obviously a better way to achieve a full sized cover, no banner etc or as it should be !!

Steps taken:

Started by removing/deleting all? traces of earlier attempts on the Kindle and also scrubbed the calibre library on the pc.

Used Mobi MetaData to change/add the ASIN (nb deleted existing one that was very long and bore no similarity to the Amazon Kindle ASIN).
Left in the ISBN was this correct?

Converted in calibre 0.9.6:
In 'Meta Data' removed existing cover and pointed to new cover which was/is 600x800 pixels, jpg, same as original just added a serial number of my own. Displays in calibre no prob and has previously displayed on the paperwhite albeit with the banner.

Conversion was mobi input to mobi output - used 'page setup' to change setting to paperwhite as output.
In 'mobi output'
Used 'both'.
Did not select 'share'
Did change to [EBOK]

Then converted and 'sent to machine main memory' via USB cable.....

I think that was all the steps.

As a small sidebar is there a difference between sending to the Kindle and simply dragging/pasting the file, as in another drive on the system? Does the 'send to' actually do something other than just act as a transfer method?

Thanks in anticipation.