After saying the above I had over two hours of booting and re-booting. All initiated on its own. I also had three or four blue screens. I did system restore a few times, once successfully, but mainly just sudden shut-downs.
I tried safe mode and even had shut downs then!
I tried removing software I had installed over the past week and followed the link BOAC supplied and did everything (I think) it suggested because of the "Serious Error". Still it shut down on its own.
Finally, I went to bed thoroughly fed-up.
I booted this morning and after a fairly lengthy start-up it went first go. I had a "Serious Error" again, but closed that, and everything appears to working Ok - so far - fingers crossed - an' all that.
What caused it? Was it shutting down ActiveX, which is now re-instated by system restore? Any suggestions, because I honestly believe that fundamentally the machine is fine.
What is this Serious Error? The same log as before, in my post above, still appeared even though I have deleted the whole of the "minidump" folder. But I can't find the other apparent culprit "sysdata.xml"
Frustrated of Surrey!