The above is exactly what I am getting.
Anyway, following the advice here I have now been using Firefox for a few days and I am getting to like it. It does have some strange artefacts in editing text in text boxes like this one but it works far better on the whole, and I especially like the way one can save a bunch of bookmarks and open them all in one go.
Stickyb: how do you set up a hosts file? Years ago, in the good ole days of NT4, I used to put entries in the LMHOSTS file, but can't remember why or indeed if this was necessary.
Thank you all.