A final note re all the above. I used firefox for a while and it got me out of a hole, but it didn't suit me. I suppose I have just used IE for so long.
Anyway I crossed a few things and downloaded IE8 again. This time it worked OK and seems much faster.
Also, during all the messing about I got rid of all the old restore points, via Mcafee and gain over 4GB of space. I suppose I nust have restored the computor half a dozen times in an attempt to solve the previouse problems. I have kept firefox on standby.
Hope this info helps anyone else.